Paul Woods

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And the result is…  read on to find out!

Before we begin, I would like to put some context around my tests.  Firstly as an Australian B2B Marketer, who really wants to sell to other Australian businesses, I restricted my ads to only be displayed to Australians

One big tick for AdWords - Geographic Targeting.  In the case of Australia, I can target to individual states.  For example if I wanted to focus all my effort (and budget) into the Victorian market, I simply target my ads to only display to people located in Victoria.  If I want to target both Victoria and Queensland, I can do so, whilst ignoring the rest of the country, and the rest of the world!

Secondly, I wanted to run a number of different versions of what was essentially the same add to see what ad copy got the most traction.

Another big tick for AdWords - Multiple Ad Versions.  The let me test the copy and identify the best strategy for both the current campaign - because I could change the characteristics of each ad in real time, but also for future campaigns.

Thirdly, as the decision makers I was really targeting would only surf the net during business hours (say 8AM - 6PM, Monday through Friday) I wanted to restrict the display of my ads to those times.

Once again - another big tick for AdWords - Campaign Timing!  And it is granular down to 15 minute blocks! 

So at this stage things are starting to look good for AdWords - but what about the cold hard facts - the quantitative data - click throughs, impressions, positioning and most importantly how much did it cost!

The Results

My test campaign lasted for five days - and was designed to sell a reasonably priced piece of office productivity technology.  Which meant some very targeted keywords (on top of the geographic targeting I had used).     Overall I was very happy with the results.

• Just under 23,000  (Australian) impressions (~575 per hour the campaign was alive)
• ~80 clicks (~0.33% Click through rate - 2 per hour)
• Average cost per click - $1.38
• Average position - 3.2

Not to bad when you just look at impressions alone.  For example if I were to advertise in CRN Magazine (a local IT reseller/channel magazine) I am looking at a circulation of about ~10,000 readers.  If I were to choose the smallest ad unit in their rate card, I would be looking at about 1500 bucks.  And those readers would not be as highly targeted as those in my AdWords campaign.  The AdWords campaign cost just over $100!  That’s 15 times more value for money using Pay Per Click than that of traditional print advertising!

But lets have a look at my ad variations…

1. 9,944 Impressions, 0.42% ctr
2. 1878 Impressions, 0.90% ctr
3. 8939 Impressions, 0.14% ctr
4. 2182 Impressions, 0.27% crt

So what was so good about variations one and three to get that many impressions?  and what was so special about variation two that saw a click through rate 272% higher than the average for the campaign?

The title of the ad in variation one was pretty much a statement of the product name.  It was very closely aligned with the keywords that I had selected for the campaign.  The copy of the ad also included a special offer, if you purchased the product before the end of the month.

Variation three was similar to that of variation one, however it lead with the offer, and had the keywords in the copy of the ad.  I suggest the similarity of keywords was the reason why the impressions were fairly consistent between these two versions, however leading with the product name in the title worked three times better.

When I look at variation four, which had the lowest click through rate (and almost the lowest impression rate) I feel the main reason for its poor performance was that I used the model number of the product.  I think it was too specific for what people were searching for (it was for a specific product, not a category of similar products).

That leads me to variation two - the most successful of them all.  Whilst the impressions were low, the click through rate was far superior than that others.  Why?  The title of the ad focused on a category of similar products, and not a specific model number.  That category of products was a large enough funnel to gain peoples attention and take them to the next step of the sales process… the landing page.

I will save my analysis of landing pages for another post - in this case I used some pretty stock standard copywriting techniques, and managed to get ~7% conversion rate (7% made a phone call to a sales rep - no online ordering!).

From those discussions we were looking at a number leads in excess of $10 000,, some of which have closed already.  All that from a measly $107 AdWords campaign, and some creative copywriting.

Key Takeaway

From a marketers perspective it was a pretty successful test - plenty of ad impressions to build the profile of the organisations brand name around these very specific keywords - plus the added advantage of lead generation.  And then there is the best thing of all - fantastic ROI!

Still… this campaign was focused on a product that we sell.  Next time I would like to test some of our more in depth services engagements, and see how they go - I will keep you posted.

Also - I feel that I can refine future campaigns to drive impressions, and to increase the click through rate hopefully by a few percentage points.  That will take some time though!

Anyone else had success with AdWords and want to share it?  Drop a comment below.

Cheers

Paul W

Technorati Tags: AdWords, Pay Per Click, ROI, Analysis, B2B