As a campaign manager, you must have come to know that Adwords campaigns need a special care to show effective results.
Although it is not that AdWords will work for you itself but you have to make them efficient. To keep the campaign on successive pace the first thing you have to do is to optimize it.
Well, that is not so tough.You should be tricky and must be open minded to inherit new ideas. However, there are some simple strategies, which can boost your campaign that you have never sighted before.
Most of us often make the mistake of leaving Google Adwords campaigns to self-run after creating them. This method might be easy, but it won’t help you fetch good ROI out of the Adwords campaigns.
Moreover, Optimization is key to run a successful Adwords campaign. There is a lot more, which is involved in creating ads, adding keywords and launching a campaign.
Are you messing yourself up finding how to make your ad appear on the top of the search page? Are you more greedy to attract more potential clicks?
Here’re 15 tips that can help you get most from AdWords campaigns-
1) Is Your Quality Score Good Enough?
Google Adwords assigns a quality score for each keyword of your ad campaign. Probably you know that Google assigns 1-10 Quality score value for keywords.
A Higher value of quality score indicates the better health of keywords.
Therefore, Quality Score is important as it determines your keywords ad rank and helps you save money. The general formula for keywords rank is
Ad Rank= Bid x Quality Score
[bctt tweet=”Higher will be quality score lesser you need to pay for CPC” username=”adstriangle”]
There are few important factors, which determine the quality score of a keyword. The main components of the quality score are keywords, ad relevance, CTR and landing page experience.
Let’s understand what exactly these factors are-
1. CTR (Click through rate)
It tells how many clicks you get when people see your ad each time.
2. Keywords and Ad relevance
These mean your keywords and ads should be relevant to each other.
3. Landing page experience
Google check few things to determine landing page value
4. Landing page loading time
Your landing page should be fast to upload on all browsers and devices
5. Content Relevancy
Your landing page content should be relevant to your keywords and ad texts. For example, if you have keywords related to plumber services then your landing page should tell about what kind of plumber services you provide to customers.
6. Device Compatibility-
Your landing page should be compatible with mobile, tablets, PCs and laptop. People can browse and read the content of landing page very easily.
2) Concentrate on Sitelinks Extensions to Get Better Ad Performance
Do not take the site links as natural search results but they are extensions. You must have thought to show value to your potential customers before they make the clicks. Google Adwords Extensions enable you to show some additional links just below your ad texts.
Moreover, these extensions have a strong impact on the user’s psychology. The provided additional links force people more likely to click on your ad.
You will come to know that the site links extensions can be considered to be the basic needs to set up your ad text. You are also lucky and intelligent enough for converting this option into a marketing strategy.
Why should you consider yourself among the regular advertisers! When you will use Sitelinks Extensions strategically to optimize the ad, you will be counted among the efficient PPC managers.
Let’s check the strong benefits that the Additional Site Links offer-
- You enjoy the opportunity to furnish and highlight some of your company features and categories
- Having the chance to elaborate the offers of your company
- Ancillary options to construct additional real estate
- You can specify some certain products to attract more attentions
[bctt tweet=”Adding Sitelinks boosts the average CTR of an ad by 20-30%” username=”adstriangle”]
The PPC experts accept this fact that using Sitelink extension is an important part of AdWords campaign. If your ad is acquiring the top position on the search page, then using site links extensions delivers excellent result. Google claims that it can boost the CTR by 30%.
furthermore, it is not really a smart thinking just to increase CTR. The good business is to turn the increasing CTR into improving the extra conversions. The effective Sitelinks Extensions strategy technically lifts the conversion rates also.
[bctt tweet=”Show your creativity in building additional site links to get good quality score” username=”adstriangle”]
Many clients ask us how many site links should be there! Now, you have to take this at the point of view of a viewer.
We have seen that the campaign owner should use minimum 4-active site links for desktop and mobile device respectively.
Therefore, do not go to elaborate message through these links and try to keep the site links characters count as shorter as possible. We found that shorter links work effectively.
