Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

How I Increased My Click Through Rate By 75% With A Dynamic Countdown Timer In Adwords

Posted: 29 May 2014 06:32 AM PDT

Many of us are familiar with dynamic keyword insertion, where you can replace text in an ad with the keyword searched. You no doubt noticed the crazy, funny dynamic ads of ebay…

What you probably aren’t aware of is the “Ad Parameterizer” feature within adwords. This nifty tool lets you dynamically change text in an ad using pretty much any variable you can put in a spreadsheet. For example, you can change your ad as your inventory changes, enabling you to say something like, “Only 3 left” or you can adjust it by the weather and say, “It’s above 90 Degrees outside, Doesn’t Ice Cream Sound Like a Good Idea?” . You can pretty much go wild and use your imagination.

This is one of the little known features within Adwords.

It is an Adwords Script, which is a tool that lets you use Javascript to make changes to your account, ads, set alerts, and all sorts of nifty tricks. Let’s be honest, marketing is changing quicker than you can read this sentence. If you stop and smell the roses, someone will jump ahead of you. If you want to stay ahead you have to have a dynamic strategy that moves as quick as the world around us. One great way to stay ahead is to utilize the full power of Adwords and deploy a bunch of scripts. You don’t need to be a programmer, you just need to know how to copy, paste, and read English. In fact, Google actually wrote a bunch of scripts, so if You don’t know how to write JavaScript you can still run these scripts just by copying and pasting the code. One of my clients is my Dad’s business. I tried my hardest not to take on this account because there’s nothing worse than having your mom call you asking how their campaigns are doing All in all though, family comes first, so I reluctantly dove in to help out. My dad and his business are experts on medicare reimbursements and preparing the required medicare and medicaid cost reports for nursing homes, hospitals and home health agencies. They offer preparation of cost reports as well as a software for accountants to prepare cost reports on their own and even offer training sessions to help operators prepare their own medicare cost reports. There is a HUGE deadline this coming Monday for submitted your Medicare cost reports, so I used a countdown timer in their ads. Check it out.

Here is what you see when you search in Google for Medicare Cost Reports.

Every hour that ad changes dynamically. This was a script written by Google meant for businesses to run a sale countdown.

Pretty awesome, Huh? But, let’s get down to brass tax, did it really help? Well, the data sample is small, so I am reluctant to say this is statistically significant, but look at the difference in Click Through Rates.

Ok, You See How I boosted Click Through Rates By Close to 75%, and cut CPC by 8%

Here’s step by step instructions for you to deploy the same script… (or you can follow Google’s Directions like I did.)

First, here’s how to setup an Adwords Script in your account.

Start by logging in to Adwords. On your left side you will see a menu of items including, All Online Campaigns, Shared Library, Bulk Operations, Reports & Uploads, and Labels. You want to click on “Bulk Operations,” and a new menu will appear with a few options. Choose the one that says “Scripts”

Now, You will need to click on the “+ Script” button to create a new script. Here is what your screen should look like…

The first thing you should do on this page is name your script. Then, you need to copy and paste the code for this script into the main area where it says, ” function main () ( ” You will copy and paste the following code below, just keep in mind you will need to modify two small details which I will highlight and discuss after posting the script.

// Date to use to find out how many days are remaining. var END_DATE = new Date(‘June 2, 2014′); // Change this to the Ad Group you set up with text ads with AdParams. var AD_GROUP_NAME = ['Medicare Cost Report']; function main() { var timeLeft = calculateTimeLeftUntil(END_DATE); var adGroup = getAdGroup(AD_GROUP_NAME); var keywords = adGroup.keywords().get(); while (keywords.hasNext()) { var keyword = keywords.next(); // We want to update {param1} to use our calculated days and {param2} for hours. keyword.setAdParam(1, timeLeft['days']); keyword.setAdParam(2, timeLeft['hours']); } } var DAY_IN_MILLISECONDS = 1000*60*60*24; function calculateTimeLeftUntil(end) { var current = new Date(); var timeLeft = {}; var daysFloat = (end – current) / (DAY_IN_MILLISECONDS); timeLeft['days'] = Math.floor(daysFloat); timeLeft['hours'] = Math.floor(24 * (daysFloat – timeLeft['days'])); return timeLeft; } function getAdGroup(name) { var adGroupIterator = AdWordsApp.adGroups() .withCondition(‘Name = “‘ + name + ‘”‘) .withLimit(1) .get(); if (adGroupIterator.hasNext()) { return adGroupIterator.next(); } }

Just copy and paste that code into the script section. For your purposes you only need to modify two small details. First, you need to change the date to the time you want your countdown timer to run until and you need to tell the script which adgroup to run the timer within. There is a way to do this on a campaign level which you can read about in the Adwords Scripts documentation linked above. Now you will need to Authorize the script to access your account, and save the script. When you click save it will ask you if you want to preview it. This is a good idea because it will tell you if there are errors or not. If there are errors, there is an official Adwords scripts community that you can tap into for help. Once the script is saved you need to tell Adwords how often to run the script. Since my script countdowns by the hour, I set it to run once an hour. Here is how to do that.

