AdWords is one of the most popular and successful PPC advertising platforms. Potentially, it can drive highly targeted traffic to your most important landing pages and produce a generous return on investment. However, for this to happen, your advertising campaign needs to be set up correctly and effectively optimised. Here, we’ll give you 6 tips that can boost your Google AdWords ROI.
- Plan your campaign spending
No advertiser has an unlimited campaign budget, so it is important that you take the time to plan your spending in order to make it as effective as possible. Each click will eat into your budget and how much you pay per click depends upon the competition for the keywords you are targeting.
If you put in a low bid for your ads, they might get little visibility and poor clickthrough rates. Bid too highly and you might not get enough clickthroughs to generate a reasonable return. For example, at £2 per click, a £2000 budget would only get you 1000 visitors. If you had a conversion rate of 2%, that would only be 20 sales. To break even, you’d need to add £100 to the price of each product just to cover the advertising costs. That might be reasonable if you are selling mortgages or loft conversions, however, for most businesses, it’s not a feasible solution.
Before launching your campaign, look at your estimated conversion rates and work out what is a viable price to pay for each advert. This will help you forecast what ROI you are likely to receive and whether the campaign is worthwhile. - Pick the most effective display networks
Google has divided its advertising channels into what it calls display networks. As an advertiser, there are two you can choose from: the search network and the display network. You can also choose to use both.
Placing an ad on the search network basically means that it will be shown in the Google search results. The good news is that this network has the highest conversion rates. However, there are several drawbacks. As it produces the most conversions, it’s exceptionally popular which means the costs per click is likely to be higher, especially as the number of ads shown has reduced since Google went mobile-friendly. Ads on this network are also limited to text only, so there isn’t any scope for banners.
The display network is where your ad appears on other websites, for example, newspaper websites, blogs and sites used for internet marketing. This network has a lower conversion rate than the search network, however, the ads are cheaper and there is more creative opportunity to use banners, etc.
Before making a decision, take a look at which option you consider is best for your budget and style of advertising. - Choose the best keyword match option
In an attempt to make your budget more effective, AdWords offers you four different keyword match options to choose from. The choice you make will affect when your advert gets displayed and can, if set correctly, help improve conversion rates and cut down on wasted clickthroughs. Here are the options.- Broad match type
This option displays your ad when searchers use terms which are broadly similar to your keywords. This can bring in more traffic but the less strategic targeting means some clicks might not be from genuinely interested visitors. - Broad match modified
This is a slightly more targeted broad match which requires specific keywords to be included in the search query. - Phrase match
A phrase match is often an ideal choice where ads are displayed when a search query contains a specific phrase, e.g., laptop deals. Phrase match can improve targeting and increase conversion rates. - Exact match
The most highly targeted of the match options, users need to exactly match your keywords. Whilst this can increase conversion rates, it can limit the number of people who see your advert, so conversions might be less frequent.
- Broad match type
- Make your ads clickable
For an ad to be effective it has to entice people to click on it. There are a number of techniques you can use to do this, such as eye-catching headlines, a well-written description, and a clear call to action. Make sure the ad contains your keywords.
To test the effectiveness of your ads and find ways to improve them, you should split-test slightly different versions of each one. This will enable you, over time, to optimise them for better click-through rates. - Link ads to custom pages
When someone clicks on your ad, you have a potential sale. To make the most of this, send them to a specially created landing page of your website that is optimised for the current campaign.
If you have several adverts, each targeting different users or focusing on different user needs, you should, ideally, have a separate landing page for each. For example, a teenager and a business person may both be looking for the same iPhone, however, their needs for it would be different. It makes sense not just to create separate ads for both but to create customised landing pages too. - Keep track of how well your campaign is going
To make sure your campaign is effective and to find ways to make improvements, it helps to monitor its performance. AdWords’ Search Term Reports can show how well your search terms have performed and what other terms could be beneficial. You can also track your AdWords performance using Google Analytics.
Tracking and monitoring will help you see where your campaign needs to improve in order to generate a better ROI.
Conclusion
AdWords can be a very useful platform to attract visitors to your website and increase sales. Using the tips provided here will enable you to run more cost-effective campaigns and produce better targeted ads that have a higher chance of conversion.
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