Try to bind them within 20 characters for Desktop and 15 characters for mobile to get effective results.
‘Sitelinks Extensions’ are powerful tools to optimize your ad campaign. People will be more likely to click on your ad. It is proven strategy, which invites more productive clicks along with helping your ad crawling to the top.
3) Google Remarketing- a Dynamic Strategy to Boost Your Campaign
Smart way of getting ROI from a business is marketing. The more your marketing strategy runs effectively the more your customer base increases.
A successful marketing idea is always constructed on some strong pillars of techniques. And Remarketing is one of those powerful norms that feed the success of a marketing idea.
Hence, we advise clients to grab the opportunity of re-marketing strategy offered by Google to optimize your campaign.
Moreover, do not think that customer will come to you generically; rather, you have to go to the door of an interested customer. Always keep displaying your options before the visitors, who have once visited your website.
Remarketing enables you to re-target the clients to run a successful ad campaign. However, before jumping into this strategy you must assign your suitable objectives. These objectives must meet customer expectations.
Remarketing is not meant to generate a huge load of clicks and not to drive a ton of traffics. It tactfully strengthens the company brand name before the people, who already visited the site.
Remarketing is also a direct interaction with the visitors and it influences them to visit your page again. It predominantly improves the conversion rates.
Do not identify Remarketing with PPC ads. Sometimes clients’ aspirations go higher and they expect the remarketing should invite more clicks just as the PPC ad does. We make them understand that Remarketing is completely different from the PPC ads.
As an efficient PPC manager, you have to take these five points in mind to run successful Remarketing Strategy-
- Audit periodically the Remarketing Lists
- Boost the performance of Remarketing by choosing perfect Ad Type (always image type is very much effective)
- Increase the Frequency and Duration period of displaying your ads
- Identify the expectation to select the target audience.
- Constantly refine the targeting to get more quality clicks
The main purpose behind running Remarketing is to force invite the productive clicks from those people, who has interests in your service or products. Targeting these people will help you to improve conversions.
4) Set Up Bid Adjustment Systematically
There are different bid level adjustments you need to understand for better campaign management. These include mobile, location and scheduling bid management.
#Locations Bid Adjustment
Location bid adjustment allows you to set bid adjustment on based on locations.
You can set location bid adjustment as per location performance.
For example, you are running your campaign for entire Australia and you find you are getting maximum leads from Sydney. In the same way, you find you are getting almost no leads from Perth location.
By using this data you can set a bid adjustment for locations. You can spend more on those locations, where you are getting results and vice versa.
[bctt tweet=”Bid Adjustment does not only helps you to save money but also assists in generating more leads” username=”adstriangle”]
#Mobile Device Bid Adjustment
Mobile device bid adjustment gives you control on mobile bids. If your website is not mobile friendly then you can reduce your mobile bid for around 90-100%.
In the same way, if you’re getting good sales and leads from mobile devices you can increase your mobile bid.
Therefore, based on the performance you can make mobile bid adjustment for your campaign.
#Bid Adjustment Based On Time
Google Adwords allows you to set bid as per day and time. You can increase bid for your AdWords campaigns on any given day at any given time.
If you find that you get maximum inquiries or sales on Monday at morning time then you can increase your bid on Monday in between 9-11 am to get maximum sales.
Once you have a fair idea about the timing, you can select the time and ensure your ad will get maximum exposure during that time.
5) Avoid Ads Below The Fold
In display network, If your ads go below the fold they could be a waste of money. The level of impressions and CTR are usually lower for ads that go below the fold.
Ads below the fold don’t work on all systems. People use various devices to access the internet and various browser types. Ads below the fold don’t always work on all the browsers and thus it’s best to avoid them.
This is true that people are most likely to click on the results that appear on top of front page. Appearing your ad after scrolling down the page cannot have much impact to draw people’s attention.
[bctt tweet=”Below the fold ad cannot get much exposure to invite clicks. ” username=”adstriangle”]
It is true that in CPC you only pay when the visitors click on your ad. If your ad does not appear in front of them on first go then a number of possible clicks drop. Therefore, when the number of clicks drops you are usually going to pay less.
