Life in the Blue

It’s that time of year again. That special time during the holidays where we gather round at the local pub and watch such college football Bowl Game classics as Middle Tennessee State vs Central Michigan, and the long time American tradition, the International Bowl. Along with the college bowl season comes the rush online shopping period.

 

As last minute shoppers shop and click, they can generate some spendy PPC costs. But not all users are great for a site to have. Maybe they are shopping for stuff you don’t offer, are looking for a shipping offer you don’t provide or have no clue what they want and are just browsing away. I call these people ‘Negative Donkey’s.’ They click on your ads but you have little chance of converting them into a sale. Although it is not possible to totally rid your life of Negative Donkey’s, there are steps you can take to help limit their presence, and soon, hopefully they will no longer exist to you. In short, Donkey’s on your site are about as valuable as flip-flops in December.

 

Negative keywords can help. AdWords lets you easily add lots of negative keywords. One easy trick is to look at your referring keywords from an analytics account like Google Analytics, or you may even have your own tracking. See what keywords people are typing in to get to your site for both PPC and organic. This is different than the keyword you are actually bidding on by the way. For example, if you don’t offer anything for free, make that a negative word. These people are looking for something free, you don’t have it, and so you don’t need to get them to your site. If they are looking for strawberry candy canes, but you only sell peppermint ones, strawberry can be a negative keyword.

 

The flip side to that coin is that if you notice people converting on your site from keywords that you hadn’t thought of before, you can promptly add them to your accounts. If they are good keywords you will be on your way buying a private party bus so you don’t have to wait for a plane at the airport ever again.

 

Don’t get caught into the thinking of, “Well, even if I don’t have it as a negative keyword, no one that searches that will click on may ad anyway.” This is bad for two reasons. First, many online users are about as smart as a pile of coathangers. Don’t ever think a user is too smart not to do anything. If they can do it, they will. Second, even if the user is not clicking on your ad, it is hurting your click thru rate. All those times where your ad is showing and you aren’t getting a click adds up and kills your CTR.

Another thing that can help is to be very clear in your ad text as to what it is your site offers. Don’t advertise things you don’t have. If you only sell baseball equipment, your ad should say so. If the search is for ‘sporting goods’ and the person is actually looking for golf clubs, you don’t need them click on your ad and costing you money that could be spent on beer. Another example is that if you are providing high end goods in some industry that are high end in price, put that in the ad. Then you won’t get Donkey’s that are trying to spend $1.99 on Wal-Mart brand t-shirts wasting your advertising budget when you only provide cashmere sweaters.

The final way to help out is try to convert the Donkey’s into something else. They might be looking for Wal-Mart t-shirts, but you don’t have them. So maybe you could set up an affiliate program with a low end clothing provider. Then you ad some text to you page that says, if you are looking for items not offered here, check out our partner site at…Maybe they go there and buys something and you can earn commission.

Keeping the Donkey’s off your PPC traffic will help you minimize costs. You don’t want them and they don’t want you, so there is no need for the two of you to have met. Either avoid them or find a way to convert them, and have a Life in the Blue…Christmas.

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