Paying between $2.00 -$5.00 per click for advertisements on Google can get expensive. That is why it is imperative that you make sure your sale is juicy, meaning that the revenue per order must be high enough to justify the per click cost. Also, your conversion rate must be such that you are breaking even, at an absolute minimum.
Maintaining this balance is not always easy, especially since the odds of having your ad clicked on are less than three percent, depending on where in the search results your ad is located. (Search results can have as many as 30 results for any keyword search)
These are just a few of our most successful strategies that you can implement to increase the number of impressions, clicks and conversions your PPC campaign receives.
1. Make Sure That Your Keywords, AdGroups, Ads and Landing Pages Are Aligned
Relevance is the most important factor here. By making sure all of these different elements of your advertisements are relevant to what the user is searching for and to one another, you improve your quality score, which dictates visibility even more than your bid price.
Generally, an ad is comprised of a title and two sentences. Use those two sentences to make two different offers. For example, if you sell nutrition bars, an ad would read something like this:
Nutrition Bars
Nutrition bars starting at $9.99.
Free shipping on all orders.
First, must make sure that the title of the ad is directly related to what the user is searching for, i.e. nutrition bars. Then, make sure your landing page reflects both of those offers. Whether consciously or subconsciously, users will be looking to see that what was offered in the ad is what is being offered on the landing page. (Free shipping and Nutrition Bars starting at $9.99) This is also what Google is looking for when they determine your ad’s quality score – relevance between the keywords, the ad copy, Ad Groups and landing pages.
2. Dynamic Landing Pages
Imagine you have an eCommerce site with 10,000 products. What would this mean for your PPC campaign? You’d think it means that you have to have over a hundred thousand keywords. But in that case, how would you build ads and AdGroups and make them targeted without creating ten thousand individual landing pages or ten thousand different offers? The answer to this is dynamic landing pages.
By programming, using a custom script, you can define the different elements on the page, such as the headline, the text, any images, the call to action, the offer, etc., based on the terms used in the original search query.
Let’s say that you sell all different kinds of bikes. If someone searched for “cheap bikes in Miami”, you couldn’t just toss up any mish-mosh of bikes that you sell. They must be cheap and in Miami. But you’re actually a national business. How would you reflect that on your landing page? Through Dynamic Text and Images; text that automatically reflects the searchers query and intent.
For example, you could use their exact search query as the title of your landing page – Cheap Bikes in Miami. Based upon the location included in the search, you could choose an image relevant to that location. For Miami, you may include a picture of South Beach, a subtle means of reinforcing that the cheap bikes are in Miami. Then you could also list the bikes you offer by price, including the top ten cheapest bikes, or some variation of that theme. This could all be accomplished through a custom basic script that queries your database of products based on the search term. This will do wonders for your conversion rate.
To help you achieve this level of specificity, AdWords also offers many different extensions.
3. Using AdWords Extensions
Depending on the type of product or service you offer, Google has a wide range of extensions you can use to bolster your campaign. An extension expands your ad’s real estate; through providing extra links to deep pages within your site that are relevant to their query, images of products, the inclusion of links to a social media or Google Local profile, or any number of beneficial add ons.
These are a few of our favorites:
- Location Extensions – This extension is perfect for local businesses, especially mom-and-pop style businesses, because your Google Local profile appears next to your ad. This extension specifically targets mobile device users who are more apt to walk in to your shop, increasing foot traffic. They can call you with a click or get directions to your store.
- Call Extensions – If most of your leads are generated through phone calls, the call extension app can be one of your best assets in a PPC campaign. This is especially important for businesses that find it difficult to make a sale unless they answer questions, give specific details or otherwise need to provide complex information to make the sale.
- Product Extensions – This extension is perfect for eCommerce sites because it provides images of specific products relevant to the search query and sends users directly to buy those products rather than having to go to the site and search for them.
- Social Extensions – This extension will display links to any of your social media profiles, including Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. This extension is especially helpful to build authority with your audience because it also indicates the number of people who have liked or are following your page.
- Mobile App Extensions – This extension allows for mobile capabilities that will only be displayed on mobile devices, including access to apps that can be bought through a smartphone’s store, such as the iPhone App Store or the Android Store. The mobile app extension would be useful if you had an app that allowed a user to scroll through your inventory effortlessly, for example.
- Dynamic Search Ad Extension – This extension provides a search query box where a user can search for a specific product or service that you may offer and land on a page specifically about that product or service. This means that users can search your inventory of products right there on the Google search results page.
- Email Opt-in Extension – This allows users to subscribe to your page directly through search engine results. An added bonus: if they are signed into their Gmail account, their email address will automatically appear in the display box. All they need to do is click subscribe.
4. Split Testing
This is necessary for every PPC campaign. You must split test your landing page so that you can change certain elements to find which set up generates the most conversions. For example, you could switch your call to action, ad design, ad copy and more to see which ones are most effective. Split testing is most successful when you focus on one or two elements at a time. For example, you can find out whether people are more likely to convert when they are offered 20% OFF or FREE SHIPPING.
Many people only check their CPA (cost per acquisition). However, to really optimize your PPC, it is necessary to look at two additional metrics:
– RPA (revenue per acquisition)
– RPM (revenue per impression)
CPA will only tell you if your landing page is effective in generating leads. By looking at your RPA and RPM, you can determine the effectiveness, not only of your landing page, but also of your actual ads. This gives you greater insight into the overall success of your PPC campaign.
Running a PPC campaign requires a lot of time and resources. A campaign must be checked on daily and analyzed by someone who knows how to read the raw data. Trying to balance the management of PPC campaign and your business simultaneously will ultimately leave one area or the other suffering from lack of attention. But never fear; Optimum7 is here to help! To learn more about PPC and how we can help your campaign achieve success, contact us today!
