Signing up for Google AdWords and creating your first paid search advertising account is easy. Using pay-per-click to turn a profit is considerably more difficult. One is a matter of following a few steps, while the other involves planning, research, and a commitment to out-thinking dozens of competitors.
One of the chief challenges associated with setting up a profitable AdWords campaign is figuring out the best ways to get the exposure you want without spending too much. Fortunately, there are some tried-and-true strategies you can follow to lower your cost-per-conversion and increase your AdWords ROI. Here are a handful you should try today if you haven’t already…
Create Separate Campaigns for Different Customer Groups
It’s easy to just lump all of your customer groups, keywords, and ads into one big marketing effort like a kind of pay-per-click stew. But, you’ll get better results, and lower costs, by separating your different target markets into unique campaigns. That way, you can adjust things like locations, demographics, and budgets to test ideas and optimize each one based on the return you get from your investments.
Divide Big Ad Groups Into Smaller Parts
The same process of segmentation should occur within the different campaigns you set up, too. By dividing big ad groups and the smaller ones (preferably with phrase and exact match search terms), you can create situations where your ads match the search queries prospects use almost perfectly. That improves click through rates, increases quality scores, and makes it cheaper for you to get paid clicks.
Add More Negative Keywords and Account Controls
Another way to boost your Google AdWords quality score (and lower your cost-per-click in the process) is to ensure your ads aren’t showing to prospects who aren’t going to buy from you. Two great ways to do that are by adding negative keywords to your campaigns and restricting your account settings.
One stops your ads from showing when customers use certain words (like “free”), and the other can help you filter out entire segments of the market that aren’t a great fit for your products or services (for instance, buyers who live in the wrong County or ZIP Code).
Try Bidding for a Lower Search Position
It has become accepted wisdom in the last few years that marketers should always want to retain the top position when it comes to paid search advertising. It’s certainly true that the first three results get the majority of all available sponsored clicks. However, unless you have a very high quality score, that might not make sense to pay for that kind of position. After all, it means your bidding more than anyone else for a given search term, meaning the revenue generated as a result might not be worth the expense.
A lot of marketers fall into the trap of thinking they need to generate clicks to their websites to make PPC advertising work. Google ads certainly are great for generating traffic, but unless you are bringing in more in new revenue than you are spending to attract buyers, it’s always going to be a net loss.
So, follow our tips and see if you can make your online ads more efficient. Then, call our team to set up a free consultation and see how we can help you take your business to the next level!