The Message Matters!
11/10/2009 09:59 Filed in: Thoughts
on Internet Marketing
A recent examination of some of my clients' text ads,
and their positions on the search engine results
pages, brought back an age-old advertising truth:
the message matters. Despite the
technologies and targeting abilities of today's
Internet marketing platforms, advertisers must always
provide a compelling and relevant message. If your
message resonates with a customer, they're likely to
click on your ad and visit your web site, no matter
where the ad appears on the page.
I wanted to know if my clients' lower-positioned ads were being clicked less frequently. I plotted click-through rates for a series of text ads, against the positions of those ads on the search engine results pages. I expected to see a basic, inverted curve, with higher-positioned ads enjoying higher click-though rates, and click-through rates diminishing as the positions of the ads became lower. This theory makes sense, right? If an ad isn't at the top of the page, weren't users more likely to ignore it?
To the contrary, my simple chart showed that ad position was less important than I'd assumed. Click-through rates for this particular group of ads varied, with no negative effect on the lower-positioned ads. In fact, some of the highest click-through rates were for ads that had the very lowest positions!
The moral of this story? A few things...
Of course, the message matters above all else. If your [text] ad is compelling enough, and relevant enough to the users' intent, they'll click on the ad no matter where it appears on the page.
Secondly - and no less importantly - this was one study of an isolated group of ads. Each campaign may be different and users may react differently to another series of ads.
In the world of Internet marketing, there is a wealth of detailed data available to advertisers. This data should be used to drive decisions, write ads, select keywords and optimize your campaigns in response to real-world, real-time results. Our assumptions may help us get started, but as our marketing campaigns evolve, we should follow the paths that our customers' actions lay out for us. What works for one campaign may not work for another - but we'll have the data and evidence to tell us the difference.
Thanks for reading and good luck with your Internet marketing efforts!
- Jeremy
I wanted to know if my clients' lower-positioned ads were being clicked less frequently. I plotted click-through rates for a series of text ads, against the positions of those ads on the search engine results pages. I expected to see a basic, inverted curve, with higher-positioned ads enjoying higher click-though rates, and click-through rates diminishing as the positions of the ads became lower. This theory makes sense, right? If an ad isn't at the top of the page, weren't users more likely to ignore it?
To the contrary, my simple chart showed that ad position was less important than I'd assumed. Click-through rates for this particular group of ads varied, with no negative effect on the lower-positioned ads. In fact, some of the highest click-through rates were for ads that had the very lowest positions!
The moral of this story? A few things...
Of course, the message matters above all else. If your [text] ad is compelling enough, and relevant enough to the users' intent, they'll click on the ad no matter where it appears on the page.
Secondly - and no less importantly - this was one study of an isolated group of ads. Each campaign may be different and users may react differently to another series of ads.
In the world of Internet marketing, there is a wealth of detailed data available to advertisers. This data should be used to drive decisions, write ads, select keywords and optimize your campaigns in response to real-world, real-time results. Our assumptions may help us get started, but as our marketing campaigns evolve, we should follow the paths that our customers' actions lay out for us. What works for one campaign may not work for another - but we'll have the data and evidence to tell us the difference.
Thanks for reading and good luck with your Internet marketing efforts!
- Jeremy
Why You Should Advertise Online
08/18/2009 10:18 Filed in: Thoughts
on Internet Marketing
Remember your "elevator speech"? The quick, to-the-point explanation of what you do and why it's beneficial? If you can't explain the value of your products/services in a few sentences or less, your customer's attention may go elsewhere.
Now, boil this pitch down to 140 characters and you have your basic search engine text ad. Challenging? Yes. Rewarding? Definitely. People will be interested in your products/services, or they won't. They will let you know with their actions. It's a highly efficient use of your time and resources, and a highly efficient way for customers to find the products/services they're looking for. Everybody wins.
With search engine marketing, you can reach people at the very moments they're looking for your products/services. True, you could reach a wide audience of baseball enthusiasts by advertising in publications like Baseball America. But when they read the issue containing your ad, how do you know if they're in the market for the bats and gloves you're selling? Maybe they bought new equipment right before they picked up that issue. In this case, your ad dollars were wasted on that particular reader. You'll still attract some customers who need new equipment, but you've paid for the other readers, too - the ones who won't become customers. Online, you're only paying to reach the people who specifically click on your ads. Continuing our example: they're looking for bats and gloves and you've met their needs at the precise moment they're looking. Everybody wins.
Boil your message down even further, and you can also reach people on their mobile devices. An iPhone isn't a phone, it's a handheld computer with an Internet browser. This is the new frontier for advertising and marketing - and you can't reach this audience through print or broadcast advertising. If customers show interest in your products/services by clicking on your ads from a home computer, doesn't this interest increase exponentially when they're on the way to the mall, wallet and credit card in hand? OK, this is an extreme simplification of consumer behavior, but I hope you'll agree about the impacts of well-placed online advertising. It's the perfect merger of customer intentions and your products/services. Everybody wins.
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