Pay-Per-Click, Part 4: Fast And Effective PPC Testing Strategies
Concluding our series on pay-per-click advertising–Shel Horowitz’s Frugal Marketing Tip, November 2007.
With any paid strategy, where dollars are flowing–in some cases quite rapidly–out of your pocket for your marketing, you want to be sure you’re tracking and tweaking and tracking again.
Sometimes, changing a single word in the headline or reversing two lines in the body of the ad can shift response enormously. So you measure your results, make changes, test the results again. You do this for any ad medium, but the beauty of pay-per-click is that you can get the data very quickly, make the tweak within minutes, and test again. So you can refine your tactics on the fly, rather than waiting months if your campaign is based on (as an example) print advertising in monthly magazines.
You need to test the ad headline, the ad body copy, the landing page headline, design, body copy, offer, etc. Testing is so critical that if you’re not willing to put in the time for testing, I don’t think you should be doing PPC to begin with. This is the big reason why I haven’t really used it so far; I just don’t have the time to look at how well it’s working.
The traditional way is to test one element at a time–but that takes too long and is far too much work. I’d recommend using “multivariate testing” software that automates the whole process and allows you to test a number of variables at once.
Since I have no experience, I can’t recommend a specific solution–but here’s a link that will connect you with lots of possibilities. Ask questions like:
- How much will it cost–upfront and ongoing?
- How many variables can you track at once?
- Is your solution appropriate for my size business–why or why not, and if not, what would you recommend?
- Please give me a rough idea of the technology you use.
- Please send me a link to objective third-party reviews.
- May I have contact information for some happy customers?
- How long have you been in business?
If money is a factor, this link goes to freeware and shareware possibilities
