While setting up a mobile campaign last night I thought “Wouldn’t it be great to see the mobile search volume for these keywords? I bet Google has a tool…let me go to AdWords Help and see.”

Kablam! Here was the 1st result. Google’s search technology is pretty dang good.

And because I don’t think Google does this tool justice, I’m going to give you step by step instructions with screenshots! Woot!

1. Log into Google Adwords…set up an ad group with mobile ads – you can leave it paused if you’re not ready to start advertising on cell phones. The tool will still work.

2. Click on your keywords tab in the ad group.

3. Click on ‘Keyword Tool’. The ‘Keyword Tool’ link is above the ‘pause’ or ‘resume’ button and below the date range.

4. Start searching! Note that “Results are tailored to mobile searches”.

I found a TON of niches where I can bid around $1 per click OR MUCH LESS and sit at the number 1 mobile ad position…when I know for a fact that the regular avg cpc we see in regular search ranges from $2 to $65!

Anybody know what mobile conversions are like? Have you had success with mobile?

As more advertisers are jumping on the paid search bandwagon every day, the ppc marketplace is becoming increasingly emulous. In competitive markets, more and more searches bring up pages full of nearly identical sponsored ads. Here’s an example of a Google search for house painting:

Does anyone else look at this and see the exact same ad over and over again? The only ad that remotely stands out is #4, because the local “Honolulu, HI” makes it take up a little more space.

Does your ad look like this? Well don’t resign yourself to mediocrity. If you think your website is great, but your ad stands out about as well as a single zombie amongst a pack of undead, then you need to keep reading!

(Photo from the movie, Shawn of the Dead, retrieved from Wired.com)

Because of a proliferation of PPC blogs, pay per click tip guides, and “get rich off of Adwords” websites, pretty much everybody has started using the same tricks: capitalization on every word, a call to action that ends in words like “now” and “today” with an exclamation point on the second description line, dynamic keyword insertion, and as many keywords crammed into the ad as possible.

Take another look at the ads for house painters above. Seven out of the eight ads have the word “Free” in them (another common trick), and two of the ads have the exact same call to action, “Get Free Painting Estimates Today!” It might seem counterintuitive, but by employing some of the most “proven” ad copy writing techniques, chances are – these days – that you are going to look exactly the same as everyone else, severely blunting the effectiveness of your ad.

So how can you differentiate your ad in such a competitive space? It seems that by simply writing something unique, an advertiser could seriously increase click-throughs based solely on curiosity or catching the user’s eye. But before you start trying out some wild CTR-increasing gimmick, you should consider your goals. In some cases, simply generating as much traffic as possible is the only goal; however, typically the goal of a paid search ad is to eventually get the click to convert into a sale, lead, or signup. Unique ad copy alone won’t help you in these departments.

Keeping in mind that our priority is probably going to be conversions, and therefore you can’t afford to pay for clicks that have no possibility of making you money, I would like to talk about 3 things that can transform your text ad clone into most attractive ad on the page.

1. Borrow ideas from unrelated, but highly competitive industries

Some industries are more cut-throat than others. Chances are, there are many industries that are more wildly and violently competitive than the one you are advertising in. Think of an industry where competition is fierce and take a look at some of the ads. Take note of the copywriting techniques they use, and use these as a springboard for your own ad copy ideas.

We recently had a client whose ad performance was simply not doing as well as we (and the client) thought it could be doing. A search showed that our client’s ads in certain campaigns were nothing but clones of a dozen other advertisers who had entered the PPC arena in the past several months. We had a brainstorming session to figure out how we could get this client’s ads to stand out. We knew once we got the traffic to the site, we could make the conversion, but we just weren’t seeing any kind of growth in click volume no matter what we did.

So we took a look at some ads in one of the web’s most competitive industries: online dating. Even though our client was in the construction leads industry, we thought online dating ads might give us some insight into techniques we could use in our situation. While these two verticals are highly unrelated, we figured that advertisers in online dating that hadn’t already been driven out of business are likely seeing good results from their ads. And in order to stick out the competition, they would also be forced to write very enticing ad copy in order to snatch clicks from their competitors.

