Potty training her has been quite the experience – one that I can directly correlate to my experiences as an internet marketer who is focused on constantly improving website conversion rates.

Here are a few observations:

1.  Test where you use incentives – are your current list building or lead capture efforts falling flat?  When I first started this potty training experience only a bathroom success, defined in one of two ways (and I will leave that alone) earned incentives.
An unforeseen problem soon arose – my daughter lost her will to even TRY because most attempts failed and were not rewarded.  She was performing the desired action, (trying to potty) which I loved but the lack of proper incentive was not overcoming her desires to continue playing, reading or watching tv.

I started offering a small incentive for the attempt and a larger incentive for the successful completion.  Conversion increased significantly.  Try breaking up your efforts into mini-steps and testing incentives along each step.  Or along the step that you have identified as the key leverage point – where you lose most of your visitors.

2.  Incentives can lose their effectiveness – how are your incentives converting?  How has that conversion changed since you first started offering the incentive?  When my daughter began potty training it took only a single pink M&M candy to get her excited about trying to use the potty.   Now I am up to 4 M&M’s of various colors (she is quite the negotiator).

Test different incentives or repackage some of your current offers in a way that adds to the perceived value.  This also offers you a great opportunity to see what resonates with your audience.

3.  Social Proof can be a powerful ally – when I first realized that my daughter was only having accidents at home, I was perplexed.  What was it about being at school with her friends that kept her potty training on track so well?  And then it hit me – SOCIAL PROOF.  Most of her friends at school were already potty trained – she just wants to fit in and be “normal”.  At home, other motivations change her behaviour and the accidents happen every day.  The same thing can happen with your website.  Test adding elements of social proof to your offer copy.  Use graphics that indicate the immense popularity of the action that your visitors are about to take.  Share with your visitors how many people have downloaded your free whitepaper or have purchased your new widget.  They will feel the same tug to “fit in” and this social proof will often times overcome the anxiety that in inherent in your call to action.

As I test these concepts on my own websites and with my clients I look forward to seeing what my daughter will teach daddy next – you can be sure that I will share it.

CPC varies depending on the intensity of competition for a particular keyword or keyphrase. Generally, the higher the bid you place on a keyword or keyphrase, the better the chance that your ad will appear on a Google.com SERP (Search Engine Results Page / “search network”) or AdSense (contextual / “content network”) page.

SERP’s are seen by people who are much more likely to be in “buy mode”, therefore, competition for clicks on SERP’s are much higher than competition for clicks on AdSense pages.

With Google Search Network SERP’s, when someone searches on the keyword or keyphrase you are bidding on, your ad will appear if you have bid high enough. Other factors determining if your ad appears and where it appears on a SERP or Adsense webpage include “quality score”, which is largely determined by “relevance” and “click-through-rate” (CTR), and geo-targeting” and “day-parting”.  More on geo-targetinig and day-parting in future posts.

AdSense, the advertising platform sitting on the “Google Content Network”, provides “contextual advertising” that shows AdWords ads on pages that are “content-focused”, not “search-focused”. Google determines the subject matter (“content” or “context”) of a page and displays relevant (“contextual”) ads based on the advertisers’ keyword list, the advertisers’ bids, and the “Quality Score” of each advertiser’s advertisement.

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PPC advertising on SERP’s on Google’s search engine (Google.com) and search network partners (Ask.com, Netscape, AOL Search) is powerful because it allows you to target peoples’ interest based on exactly what they are searching for in that moment.

Generally, the most expensive keyword phrases (“keyphrases”) to bid on are those where a search engine user indicates a desire to buy. They do this by searching on terms like “where to buy a Gravely lawn tractor in florida”, “reviews of best wide screen tv’s”, and “body building supplements for sale online”. You and your competitors are willing to pay more for clicks on keyphrases like these because they are much more likely to result in a sale, where you recoup the cost of the click, plus profit–realizing a positive ROI (return on investment). Below is an example of AdWords ads on a Ask.com SERP for the “ready-to-buy” keyphrase “candle making supplies”.

PPC AdWords advertising on Google’s “AdSense network” (contextual advertising on thousand of websites that are relevant to your product/service) is not nearly as powerful as advertising on Google’s AdWords “search network” (Google.com, Ask.com). Your Google AdSense Network ads show up on webpages on which your ad matches the “context” (the subject) of the webpage. People viewing pages on the Google content network are much less likely to be in “buy mode”, therefore, competition for clicks on the Google content network is much weaker, and CPC (cost-per-click) is much lower.

Below is an example of AdSense advertising showing up on a webpage showcasing videos from Mont Tremblant ski resort.
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When there are more advertisers bidding on a keyword or keyphrase than there is space on the SERP or non-search engine webpage to show all the ads (a common occurrence on Search Engine Result Pages’s resulting from searches on popular keywords), Google must decide which ads to show and which ads to not show.  Often times the ad with the highest bid shows up first, at the top of the webpage or at the top of the right side column on the webpage.