You should not be so happy for this lesser payment because at this point if you look at your CTR, it is dropping drastically.
The continue impressions of the below the fold ad affect the CTR by 30%.
6) Is Your Landing Page Mobile Friendly to Catch More Quality Clicks
Smartphones are the needs of the day. If you want to increase your revenue then you need to make sure your website is mobile-friendly. Also, try to show your ads on mobile devices for more traffic.
The success of ad campaign is standing on the user experience. It is all about online advertising, so you need to opt for the most basic things of the people you want to reach.
The fundamental theory PPC ad is to reach most of the people to generate maximum quality clicks.
It is not possible that people always sit in front of laptops or desktops for web search. But the smart devices enable them to get the result on the go.
Therefore put your ad words into their pocket and be with them whenever they need to enter into the web world.
To gain more conversion rate you have to provide the more comfortable user experience. Your linked pages and landing page must be the web responsive so that user can browse your pages through their smart gadgets like tabs and smartphones.
From early 2013 Google was offering separate AdWords campaigns for mobile devices. But a year later the option was banned.
If your web is having a responsive layout, the user can go through your products or services without inducing much effort from mobile devices. However, we advise our clients to target all kind of desktop, mobile and tablets users through AdWords campaigns.
Google currently does not allow device-specific AdWords campaigns. Therefore you are not able to create device specific campaign but you need to modify your tricks to reach multiple devices.
Your ad structure and bidding strategy must be modified in order to target all kind of people.
Our customer base experience elaborates that the user behaviors differ when the devices turn from wide screens to small screens.
Though for eCommerce sites, users find it very flexible to put items in a cart through desktop than mobile but sometimes responsive web layout cause great quality traffic.
[bctt tweet=”Get responsive web design to attract more profitable clicks.” username=”adstriangle”]
One more important thing- if you are not having mobile friendly layout then you can think alternatively by designing another URL for mobile users. This can drive the mobile users to a different page than the desktop.
7) Placements Exclusion is Must
Always keep an eye on the placements. Add all those websites to exclusions, which don’t give you results. At site category options you can exclude categories, where you don’t want to show ads.
No matter how good your ads are and how good you are in campaign settings- the basis of the optimization depends on the placements of your ad campaign. Good theory on placement exclusion can exhibit optimal result.
In your display network, you must run the “Placement Exclusion’. Along with Placement exclusion lists your campaign exposure will be more controllable and this way you take a further step to optimize your PPC ad.
Place your ads only on the contextual, interest or demographic basis to make it more relevant to the target audience. You must have witnessed that some optimization techniques actually killed the performances.
Take some moment to adjust your placement exclusion and soon you will come to observe that this necessary step is improving the optimization actually.
[bctt tweet=”The relevancy of your ad placements enhances the overall performance ” username=”adstriangle”]
In primary level just after the campaign goes live, check your account to know which domains are eating more impressions and clicks. Sort out those domains that are unable to give good conversions.
Without wasting time exclude those domains. It might be your ad is actually targeting wrong audience base. But remember it is the initial step.
You should not be in hurry to commit placement Exclusion. Always wait for the longer period result (30 days).
It may be possible that unconsciously in hurry you have excluded the better placement domain. Do not judge your placement in short time frame.
8) Exclude Parked Domains and Error Pages
Display campaigns that include error pages or parked domains can’t generate any leads and thus these ads don’t work. The visitors find no valuable content on the landing page.
If the visitor finds nothing on the linked page then the level of interests drops. In this way, you actually lower the conversion rate.
Along with avoiding link Parked Domain or Error pages, you must also be sure that your ads must not be shown on these category pages.
According to Google Adwords policy, the parked domain is the part of either Display Network. People visit the page accidentally and it offers no viable experience.
[bctt tweet=”You should be sure at the very beginning of the Campaign to protect against the click frauds.” username=”adstriangle”]
Sometimes, leads from those pages can give great CTR but fail to generate quality conversions. Actually Parked Domains and Error pages cannot get quality traffic.