Here are a couple ads that caught our attention right away:

First of all, the ® symbol in the Match.com ad immediately gives it credibility and allows it to stick out. They still use the keywords “online dating,” but they clearly draw attention to themselves. Another attractive thing about this ad is the claim to fame, the “World’s Leading Dating Site.” One of the editorial rules for Google and other major search engines is that all claims in ads have to be backed up on the landing page visitors are taken to. If your business doesn’t have some kind of credibility factor like this, take the time to court some endorsements or enter some competitions. Match.com could be the world’s leading dating site in terms of members, active members, page views, profit, or any number of things. This means that other dating sites could be the “world’s leading dating site” by another criteria. Which also means that your site could be the leader of something in some quadrant of the world. Pursuing something like this can definitely be worth it.

Although we gained some insights from the Match.com ad, we found another one that gave us some material we wanted to immediately work with:

This ad was especially appealing to us for the construction leads market. All of the ads for a search for “Home Remodeling” would show up with the title “Home Remodeling” and occasionally things like “Home Remodeling Quotes.”

So we tested a new ad, based on ideas we got from this one, against our old “zombie-clone” ad. We changed the headline “Home Remodel Bids” to “Top 3 Remodel Contractors,” and guess what?  On that change, our CTR shot up and our conversions consequently increased. Nobody else had a similar ad, and apparently people searching for home remodeling services liked the idea of getting bids from the top contractors (according to us) rather than just getting bids.

You don’t have to confine yourself to pay per click ads, either. Turn on your TV or log onto YouTube.com and watch some ads in another industry. Take note of the calls to action that the ads use. How do they grab people’s attention? What kind of language do they use? Of course, a commercial has a lot more words at its disposal than a paid search ad, but some of the best video ads can condense their pitch into one or two very short sentences.

While you’re at it, go to Barnes & Noble and bust out some magazines. What ads grab your attention? Of course, images can play a big part in attracting you to stop turning pages to look at an ad, but effective copy is essential to print advertising in almost every industry.

2. Write something clever rather than keyword-stuffed

What can cause two ads for the exact same product or service to be light years apart in terms of grabbing attention and invoking action? To stand out in this way, the ad needs to approach the customer from a different direction. A unique angle can give you more than just an edge on your competition. To avoid speaking in too many general terms, here are a few examples, using our same construction leads company:

Instead of:

Start Your Remodel Now
Get Quality Home Remodeling Bids
From Local Pre-Screened Contractors

We tried:

Start Your Remodel Now
Top Contractors So There’s No Delay
Shop Free Bids & Save Today!

What do you think the click through response to this ad was? Well, have you ever heard of the phrase, “through the roof?” Rhyme and cadence are a couple of things that can get your ad to stick in someone’s head. And people like the smooth feel of a rhyme. It may not work in every case, but it’s definitely worth testing.

Here’s another trick we’ve tried: alliteration.

Ready To Remodel?
Compare Custom Contractor Quotes
Click Quickly To Cut Your Costs!

How much friendlier and more clever is this than the generic ads everyone else has, like this one?

Remodeling Quotes
Find Remodeling Contractors
Get Remodel Price Quotes Today

Just a few things to think about. The point is, stop focusing on cramming keywords, and focus on making your ads appealing. Chances are, it’ll pay off.

3. Try something risky

By risky, I don’t mean stupid; I mean do something aggressive. And by aggressive, I don’t mean a call to action like “Order Right Now!” I mean write something that persuades people to click on your ad without looking desperate or the same as everyone else.

This is tricky to do. By studying competitive advertisers in other industries, as discussed in Tip #1, you might be able to find inspiration for ideas if your brainstorming hasn’t gotten you anywhere so far.

Take this example:

Cut The Crap
Expert Remodeling Contractors Are
Ready To Bid. Get A Free Quote Now!

Now there’s an ad that could get your attention. Of course, there are still editorial guidelines to be followed, and taste to be considered, but as the competitive game gets tougher, in order to outshine the rest of the text ad clones, good advertisers are going to have to test risky, aggressive ads.

