Tips to improve the management of sponsored ads in search engines

Written by Fernando Maciá

Advertisements or sponsored links in search engines (MSN Search, Google, Yahoo!) represent the most effective and profitable Internet marketing tool as long as they are used properly. Learn the tactics that make the most of your sponsored ad campaign.

Sponsored links or sponsored ads in search engines (MSN Search, Yahoo!, Google) are classified within the group of pay-per-click tools, whose main particularity is that the investment is only paid when the potential customer clicks on the advertisement offered. Other forms of online marketing such as the well-known banner ads are usually paid by the number of page impressions and not by the total number of clicks. Hence, sponsored links are today the most widely used Internet marketing tool by advertisers.

Sponsored links appear on search engine results pages. They are usually seen on the right margin of the results page. They are sometimes displayed on the left side above the natural results. The ads have a standardized format (a text banner in the shape of a rectangle) consisting of a short headline, two descriptive lines and the web address of the advertiser’s page.

The texts that are normally included in a sponsored ad are the name of the product, a brief description of the product and the web address of the advertiser’s specific page where the product or service is offered. These ads when clicked on by search engine users function as a link or linl allowing those users to automatically land on the advertiser’s web page. For example, an online mattress store can create a campaign that aims to appear at the top of MSN Search when someone types the search phrase “mattresses for sale online”.

Sponsored ads work like a keyword auction where the advertiser that pays the most is the one that comes out on top for a given search term. However, owning the first place is not always synonymous with a profitable sponsored link campaign. Here are the main tricks that will make your sponsored ad group the best return on your investment:

Insert the keywords that your potential customer would use within the sponsored advertisement

Advertisements should be written to include the search phrases most commonly used by search engine users interested in your product or service. For example, if many users use the phrase “beachfront houses in La Palma” we should include that phrase in the descriptive text of the sponsored ads. It is proven that users click more times on those ads that contain the words that match the search phrase used.

Segment your ads as much as possible by keyword

The trick to improving the performance of our campaigns is efficient segmentation. We must create very specific ads for each product we offer. For example, in the case of real estate, it is best to create an ad for each combination of property and location. If I have 3 penthouses in different locations, it is best to create an ad for each location. For example, an ad for “penthouses in Valencia”, another ad for “penthouses in Gandía” and another ad for “penthouses in Castellón”, etc. A keyword must also be assigned to each ad.

Segment your campaign by language and country

When we are configuring the sponsored links campaign in the search engines we can select the language and the country where we want our ads to appear. Do not forget to segment your campaign to avoid visits that are geographically impossible to convert into customers.

Use the keyword suggestion tools to find the most appropriate phrases to advertise with.

If you are unsure which search phrases are the most attractive to advertise with, search engines offer keyword suggestion tools which tell you in detail which keyword clusters in your industry have been used the most by search engine users and which search phrases have been the most popular with advertisers.

“Invite action” from your ads.

Sponsored ads that contain actionable copywriting often capture the attention of search engine users. If we can insert call to action (CTA) words such as “Compare”, “Book”, “Learn more”, “Buy”, “Download”, etc., our ad will increase the probability of being seen and clicked.

Use the price in the ad to target potential customers.

Placing the price of our product or service in the wording of the ad is usually an appropriate tactic to segment potential customers. For example, if I advertise a luxury villa and place the text “Villas from 600,000 euros” I will segment the ad in such a way that search engine users who see the ad and have a lower budget than the one advertised will not try to click on the ad. This way we save hundreds of visits that will not become customers.

Use of negative keywords

The sponsored ads control panel allows us to discard specific keywords so that our ad does not appear in the search results when a user types a certain search phrase that is not appropriate to our business interests. For example, if we sell a birth chart service over the Internet, we are not interested in our ad appearing for the phrase “free birth chart”. Given this we must configure through the negative keywords that this type of search phrases are not related to our sponsored ads.

Frequently monitor your campaigns for opportunities to reduce budgets without compromising ad position.

For a campaign to bear fruit, it is mandatory to monitor the results that are being registered on a daily basis. Ongoing improvements can always be made such as adjusting budgets, improving ad copy, creating new ads, pausing less profitable ads, etc. The combination of these tasks will result in a more profitable campaign for our interests.

Optimize your budget: do not be tempted to obtain the No. 1 position at all costs

Do not fall into the temptation of wanting to be the first at all costs in sponsored links. Placing our sponsored ad in first place for a highly competitive search phrase can be tremendously expensive compared to second or third position. The ads placed in lower positions also receive many visits. It is preferable to place our ad in third position and obtain 1000 visits at 0.20 euros cost per click (200 euros of investment) than to place our ad in first position and obtain 400 visits at 0.50 euros per click (200 euros of investment).

Analyze web traffic data from sponsored link campaigns

If you have a good web statistics system you will be able to detect the footprint left by visitors coming through your sponsored links campaign. Analyze the number of visits that come through sponsored ads, the number of pages they view, the time they spend on the website and finally whether those visits convert into customers. Promoting in sponsored ads is profitable as long as the cost of the click of the visit is less than the profit that can be obtained from that visit. If for every 100 visits we earn 30 euros, this means that the cost per click in a sponsored ad campaign cannot cost more than 0.30 euros per click.

Optimize your Landing Page

According to the latest studies, 50% of the performance of a sponsored link campaign is based on the quality of the landing page. It is useless to have the most attractive of ads if the user lands on a page with little information and poor usability that forces the potential customer to flee to a competitor’s website. Try to make sure that the page where the user who clicks on a sponsored ad lands is a page that really reflects the offer you previously advertised in the search engines and that obviously that page has everything necessary to persuade the visitor to become a customer.

Apply A/B testing to ads and Landing Pages.

Test an ad for 15 days and then change various elements of the wording of the ad and leave the ad active for another 15 days. Then take note of the version that worked best to leave it permanently. Testing different versions of sponsored text ads for the same product or service will help us find those ads that register the best results. Likewise, if you can change elements on the landing page and take note of the conversion statistics over time you will be able to get the page that produces the best return for you.

Conclusions

Trial and error is the best strategy to get the best possible performance from your sponsored ad campaign. The constant application of changes in any of the elements that make up a sponsored links campaign in search engines has an impact on the increase or decrease of ROI. Try several of these tricks and take note of the statistics produced. This butterfly effect game will make your web promotion campaign get better and better as time goes by, thus obtaining the highest amount of customers with the minimum investment.