Google AdWords is a great way to generate a large amount of inbound traffic to your landing page. Smart use of a Google AdWords campaign can often result in a significant impact on the number of leads converted into sales, without an increase in budget.
Today’s post is on the 5 smart ways to use Google AdWords easily and effectively.
Tip #1: Modify bids according to geographic performance.
To optimise Google Adwords, remember to modify your bids according to the geographic performance of your advertisements. Simply put, track the geographic performance of your advertisements to better understand how your advertisements are doing in different locations.
The idea is as follows: Red T-shirts might sell better at regions where “red” is considered a lucky colour, as compared to regions where “red” is not considered a lucky colour. The performance data can help you decide as a digital marketer where to put more of your efforts, attention, and advertising budget on to maximise the total sales of red T-shirts. Therefore, less profitable areas use up less budget that can then be allocated to the most profitable geographic areas.A/B testing is key.
To modify bids, go to the “Location reports” in your AdWords Account–these reports give you information as to where your customers are physically located or information to the locations where your customers showed interest in. In the event where location extensions are used, it is possible to use distance reports to find out how each advertisement is doing.
Tip #2: Use Google AdWords A/B testing tool.
All marketers have a limited Google AdWords budget, so A/B testing is useful to increase key metrics such as conversion rates and clicks. Use the Google AdWords A/B testing tool to achieve this on a systematic basis. To achieve that, use a calendar to make split-testing part of your job scope so that you can improve as time passes.
Do always remember to take some time to decide on what the objective of your digital campaign is.
Here, there are three variables: AdCopy, Keywords, and bids. Are you deciding between two very similar sales copy, and aim to measure which copy does better through the A/B testing? Or are you looking to see if a marginal increase in AdWords bids can increase the conversion rate? Or are you testing out a new keyword that was previously not used by either yourself or a competitor?
After clarifying these, you can then use the Google Adwords A/B testing tool. Decide on a “control group” and then a “variable group”. Here are some pointers you can use to guide yourself when you are changing each variable:
1. AdCopy
The inclusion of certain words such as “New”, “first” and “get” attracts more clicks and subsequently conversions. Try this out in your A/B testing! Include one version with these words and one version without.
Google also recommends the Capitalisation of each word to make the title stand out. Do this in the split testing and let us know how it goes!
2. Bids
- Is it necessary to place high bids on a specific keyword? Test with alternative synonyms!
- Is it worth it to increase a person’s bid to result in a higher conversion rate? Does the marginal cost outweigh the marginal benefit?
- What is the conversion rate of bidding on your most competitive keywords?
3. Keywords
- If you usually use generic keywords, A/B testing allows you to test which other keywords are more competitive.
Tip #3: Pay attention to new negative keywords.
Negative keywords are defined as keywords that are irrelevant to what you want to rank for. For example, if you want to sell “Japanese (wine) glasses”, then negative keywords include “Japanese eyewear”. Negative keywords will help you exclude certain search terms from your Google AdWord campaign.
Look at your search term report after one round of advertising. It will inform you what sort of keywords result in readers finding out your advertisements. From these keywords, you will find both profitable and unprofitable keywords, so keep the profitable ones and put the unprofitable ones under your list of negative keywords. This will maximise your ROI further and stretch the effectiveness of your budget.
Tip #4: Look at bounce rate, time spent on site, and page views.
It might sometimes be useful to look at engagement levels too. Indicators that measure this includes the bounce rate, time spent on site, and page views. This is because an engaged audience might convert to actual paying clients later in the future, even though they do not buy anything now.
Therefore, look at how much time is spent on average on your site. If the time spent is too short, you might want to consider working on your content marketing to deliver more compelling content to your target audience.
Tip #5: To maximise reach, use auction insights.
Google provides an auction insights report with every campaign, which informs the digital marketer how many times the campaigns show up higher on Google with a higher bid. This report also informs the digital marketer which keywords are highly competed for and makes recommendations on how to allocate the budget most effectively.
Therefore, in order to maximise your reach, be sure to use auction insights to see where you can consider putting your money next. You can definitely stretch the dollar with useful information!
We hope you have enjoyed this post! Be sure to use Google AdWords wisely!