And that’s the beauty of pay per click advertising. You can test everything, and nothing is permanent if you want to reverse it. If you no longer want to be one of the text ad clones, then start testing some new ads! If they don’t work, then test some other ones!

Selected AdWords advertisers are having a line show up below their ad in search results that says “+Show Products from [Advertiser] for [search query].” When clicked, this link expands to a box with three product images, complete with title, price, and description. The box takes up a very large portion of the screen, bumping the next results far below.

A Google AdWords rep confirmed in a message to us that the name of this feature is the “Product Search Plux Box,” and that the alpha test involves a very limited number of advertisers and is closed to additional participants at this time. The Google team may decide to re-open the test to additional advertisers in the future, but for now only those advertisers that were previously invited are able to participate in the test.

We were personally unable to replicate search results that featured the Product Search Plus box, but Search Engine Land posted a couple of screenshots a few weeks ago that we took the liberty to draw on:

It appears that the advertisers involved use GoogleCheckout, but it is unclear whether these products come from Google Base. Search Engine Land speculated that they do not.

Questions we have are: Can anyone out there find examples of the Product Search Plus Box out there? Can any of you replicate this? Also, are there similar results coming up with local adwords listings of some kind?

While a monthly budget may seem like the intuitive method of budgeting ad spend in the first place, the addition of this new option does not mean you should hurry up and change all of your campaigns to monthly in order to save yourself from having to do math. Until recently the amount of money spent on Adwords campaigns was throttled by a daily budget cap, and there can be distinct advantages to either budgeting method.

Advertisers can access this feature by clicking on Campaign Settings inside their Adwords account:

(Click to view screenshot)

The following outlines the advantages and disadvantages of each method:

Daily Budget:

• Pros: You know exactly how much you will be spending each day. Unwanted fluctuations in cost or traffic can be leveled out.
• Cons: Opportunities for traffic are capped by your budget. You may miss out if some good press or other external factor causes a huge lift in traffic for a day, or several.

Monthly Budget:

• Pros: Months with large fluxuations of traffic can be taken advantage of – you don’t have to lose out on an opportunity if a sudden spike in traffic comes your way.
• Cons: You can wipe out your whole budget for the month very fast.

The ability to show ads evenly over time or at an accelerated rate is still available for both options, and advertisers are free to switch between options as well. The new addition of the monthly budget simply gives advertisers more freedom. This could be especially helpful to businesses that wish to monitor monthly goals more easily than before.

Previously, data from Search Partners and Google Search was aggregated, so advertisers could view all of their search stats and all of their content network stats separately. Now, however, Adwords allows users to drill down even more and separate the search network partners such as Ask.com and AOL from the regular Google Search. The Report Center will soon reflect this change as well and give users the ability to run reports with search statistics separated or aggregated according to their preference.

How will this change help you as a PPC manager or advertiser? Well, now you can see if the search network is helping or hampering your regular Google search performance. It’s well known that the Content Network can sometimes drive costs unnecessarily high for certain campaigns (and sometimes it can be quite cost effective as well). Now you can see if AOL and the other search partners aren’t converting as well, which enables you to make the wise decision to cut the cord if necessary.

It’s kind like if you’re advertising on cable and you get the results from your TBS and TNT advertising campaigns lumped together. It might be nice to know that TNT is doing awesome and TBS is doing poorly instead of knowing that overall everything is doing average.

Once again, the more information at your disposal, the more empowered you are to make important marketing decisions.

This new tool is accessible from the Create An Ad page within an Adwords campaign. Navigate to your campaign, then ad group, and then click on the Ad Variations tab. On that page, simply click on Display Ad Builder to get started.

Display ads are used on the content network and show up where publishers have enabled “image ads” through AdSense.

You can visit the Display Ad homepage here, or view the video tutorial below on how to use the ad builder, which Google has provided.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Prior to today, advertisers were required to have a minimum of 300 conversions in the past 30 days in order to use the Conversion Optimizer. Now that number has been reduced to 50 conversions per 30 day period, a number which is far more attainable to many advertisers.