You as the advertiser must estimate the value of a click from Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing, or Microsoft Network (Bing). You assign this value based on the type of individual you expect to get as a visitor to your webpage when you get a click on an ad on a SERP or other page for a specific keyphrase. This value can be revenue from a sale coming directly off the page, a subscription to your e-newsletter, a phone call, an email, or branding in the marketplace.

In my next post we will dive deeper into the subject of “How Is My Google AdWords Cost-Per-Click Determined?”

AdWords includes:
1) Text ads appearing on Google.com, Ask.com, AOL Search, and Netscape SERP’s (Search Engine Results Pages). All of these SERP’s are generated by Google.
2) Text, banner, and video ads appearing on Google’s “AdSense Network” of websites, enewsletters, and web-based email (Gmail). The AdSense Publisher Network is made up of millions of pages displaying blocks of advertising labeled “Ads By Google” and “Sponsored Ads”. These non-Google pages provide clicks for Google’s and its advertisers. The website or enewsletter publisher keeps around 50% of amount the you, the advertiser, pays for each click.
3) Ads appearing on SERP’s resulting from searches using Google search boxes on millions of non-Google webpages across the Web. Searches using Google search boxes on the AdSense Search Network serve SERP’s similar or identical to Google.com SERP’s; matching the keywords used for the search to advertisements containing the same or similar keywords.  Website owners who put a Google search box on their website do not get paid for a search, but if the resulting SERP gets a click, the website owner splits the revenue with Google.

So, to summarize…
the “AdSense Search Network” and the “AdSense Publisher Network” combined comprise the “AdSense Network”, which itself is a subset of the larger “AdWords Network”. The AdWords Network is the sum total of the AdSense Network combined with the Google/Ask/AOL/Netscape SERP’s advertising platform.

o (Adsense Search Network) + (AdSense Publisher Network) = AdSense Network
o Google + Ask + AOL + Netscape = AdWords Search Network
o (AdWords Search Network) + (AdSense Network) = AdWords Network

Most small businesses advertising on AdWords opt out of running Adsense ads; choosing to have their ads appear on Google.com and Google search partner SERP’s only, foregoing the placement of any ads on the AdSense Network. If you opt out of AdSense you will only see your ads appear on SERP’s on:
o Google.com for keyphrases related to your business
o Google.com’s Local Business Ads for Google Maps
o Netscape, AOL, and Ask.com for keyphrases related to your business

AdWords text advertisements are short, usually with a title line, two content text lines, and a fourth line being a link to the advertiser’s website. Below is a screenshot of a Google.com SERP resulting from a search for “florida vacation rentals on the beach”. The ads on top have only two lines in this case, while the ads in the right hand column have four lines.

Besides having your adverts show up on Goggle.com SERP’s as in the above example, you can, as I mentioned previously, opt to have your ads show on Google’s AdSense Network, which is comprised of millions of webpages all across the Web and in web-based email and e-newsletters. This is called “contextual advertising” because Google tries to match the keywords in the adverts with the subject matter of the page on which the advert appears. Below is a screenshot of an example of AdWords ads showing up on the AdSense Network, in this case a publisher website, more specifically a blog about vacations in southwest Florida.

In the next blog post I’ll cover how a PPC network determines cost-per-click charged to you and your competing advertisers.

The first type of page upon which your PPC adverts can appear is a webpage called a SERP, which is a “Search Engine Results Page”. This is a webpage which people see after they do a keyword search or keyword phrase (“keyphrase”) search on a search engine. If someone searches for “gainesville florida real estate” on Google they will see a page that looks something like the screenshot below. The paid search results are a form of PPC adverts called “Google AdWords”.

AdWords is Google’s main source of revenue. This screenshot shows a type of AdWords advertising known as AdWords Search Network advertising.

The adverts along the top and in the right side column, the “paid search results”, are the PPC adverts. The AdWords ads that Google chooses to display here are chosen based two criteria:

1)  The amount of money the advertiser is willing to pay for a click, done through bidding on keywords and keyphrases, competing with other advertisers.
2)  The “quality” of the ad and the webpage the ad links to as determined by Google. Quality is determine by relevance and click-through rate (CTR). More on this in future posts.

Note: Typically around 90% of clicks on a SERP are on the organic links, not paid ones. But the quality of traffic produced by PPC ad clicks is better, i.e., yields higher conversion of website traffic into leads and sales. Also, you can drive traffic to your website much more quickly by paying for ad space on a SERP. Waiting for a link to your site to appear in the organic search results can take months, and may never happen at all, no matter how hard you work at it.

The second type of webpage upon which your PPC adverts can appear, if you so choose, is non-SERP webpages that are imbedded with adverts related (usually) to the content on the page. This is known as “contextual PPC advertising”. The biggest network displaying contextual PPC adverts is the Google AdSense Publisher Network. You will see these pages all over the Internet–webpages, emails, and e-newsletters that have blocks of advertising labeled “Ads by Google” or “Sponsored Links”. In the example below the AdSense adverts appear in the column to the right.

Three PPC networks dominate the Web:
1) Google AdWords
2) Yahoo Search Marketing
3) Microsoft adCenter (Bing)

In the next post I’ll cover Google AdWords in more detail.