Pay per performance web traffic tips

When it comes to pay per performance web traffic…

Here's How to Let the Market
Tell You What It Wants

Wouldn’t it be great if you knew exactly what your market wanted?

In that case you’d have all the pay per performance web traffic you could ever want, right?

Well, are you running two ads alternately served up by Google Adwords?

If not you should be. Because usually one will be a clear winner. I’m talking "head-and-shoulders-above-the-other" winner. Which is the start of a pay per performance web traffic research campaign to find out exactly what the market wants.

In marketing lingo that winner’s called the "control". Which is another way of saying the one that produced the best click through rate (CTR).

The neat thing is if you continue to test various headlines, words in the text part of the ad, and other things over time you’ll slowly but surely improve the CTR. Almost by magic. While your pay per performance web traffic from Adwords pours in.

And it doesn’t take forever to get that first control. After just 40 clicks you’ll you have a statistically valid sample size. One you can be relatively confident in the accuracy of.

Then all you do is pitch the loser and come up with another test ad.

Usually I start testing variations of the headline and go from there. Because your headline will be the element that most affects CTR. Which in turn determines how much pay per performance web traffic you attract.

But here’s the trick. You DO NOT want to waste half your traffic at the test ad. Because it is unlikely to produce as many clicks as your control.

So here’s what you do. Duplicate the winner and add the new test ad so you’re now running three ads. Two of which are identical. (That’s the secret.) This way the control is showing up 2/3s of the time. The new candidate only a third.

After another 40 clicks on the control ad stop and take another reading. If the new ad is producing more click throughs than the control ad you’ve got yourself a new control.

Come up with another angle for your next test ad. And let it rip.

With each new winning idea you’re gaining a small percentage improvement in your click through rate. (Plus a small boost in your pay per performance web traffic don’t forget.). Now I’m not going to tell you to expect to double the initial CTR through testing. Even though you could. But if you eventually increase it by 40-50%, that’s a whole bunch more pay per performance web traffic from Adwords - without a whole lot of work.

So to get the market tell you what appeal it will respond best to all starts by running two ads in Google Adwords.