Google Ad Words!!

Most ecommerce businesses use AdWords to generate traffic. In essence it’s pretty simple – you bid for search terms in Google, your ad appears if someone searches for that term, and you pay only if someone clicks on that ad. It’s a great system, but it does have a few traps.
Introducing Quality Score
How much you pay per click depends on many factors. A common misconception is that it’s a simple auction – if someone is bidding 50 cents per click (cpc), a bid of 51 cpc will appear in the ad slot above. It’s a bit trickier than that.
Google wants ads that are relevant. If the quality of the ads is higher, more people click them. Google assigns each advertiser’s keyword a quality score between one (lowest) and 10. If you are paying 50 cpc and your ad has a quality score of 5, and your competitor is paying 40 cpc for an ad with a score of 8, it’ll likely appear above yours, getting more clicks for less money. Getting your quality score higher is important.
The best way to increase your quality score is to increase your click-through rate (CTR). If your ad is viewed 100 times (called impressions) and clicked on twice, your click-through rate is 2 percent. Generally your click-through rate should be at least 1 percent.

You can see your quality score by hovering your mouse over the “eligible” column.
(Click for larger image).

To increase your CTR, you can have your ad shown less often, or clicked on more often. Let’s look at both scenarios.
Negative Keywords
A common problem: your ad shows up for irrelevant search terms. If you are selling makeup, you might bid for the keyword “makeup.” However, your ad will show up when someone searches for “makeup artist”, “makeup classes”, “makeup jobs,” and many more. Someone looking for a makeup artist probably isn’t interested in buying makeup, so you have increased your impressions needlessly and lowered your CTR. Adding negative keywords can reduce this problem.
Here’s how you add negative keywords. Go into AdWords. At the bottom of your keywords screen you’ll see + Negative keywords. Open this and add your negative keywords. You can choose ad group level but generally campaign level is better.
By adding lots of negative keywords you can decrease your impressions, and increase your CTR and your quality score. In this case, “artist”, “classes” and “jobs” are good negative keywords. Here’s a collection of generic negative keywords for inspiration.
Creating Ad Variations
Sometimes making small changes in an ad result in big changes in CTR. AdWords has a neat tool -- called Ad Variations -- that helps with this problem.
Go into your Ad Group in AdWords, and where you see ads, simply create another one. Google will automatically rotate your multiple ads to different users. Over time it will show the higher-performing ad more and the lower-performing ad less, increasing your CTR automatically. Start with two or three ad variations, and once there’s a clear winner, use that one as the base for more variants.
Choosing the Right Pages
Many AdWords campaigns send all traffic to their homepage. You’ll get a better result by pointing the ad to a specific page. The page you point your ad to is known as a “landing page.”
For example, you run a bicycle shop. The word “bicycle” will probably go to the homepage. However, ads for the keyword “mountain bike” should point to your mountain bike page. This will almost certainly increase sales.
If someone searches for “Holstar Lightning Men’s Mountain Bike”, point them at the product page. The rule: always point ads at the most specific page. Yes, it’s a bit more work to setup, but your sales will increase.
Choose the Best Words
Many people just bid for a few of the “big” words. For our bicycle shop example, the keyword “bicycle” would clearly be very popular. However, it would also be very competitive and expensive to buy, and generic words tend to result in fewer sales.
A better approach is to go for a large number of less popular words. Instead of five popular words, use 200 less popular ones. That sounds daunting, but help is at hand -- Google’s keyword tool.
Enter some popular words and it will generate some alternatives. Entering bicycle returns about 200 results, including some possibly useful sounding words (depending on your business) such as:
• racing bicycle
• men’s bicycle
• folding bike
• bicycle retailer
• cycling clothing
All of these terms are likely to be cheaper keywords than “bicycle”. Also look at your site category section names and product names, to get more keyword ideas.
Bringing it all Together
Now that we have a good list of keywords, we need to group them properly. Group your keywords into themes – typically around five – 20 related keywords in each group.
In AdWords, create a new Ad Group for each theme. Each Ad Group will share the same ads and the same landing page, so good grouping is important.
You could create an Ad Group called “Mountain Bikes” containing the following keywords:
• Mountain bike
• Off road bike
• Downhill bike
• Trail bike
• Dirt bike
You would then create two ad variants for this group:
Mountain Bikes
Wide range of mountain bikes
in stock now
www.bikeshop.com/mountainbikes
And
Cheap Mountain Bikes
Best prices on mountain bikes
available online now
www.bikeshop.com/mountainbikes
By creating the two variants we are letting Google do the hard work to see which one performs better. Note the specific landing page used. Repeat this process for each theme.
Once you have your campaign up and running, be sure to check on it once every few weeks. The first attempt is rarely optimal and so monitoring is critical. It’s easy to spend dozens of hours on creating the perfect campaign, so it’s up to you to balance your time relative to your AdWords budget

Pricing and Inventory!! The Most IMPORTANT key to Online success!

