If you want targeted traffic that is ready to make a purchase on your site, one of the best avenues to take is that of pay-per-click advertising. Google Ads brings you qualified leads that can become revenues, just as long as you do your ads right. How do you create effective ads and is there some trick to making people click on your ad over those made by your competitor?
Much like everything else in this world, there are a few tricks and tips that you can use to help make your ads more effective and more lucrative for your site. Here are some things you might want to consider in order to increase conversions and to make your ads rise above those of your competition:
Adjust Your Budget According to Keyword Performance – this is as simple and as straightforward as it gets. When you find that a keyword is performing better than others in converting clicks to revenues, always increase your spend on that keyword as compared with keywords that do not perform as great. This will help you direct your ad spend towards higher performing ads and keywords, ensuring that you earn more from your efforts.
Check your ads regularly to find out which keywords are outperforming others and tweak your ad budget accordingly. People often search for different things all through the year so you will need to adjust your ad budget and bidding accordingly.
Do Not Be Afraid to Use Negative Keywords to Your Advantage – you may not be aware of this but not using negative keywords to control the appearance of your ads can actually cost you a pretty penny. Adding keywords you don’t want your ads to appear on will help you eliminate those searches that you know do not fit your offerings. Negative keywords also help you reduce costs because your ads won’t ever appear for keywords that are irrelevant to your site.
For example, if you are selling women’s clothing but not men’s wear or children’s clothes, you can add the last two phrases in your negative keywords list. This ensures that people who are looking for men’s clothes or clothing for kids won’t click through to your site since your ad won’t appear for them. The same goes for keywords and phrases with negative implications (ugly women’s clothing or low-quality women’s clothes, for example). These should be added to your negative list to prevent your ad from appearing when people type these in search engines.
Modify Keyword Match Types – you should always change the keyword match type for your ads to ensure that these meet your expectations for your ads. For example, if you want your ads to reach a very wide audience but without really targeting specific phrases or words, Broad Match is what you use.
If you want a more targeted approach and want your online ads to appear only when people look for something very specific that you may have, Phrase Match and Exact Match are what you need. These have advantages and drawbacks though, with the former appearing more times than the latter, but the latter brings in more qualified leads than the former.
Always Use Optimized Landing Pages – some people who create PPC ads often lead people who click through to product and services pages that are related to the ad that is being displayed. This can work for some but not for all. Sometimes, people looking to purchase or book a service need a bit of convincing in order for a visitor to become a paying customer. This is where a good landing page comes in.
In order to convince people to conclude a sale, your landing page should resonate well with your ad. These two should be cohesive and well-aligned. Not only will the cohesion between your ad and your landing page improve revenues, but it can also lower your ad spend since better ads, high CTR (click through rate), and high conversions actually lower CPC or cost-per-click.
Do Not Be Afraid of Ad Extensions – sometimes your customers will take a bit of convincing to see that you have exactly what they need, particularly with the limitations in the number of characters that these online ads sets. This is when you will need to use ad extensions. These help you explain in more words what you are selling (structured snippets), assure customers of your high quality (callout extensions), and even show people just how satisfied your customers are with what you offer (review extensions).
You can even give people a link to your phone number, links to related products, and even links to your contact page with the help of a variety of ad extensions that you can find on your dashboard. Choose the best ad extensions for each specific ad to maximize on the effect these ads have on your target markets.