Conversion Optimizer is a tool that helps you achieve more conversions by analyzing your tracking data and adjusting ad placement. The tool figures out how you are most likely to get conversions and adjusts things accordingly. Click here to find out more about how Conversion Optimizer works.

AdWords states that many advertisers see double digit increases in conversions as well as decreased cost/conversion by using the optimizer. However, until now many advertisers were unable to use the tool and thereby benefit due to lower volume than the rigid 300 conversion/month standard. Reduced standards will allow more advertisers to increase conversions and profits, which also means that Google increases its profits.

Google also stated that the updated Conversion Optimizer will now deliver better performance overall, due to improved technology. Specific details were not given.

Why This Firefox Addon Rocks!

This toolbar will display today’s basic key performance indicators at the bottom of your browser.

Double Click this toolbar for your stats to update – it may take 60 seconds to update depending on the size of your account. The data you see will be for today only.

Right click to see the tool menu and drill down into your account level statistics.

Clicks: Total number of clicks accrued today

aCPC: average Cost Per Click today

Cost: Total spent today

Conv: Total number of conversions accrued today

C/C: Cost per Conversion today

Requirements

-FF 2+ preferred while we’re confident this works from 1.5-3.0.*

-AdWords Client Center

-AdWords API Tokens

Tip: Your statistics might take 60 seconds or more to load depending on the size of your account. If you still do not see data, you may need to restart FF and test your credentials again.

How to Install This Firefox Addon

Upon download, Firefox should automatically recognize the extension and install it.

If you get any errors:

Right click the logo, click ‘save link as…’, after saving you can scan it with any Anti-Virus program, then open Firefox. In FF, click file -> Open File -> Find the file and open it -> Install

How To Use PPC Management for Firefox

Credentials

Login Email: Your Client Center login email address

Password: Your Client Center login password

Developer Token: AdWords API Token found in your Client Center (My Account->AdWords API Center)

Application Token: AdWords API Token found in your Client Center (My Account->AdWords API Center)

Client Email: The email address of the account in your Client Center that you want to see stats for

Save your credentials, then test! Load is kind of a pseudo button for now…

Tip: You might need to restart FF after saving your credentials for the tool to work properly!

Keyword Estimates Tool

This tool is very similar to the Estimates tool you find in AdWords.

You don’t have to enter a Max CPC if you want to see the absolute maximum you can expect to pay with the highest possible bid ($100).

Keyword Tool (AKA Kewyord Suggestion Tool)

Search Volume and Competition are on the old scale…1 to 5 where 5 is very competitive or very high search volume and 1 is limited competition with a very low search volume relative to other keywords in that space.

In the future we will incorporate the new real number estimates currently available at Google.

Site Keywords Tool

Enter your landing page in the Site URL field and click Generate Suggestions to see what keywords Google thinks the page is targeted towards.

Account Statistics Tool

You can drill down to the keyword level statistics to find out how your account is doing for the day!

Double click your way through and new windows will open displaying the next level of statistics. For example, double click on a campaign to see the ad groups of that campaign in a new stats window. Then, double click an ad group to see the keyword stats!

Privacy and Security

We are confident that this tool is secure and your privacy is protected. semvironment will not and will never ask for or gather the information you enter into this tool. All of your credentials are stored on your local machine, not our servers. All AdWords API calls are made via https. This project is in beta right now so there aren’t any guarantees that a site you visit might have malicious material that could crack this…or one of your buddies could borrow your computer and get your credentials, etc. Please send any privacy concerns back to us asap so we can add it to our development time line as a priority!

Simply log into your Client Center (yes, you need one even if you have one advertiser account!)…then click on ‘My Account’, then click ‘AdWords API Center’ and follow the instructions from there to apply!

Here are the instructions in super simplified form:

1. Get a Client Center account if you don’t already have one!

2. Log into your Client Center -> My Account -> AdWords API Center -> Sign up!

Do it…you won’t regret it!

A couple of good resources for learning about the AdWords API are the AdWords API Blog, the Google Groups AdWords API Forum, and Google AdWords API Introduction & Help.

We recommend you sign up for this API now. You may be kicking yourself in the next couple of weeks if you don’t! That’s all I’m trying to say…