READ THIS ARTICLE I PULLED FROM DEALER MAGAZINE. I SEE EXAMPLES LIKE THIS EVERYDAY AND FEEL IT SIGNIFICANTLY REDUCES ONLINE LEADS AND OPPORTUNITIES.




Dealer Magazine | October 2007

Pricing Without Market Visibility Misses the Mark

by : Dale Pollak

There are some things that nobody questions. The earth is round, the certainty of death and taxes, and the fact that every used car department works especially hard to get rid of vehicles before they become aged. Right? Wrong.

While I’m not going to assert that the earth is flat, or that death and taxes are avoidable, I am going to let you know that about half of the aged used vehicles in America are actually priced less aggressively than the fresh ones. Allow me to explain.

To provide a simple example, imagine a dealer has a vehicle in stock that is 15 days old. Our hypothetical dealer’s 15-day unit is priced 5 percent above the identically equipped, competing vehicles with similar mileage in the local market. Dealers commonly accept this pricing strategy because the vehicle is considered “fresh merchandise.” The traditional rationale is we can afford to ask a higher than average price for a new vehicle because, quite possibly, somebody will fall in love with it and take it home, unaware that there are others just like it for less money.

After approximately 30 to 45 days, however, as our confidence begins to fade, we often come to the conclusion that the vehicle needs to be re-priced in order to ensure a rapid sale. At least, this is what we would like to believe would happen on our lot. However, the reality is that approximately 25 percent of vehicles receive little, if any, price adjustment for the first 60 days. Yes, what I am saying is that the original asking price often persists for 60 days. Thus, the 45-day old vehicle in the dealer’s inventory, by way of neglect, is priced less aggressively than when it was a 15-day old vehicle. I track day-to-day pricing on tens of thousands of vehicles on behalf of hundreds of dealers and this is simply the truth.

Perhaps even more surprising is that an additional 25 percent of used vehicles that are re-priced are actually less competitive after the adjustment than when they were fresh in inventory. This is because the starting point for the typical price reduction is the original asking price itself, which is often too high. Why is it too high? Because we often neglect to realize that the Internet provides shoppers with many choices of comparably equipped vehicles with similar mileage in the local market. So while we might feel good about our price reduction, the broader market is also reducing its prices and very often from a starting point that is more realistic. The bottom line is that in spite of our price reduction, we are actually losing ground to the competition.

When working with clients on efficient pricing, I often use the analogy of the children’s game of pin the tail on the donkey. In this game, we are blindfolded, turned around, and then attempt to pin the tail on the donkey. The disorientation often causes us to miss the mark, amusing those with a perfect view. Similarly, in the used car business, we often engage in a series of price reductions based largely on our blindfolded high profit starting point. To our consumers, however, who have a perfect view of all competing alternatives on the Internet, this practice makes our prices appear as ridiculous as the tails pinned on the donkey’s head.

The transparency of the Internet requires us to price with the same market visibility that the consumers have when they shop. This means that we must stop pricing from cost. We need to extend the effort or invest in software that compares our prices to similarly equipped competing vehicles in the market. If we want to get rid of inventory before it ages, then we absolutely cannot do it blindfolded. We must remove the blindfold, reorient ourselves, and hit the mark the first (and every) time.

This or THAT!!

Which vehicle Would you click on FIRST? Which Picture displays the vehicle and the DEALERSHIP! In a PROFESSIONAL MANNER?

Vehicle Photos are often over estimated on their quality by dealers until they are compared side by side with a higher quality photo.. Unfortunately this is what the online consumer does vigorously when shopping your inventory next to everyone else. They are drawn to the number of photos and the quality of the photo. Think to yourself does this vehicle look like a $30,000 vehicle or does it look like a $20,000 vehicle selling for 30k. This is what the consumer thinks. Also I encourage you to shop your own inventory. What does the customer see when doing a search that includes your vehicle? (300 mile radius). Are there other vehicles that look BETTER THAN YOURS? If their is, what can YOU DO to change it? Whether you take your own photos or you a third party does it for you DO NOT underestimate the importance HIGH QUALITY PHOTOS!! CHECK THEM REGULARLY!! Poor phots WILL significantly lower your results!

Comments SELL CARS!!

Remember to include a call to action, something special about the car or the dealership, a name or names to ask for, special financing, even a payment is good. This targets the payment shopper. Make sure you include this within the first 250 characters.

When typing your AD, mix UPPER and Lower case Letters to GET the customers ATTENTION on SPECIAL points of Interest.

If You Don't HAVE it! Get it!

This book is a MUST Read for anyone who wants to become an internet superstore. Dale Pollak outlines in his book Velocity the fundamental changes needed to survive in this new era of internet Shoppers.

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