Now, you should concentrate to block parked domains to ensure your ROI and conversion rates. Excluding the pages that do not have relevant content or no content is your prime responsibility during the campaign construction.
9) Keyword Match Types Always Work for You
It is Keywords that do the magic. Your job is not done only with picking out the right keywords. Select the perfect ‘Match Types’ for your keywords to make it perform best.
You can use 4 types of ‘Match Type’ variations-
i) Broad Match:
Like the name suggests, this match type considers all variants of the typed search content. It doesn’t stay specific and could include words, which are not spelled right, plural forms and stemming.
ii) Phrase Match:
This type allows users to show ads only when people search keywords in a certain phrase. It could include words before or after the phrase, but the keywords need to be together for it to show up.
iii) Exact Match:
This match type shows ads only if people search for an exact keyword. It sometimes allows a very small variation; for example, if your phrase is ‘small dog’ it could pull up results such as ‘a small dog’ or ‘small dogs’.
iv) Broad Modifier Match:
These match types show ads if certain keywords appear in the search term. Unlike phrase match, we don’t need to have keywords in same order. This match type fills the gap between broad and phrase match.
All these variations are useful in one way or the other. You just need to understand each type and choose the right one for your campaign.
10) Test and Split Ads- Select perfect alternatives
As an ad owner, you always expect your PPC ad to be stand out from others. No, there is no single formula to achieve this. It is also really hard to know the initial response of the market towards your ads.
We are not letting you down but we are giving you some ideas to enhance your ad performance. Split testing is the important but critical formula to take steps forward for optimization.
CTR is the ultimate goal because finally, it determines the quality score. Test and Split Ads to know the perfect structure to get great conversions.
For overall optimization, A/B Split testing can do better. A/B is a hypothesis testing form, which works with two variants A and B. This technique is not only fruitful for optimization but also for ads validation at the initial stage.
[bctt tweet=”Testing the performance of various ads alternatives will help you get a better idea.” username=”adstriangle”]
Testing the performance of various ads alternatives will help you get a better idea of the ones that perform better. There’s a lot you can experiment from including the call to action, new offers, images, color schemes and promotions.
You can go through these two basic experiments-
• Ad Copy
Try to implement a different call to actions along with different headlines and messages. Do not hesitate to insert dynamic keywords
• Landing Page
You can work with a different layout for landing pages. You cannot know which one will perform better.
Don’t change too many things at one time. Try out one or two different things on each ad. Rotate the ads indefinitely and later check the data collected to analyze which ads did better than the others.
11) Be careful about Landing Page Optimization
Your ad campaign may get the top position in a search result or may invite lots of clicks but without an effective landing page, all is complete wastage.
You need to convert visitors into potential clients as soon as they visit the landing page.
Always ensure your landing page has these three things to increase conversion rates-
i) Testimonials
These help convincing customers that your product or service is good.
ii) Strong Call-to-Action
Instead of using multiple ‘call to action’ phrases on your landing page, use one and make sure it’s a strong one.
iii) Strong Headline
A reader decides whether to stay or left a page within seconds of their arrival. A strong headline is an essential part of a landing page since this headline helps in generating interest and convinces users to stay on the page for a longer time.
[bctt tweet=”The landing page must be appealing and cryptically informative.” username=”adstriangle”]
It is evident that in B2B businesses landing page is the instrumental behind accumulating 68% conversion. If you can provide quality landing page you will be able to increase the customer acquisition by 55%.
12) Set Up Conversion Tracking
Conversion tracking is a great way to keep track on the leads or prospective leads your campaign generates.
Although this might not help directly in converting leads; it helps you track down interested customers to try converting them into clients.
This is no doubt a powerful tool to calculate the overall performance of your ad campaign. It enables you to identify whether your campaign is generating leads for the business key factors or not.
Because the only determining metric is conversions, you must track it periodically.
