Will’s Web

Can you really improve the conversion ratio of your PPC adverts by displaying the price of the end product or service on them?

It would seem to make sense. Let’s take Google AdWords for example. You set up your campaign together with your adverts to be displayed amongst others competing for the same keywords. Then a searcher comes along, keys in your keywords and triggers the display of one of your ads.

“Hmmm, looks interesting” thinks the searcher.

At this point, the searcher may or may not have a price in mind. If they did and yours is lower then great, they’ll likely click on your ad and view your offer. If your price is higher than what they had in mind then it’s likely that they won’t click on your ad.

You might think, “Great! No need to spend advertising money on people who aren’t willing to pay my price.”

But hang on a second. How do you know that the person you’ve just turned off wouldn’t have visited your website, realised the full extent of their problem, seen the value of your offering and then decided the value to place on it was higher than what you’d set it at? AdWords adverts only allow you to capture the searcher’s interest with just a few sentences yet by displaying a price you’re effectively placing a value on those few sentences rather than on the full strength of your offer.

Can people really determine value in the confines of an AdWord advert?

The SPIN technique would suggest that you should build the value of your offer first, make sure the prospect knows the full extent of the problem they have and the implicated problems of not solving it. Once that’s clear then you offer your solution.

Let’s suppose… The searcher has a rodent problem, goes searching for mousetraps and comes across your ad complete with price (you sell the latest, most effective mousetraps, but you’re not the cheapest). She decides that you’re far too expensive. After all, it’s only a single mouse and she just wants something that will snap at the right moment. What the searcher doesn’t realise is that mice can carry any number of diseases, have no qualms about defacating all over her house and breed like crazy. If you can get her to your website then you can educate her and make her realise the depth of her problem. Then you tell her that your mousetrap is the most effective on the market and attracts mice like a magnet made of cheese. You’re a little more expensive than most, but you’ve now increased the perceived value of your product in the eyes of the prospect. Think she’ll buy now?

But what about those ‘freeloaders’ also searching for your product. Well, they’ll most likely want to improve the quality of their search by explicitly including the word, “free” and that’s exactly how you can make sure they never see your ad.