Do you ever feel like your
advertising budget isn’t earning you the results you were expecting? You’re not
alone. If you’re not being cautious of optimization tactics, or you’re not
familiar with PPC best practices, it’s easy to blow your budget and overspend
on unqualified clicks.
The investments you make into
advertising impact your entire company, so it’s important that you’re getting
the best ROI.
Use these eight tips to get the most
out of your PPC ads:
1. Add Negative Keywords (The Right
Way)
Negative keywords give you the
opportunity to filter out traffic that doesn’t align with your target audience.
This allows you to reduce the number of wasted clicks, and thus wasted spend.
The best way to determine the
appropriate negative keywords for your campaign will involve an analysis of
search queries that are costing you money, and how people are interacting with
your site after clicking through. Run a search query report, and also
experiment in Google by actually searching the terms yourself.
You may discover that a keyword you
thought would be extremely relevant to your ad brings up completely different
results, which can indicate that searchers have alternate motives.
Pro Tip: Adwords Search Query
Reports allow you to automatically add negative keywords to your Ad Group or
Campaign. However this only ads a negative “exact match” keyword, meaning your
ad will be excluded from searches that are only that keyword exactly.
Example:
Original query is: HR Software Jobs
but you don’t want your ad to show for “job” related queries. Adwords will
create a negative keyword: [HR Software Jobs]. If the next day someone
searches: Jobs Developing HR Software, your ad will still show up on Google.
The best way to accomplish this
correctly is to simply add the negative keyword: jobs to any list you want that
term excluded from.
2. Follow Ad Copy Best Practices
Your ad copy will largely depend on
what you’re selling, and the overall goal of your campaign, but there are
common best practices to follow that can help you achieve a better ROI.
First, start by scanning your
competitor’s ads. This will help expose any gaps that you can capitalize on in
your own ads, like:
Undercut your competitor’s
promotion. If your competitor highlights 10 percent off in their ad, include 15
percent off in yours;
Focus on the user — more you than
we;
Speak to the searcher’s end goal,
not the product’s attributes;
Include the search terms in the ads;
Use actionable language with verbs,
(also known as a call-to-action), such as “Buy Now” or “Sign Up.”
3. Increase Your Geo-Targeting
Radius
Local businesses often select
specific cities or locations to run their ad in. In theory, this makes sense,
but in practice, ads are served based on the searcher’s IP address.
You’ve probably witnessed this
firsthand, if you’ve ever noticed that your IP address identified by Google
isn’t entirely accurate. Sometimes it thinks you’re 30 miles or so from where
you’re actually located.
So if an ideal customer searchers
for a keyword you’re targeting but their IP address is slightly off, they won’t
see your ad.
Increase your radius far beyond what
you feel is appropriate to ensure you’re not missing anyone.
4. Avoid Over-Segmentation
Old school advertisers were taught
to segment their PPC campaigns as narrowly as possible, and to create separate
campaigns for each segment. This strategy can be effective in some situations,
but not all.
Over-segmentation can lead to:
Paying for keywords twice, or double
bidding
Fewer impressions, which leads to a
lack of actionable insights since you’re not obtaining enough data
Low quality scores. This happens
when the search volume is low.
Research your best keywords to see
if there are differences across devices, locations, and times of day. If there
are major variances, you can adjust your bids within the same campaign, thanks
to the introduction of Enhanced Campaigns.
5. Optimize your Landing Page
Many advertisers send searchers to
their homepage and hope that they will have the information they need to turn
into a customer.
But in reality, people need to be
guided in that direction. If they don’t see a direct connection between your ad
copy and the page they land on, they’ll feel misled and probably bounce.
Closely matching the two will
improve conversions, and your ad relevance score. Create custom landing pages
for each campaign so you can control the copy and even strip out distractions
that appear on other pages. Keep your users focused.
6. Test, Test, Test!
What works for one company may
produce the complete opposite results for another. The best way to determine
the winning combination is to run split tests. Choose one element to test at a
time so it’s easier to identify what’s working and what’s not.
Here are some things you can test in
your PPC ads:
- Headline
- Ad copy
- Links
- Keywords
- Location
- Time of day
- Device
- Bidding strategy
- And many more factors
Whatever you’re testing, try to keep
your experiments relatively similar, and avoid switching too much. Keep track
of your tests, and adjust your strategy accordingly. Try to revisit your
campaigns to analyze each week.
7. Try Remarketing
Have you ever run Remarketing Lists
for Search Ads (RLSA) on Google? Most advertisers overlook this function, but
it can be extremely effective.
It works the same way as retargeting
ads work on any other platform. RLSAs show up within Google search engine
results based on individuals who have browsed a particular website in the last
540 days.
Benefits can include:
- Staying top of mind among your audience
- Lower bids on broad match keywords
- Lower cost-per-conversion and cost-per-click
- Better CTR (click-through rate)
- Higher quality scores
- New keyword opportunities
This can be an effective tool if
you’re achieving a strong CTR, but not seeing the corresponding conversions.
8. Stay on Top of Analytics
Advertisers often choose their
keywords based on how many conversions are associated with each. But this isn’t
the only metric you should be analyzing.
Log into your Google Analytics
account each week to see how users are interacting with your site after
clicking your ad. Pay attention to the number of page views, bounce rate, and
total time on your site triggered by specific keywords.
PPC ads have the potential to bring
in quality leads that are actively searching for your solution. If you’re not
implementing these strategies already, head over to your account now.
Source: - http://www.sitepronews.com/2017/07/25/the-8-best-ways-to-boost-roi-for-your-ppc-ads/
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