PPC-Advice.com

PPC Ad Testing using Personas

Published March 25, 2008 by Garry Przyklenk Google Adwords, Microsoft adCenter, PPC Basics, Yahoo Search Marketing

The concept of using customer personas isn’t new in marketing, but it can be a valuable exercise in finding the right ad text that either compels or pre-qualifies search users to click.  Depending on your advertising goals, you may want to consider several unique personas prior to even committing ad texts to a real time test.

What is a persona?

I guess we should get a definition out of the way first.  In a marketing sense, a persona can be compared to a fictional character an advertiser creates that fits into a specific role.  Personas will have different motivators, demands, and sensitivities.  By understanding several personas that are representative of your prospective visitor base, you can fine tune ads, landing pages, and promotions to meet their needs and maximize your ROI.

Finding Personas

The first step in testing involves determining your known personas.  A few of the best places to look include:

• Interviewing front line representatives, like sales reps
• Mining your client database for patterns in client traits
• Looking at your web analytics

Once you have your core personas listed out, start thinking about how each persona affects  behavior when searching online.  You’ll quickly determine that most search users have only a few basic motivations, including:

• Learn about available products and services, aka the Researcher
• Weigh and evaluate specifications and prices, aka the Evaluator
• Find products that meet their needs and purchase, aka the Buyer

Each of these basic search motivations should be targeted individually, so that advertisers can fine tune their pay-per-click spend and migrate prospects from one motivation to another – removing barriers to conversion one at a time.

The Right Ads for the Right Persona

Ad text written to compel or qualify users to click depends on user persona and motivation.  Using the right headline text, description text, call to action, and even display URL plays a part in attracting unique personas.

For instance, luring personas that act as Researchers might be accomplished by ads featuring:

• Product listings of some kind including most popular products, or for sites competing with big brands, mention of “huge selection” or “updated daily”
• Pitching information is never a bad idea, but try to stay away from competing with review sites
• Consider offering a free download, perhaps a white paper or buying guide in exchange for contact information

Similarly, targeting Evaluators involves the next step in the buying cycle, and that is providing information that will help users to start eliminating all the options:

• Now go for reviews and user generated content (UGC), even if it isn’t really UGC
• Serve up comparison charts, biasing products or services you really want to sell, highlight the features that make your offer shine
• Use trust marks to hammer home your brand as the one to choose when an Evaluator makes the switch to a Buyer, or recommends you to a Buyer

Finally, you’re ready for Buyers.  Buyers are fun.  Buyers usually know what they want, know where to get it, and know how much they are willing to pay.  Winning them over can be easy, if you have the right ad.  Consider the following:

• Buyers may resort to searching your brand immediately, so make sure you insert “Official Site” in your headline for easy (and usually cheap) conversions.  I say usually cheap because by now everyone reading this blog will know to protect their trademarks and brands.
• Buyers are usually looking for a good deal.  Yes, they know what they’re willing to spend, but coming in lower than a perceived dollar value is never a bad thing.  Try inserting “Sale” or “Free extras” or “Complimentary” into your headline or description.
• If you have the best price on the block and you know it, put that bad boy right into your headline!  Buyers will click, and if your offer comes without strings attached, are likely to convert four times out of ten, at least.
• Try experimenting with a truncated pseudo catalog-numbered display URL.  Something messy and machine-coded that looks like you screwed up and pasted the destination URL by accident.  For example, www.PPC-Advice.com/products/cat_Prod=id399850293.  It works sometimes because Buyers look for specific products.

Finally, make sure that you setup enough ads that you can give you significant statistical results to a high level of certainty.  Dig out and dust off your stats textbook from 1st Year.  If you have too many ads and not enough traffic for meaningful results, you need to pare down the ads you’re running at one time.  An easy to use calculators are a dime a dozen, this one from PRC for instance.

Also, make sure your search engine of choice can show your ads evenly, and not optimize them based on CTR or ad quality.  In Adwords, this setting is called “Rotate”, as opposed to “Optimize”.