Once your script is saved and ready to run, you need to Click RUN to let Google know to start running the script. Finally, You need an ad that the script will modify, so you need to add ad parameters into your ad. Here is an example…

Only {param1:a few} days {param2:and} hours left!

Just like dynamic keyword insertion, you need to tell Google what to display if the countdown timer isn’t working. That’s what the text after the colons are. You’re all set . You can even check in the Ad Preview Tool if it’s working or not. What ideas can you think of for using the Ad Parameterizer feature? I bet there are some pretty creative ways to modify ads based on the news, or what’s going on in People’s lives, etc… Share your ideas in the Comments. I’ll get you started. 1. Countdown to a sale 2. Change ad by weather 3. change ad based on inventory 4. Change ad based on price 5. change special offer 6-100. ???

You Know What… I’ll Do You One Better Than Step By Step Instructions. I WILL DEPLOY THIS SCRIPT FOR YOU.

Here, Let Me Do That For You. Why Would I do it for you? What’s the catch? You have to be willing to let me publish a case study of the results on Shoemoney. Click below if you are interested. Yes, Please Setup a Countdown Timer Adwords Script For Me.

Five Simple Ways to Make it Much More Likely Your Guest Post Will Be Accepted - DailyBlogTips

Five Simple Ways to Make it Much More Likely Your Guest Post Will Be Accepted

Posted: 29 May 2014 05:17 AM PDT

Whether you're an old hand at guest posting or have yet to submit your very first guest post, there's one issue you're sure to face: getting your posts accepted.

If you've been guest posting for months, you may find that the majority of your posts get a "yes". Even so, you'll want to improve your success rate.

And if you're working on your very first guest post, you want to give it the best possible chance.

Here are five simple things that you can do make it much more likely your guest post will be accepted. None of these are complicated or hard … but you'd be surprised how few bloggers actually do them.

#1: Read and Follow the Guidelines

If a blog has guest post guidelines, read them … and follow them. I find it's often useful to print out the guidelines and check them off as I go through.

Once you've written a few guest posts, you'll find that most guidelines are pretty standard (e.g. "100% original content") — but it's still important to carefully read each separate blog's guidelines.

And while this isn't usually stated in guidelines, it's really important: address the person you're writing to by name.

If I get guest post pitches that begin "Hi there" or "Dear DailyBlogTips", I usually delete them straight away — because I've found that emails that don't use my name normally come from SEO agencies who are mass-emailing lots of blogs.

#2: Ask a Friend to Review Your Guest Post

It's always a good idea to have a second pair of eyes look over your guest post … and that's especially true if it's your first post for a particular blog. Your friend might easily spot something that you've missed (like a flat introduction, a confusing paragraph, or simply a daft typo).

If you know a blogger who's already guest posted on your target blog, they'd be a great person to ask. They'll have a clear idea of the blog's requirements … and they clearly have what it takes to get a guest post accepted there!

#3: Edit Your Guest Post Thoroughly

Never, ever, send a guest post that's a first draft. Even if you're asked to send "a draft", you should make it as good as you can. (Just be prepared for the blog to ask for changes.)

This is important even if the host blog doesn't have brilliantly high standards. (Of course, it's doubly important if they do!) A well-edited post is one that reads smoothly for both the person making the "yes" or "no" decision on it, and for the readers when it's accepted.

Two problems I often see in guest posts are:

Tangents. The poster introduces an idea in the introduction that never gets picked up in the rest of the post, or they have a long rambling section in the middle where they get off the point. It's important to edit on a "big picture" level to catch this sort of problem.
Typos. While I'll forgive a few of these, they make my life hard as an editor … and they suggest the post has been dashed off in a hurry. Look out for missing words and the wrong form of a word (e.g. "there" when you need "their").

#4: Link to Posts on the Host Blog

This is an incredibly easy thing to do, and I'm always surprised that most guest posters don't. Of course, your guest post isn't going to be automatically rejected if you don't include links to the blog that (you hope) will host it … but having those links already in place definitely makes it more attractive.

Once you've written your post, look through for any phrases or sentences that would make good links — e.g. if you introduce a topic briefly but don't go into detail. Search the host blog for a post on that topic, and link to it. You don't need to go overboard: two links is usually plenty.

#5: Time Your Follow-Up Email Carefully

Big blogs get a lot of guest post submissions, and busy owners/editors may take a while to get back to you. There are a couple of mistakes would-be guest posters often make when checking up on a submitted post:

Not emailing at all. It's embarrassing for a blogger if they misplace your email, only to realise two months later that they never replied. Most bloggers will welcome a brief, polite follow-up message.
Emailing too soon. While you may well be keen to find out whether your guest post has been accepted, emailing three days after submitting it just brands you as a nuisance. If you push a blogger for a response, the easiest one for them to give is "no".

So what's the right length of time? I'd say you should email between two and three weeks after sending your post, if you've not heard anything by then. Definitely don't email before a week is up, and try not to leave it more than a month.

Do your guest posts (almost) always get accepted? Share your best tips in the comments below.

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