From the very beginning of constructing your campaign, you should set up conversion tracking. If you have basic knowledge of HTML, then it is enough to generate the code in Adwords and paste it on your page.
There are three types of conversions- Webpage, App Download and Call on-site. Web page conversion is the most accurate and profitable conversion type.
The last is to analyze the conversion data because it will give you the complete frame of the ROI. You should analyze the data with the search funnel for advanced analysis.
13) Understand the importance of monitoring the Impressions Shares
Once you’ve successfully launched an ad campaign, it’s important to monitor it. ‘Impression shares’ help you understand the impact of your campaign and assists you to improve it.
An impression share is essential and although most AdWords campaigns will have impression shares above 70%, some of them might not have the mark. So monitor and keep a watch for the lost impression shares for all your AdWords campaigns.
[bctt tweet=”70% of impression shares is the ideal mark for a successful ad campaign.” username=”adstriangle”]
The simple way of calculating your impression share is to divide the total number of quarries by a total number of your ad’s appearances.
You must keep a close eye to the lost impressions. The impression share gets badly affected by the poor budget and thus it can drop your campaign performance.
If your daily budget is too low then you can lose impressions and this way you will miss out valuable clicks. Impression loss causes bad results for the conversions.
There are three types of Impressions lost-
i) Search Lost Impression Share:
It is the percentage of not displaying the ad due to insufficient budget
ii) Search Lost Due for Lower Rank:
It tells the percentage of your ad not appearing due to lower ad rank
iii) Display Lost for Budget:
It is the percentage of not displaying the ad on Display Network due to insufficient budget
iv) Display Lost for Poor Rank:
The poor rank of your ad can cause not displaying the ad on Display Network
Now you understand what the Impression share is and how you save the Impression Shares from being lost. Protect those impression shares and convert it to generate quality conversions.
14) Negative Keywords may help you out
Negative keywords might sound like something you should avoid. However, the truth is that using these keywords can help you reach customers, who are most interested in your services or products.
Negative keywords save your clicks from being wasted.
[bctt tweet=”Get more control over your keywords by implementing suitable negative keywords.” username=”adstriangle”]
Negative Keywords can optimize your ad by including valuable clicks in three ways-
• Saves budget by excluding the phrases or words that cannot generate ROI
• Helps the ad to appear only before those people, who is relevantly interested in your products or services
• Protects your ads from those clicks that are not meant for your products or services.
Negative keywords help you display your advertisement only to people interested in the services or products you have to offer.
It also increases the CTR for your ad. Negative keywords are simple and easy to use, and when used correctly they can do wonders for your pay per click campaign.
15) Check Your Campaign Settings
There are a lot of settings options on Google Adwords to set your campaign. For an effective ad campaign, it’s essential to pay attention to the normal settings.
These are a few important things you should check under the settings tab before you begin an ad campaign-
i) Location:
Always choose the right location. Some ad campaigns are created for an audience belonging to a particular State or Country; therefore choose the location accordingly to save on irrelevant clicks.
ii) Schedule Right:
Once you’ve scheduled a few ad campaigns, you would get a fair idea about the timings of the ad campaigns and about the idea when they perform best.
You can then schedule the ad campaigns based on the time best suited for the campaign to generate the most revenue.
iii) Device Targeting:
It’s advised to always have a website that is compatible with mobile phones & tablets. However, if for some reasons your website does not load on mobiles, choose for the ads not to be displayed on mobile phones.
Conclusion
Optimization is an indispensable section in Adwords Campaign Architecture.
As you know how the optimization matters to run a successful ad campaign, the above said procedures will definitely enlighten your knowledge on how to get the fruit from the Adwords campaign.
The main motto of Adwords campaign is to get more business and that is why the factors that evolve more productive clicks bear the essential keys for ROAS (Return On Advertising Spend).
[bctt tweet=”Factors that evolve more productive clicks bear the essential keys for ROAS. ” username=”adstriangle”]
Aforesaid discussions will surely help the fresher on how to deal with Adwords Campaigns. It is worth saying that only the professionals know the tricks best and can apply perfectly.