Selling successfully on the Internet is all about being visible. But this is easier said than done, considering that there are millions of businesses showcasing products or services similar to yours. The best approach is to come up with the right marketing mix that boosts your online visibility. Of course, you cannot skip SEO because of the potential to reach the top of the search rankings. At the same time, pay-per-click advertising is a tactic that you cannot survive without either.
Everyone knows how valuable Google AdWords is when it comes to driving qualified traffic to your website. What’s more, ads are cost-effective as well because you need to pay only for the number of clicks that the ads get. However, this is possible only if you set up the campaign properly and get only the right people clicking on the ads. What do you need to ensure the campaign relevance? How can you reduce ad spend waste to a minimum while getting the best results? Here are some tips to help.
Even before you design your Google AdWords campaign, you need to have a clear goal in mind. Decide whether the campaign is meant to boost conversions or generate brand awareness or anything else. A clear goal will enable you to identify the metrics that you need to monitor in assessing the campaign’s performance. Unless you have defined goals and metrics, you cannot expect your PPC investment to bring any results for your business.
A critical aspect of creating a winning Google AdWords campaign is to know your target audience and understand their intent. Write ad copies that are relevant to the audience, while adjusting the tone, language, and a call to action to match their intent. Understand what would engage them to make the desired actions and incorporate these elements into the ad copy. The more the ad copy resonates with the target audience’s intent, the better the results of the campaign will be.
Google AdWords is all about keyword targeting. You will be able to make a successful campaign only when you have the right keyword targeting strategy in place. Include broad match, phrase match, and exact match keywords in the campaign, while bidding the lowest for broad match keywords and highest for exact match keywords. Using negative keywords is equally important as they make the ads more relevant.
A unique and clear selling proposition definitely adds value to your Google AdWords campaign. After all, you need to tell customers why they should choose your business over your competitors. Besides generating awareness about your business, a clear and strong USP brings more traffic to your website even while keeping unwanted leads away. This translates into higher conversion rates and increased revenue for your business in the long run. At the same time, a clear USP also gives you a branding advantage.
Only following rules for making a campaign successful is not enough. You need to constantly monitor and track its performance so that you can identify and address gaps throughout its lifetime. Tools such as the Google Ads Cost Calculator can help because they give you insights about key metrics like Wasted Spend Percentage and CPA Aggressiveness Score. You can implement conversion tracking for the campaign as well. These metrics help you understand what is lacking so that you can tweak the campaign to get better results.
If you want to create a winning Google AdWords campaign, make sure that you don’t forget the mobile audience. This is because a major chunk of online audience searches come from mobile devices. If you fail to optimize your ads for mobile, you will miss out on this segment. Create mobile-specific CTAs and customized messages specifically for mobile users. Couple them with mobile-optimized landing pages for enhancing mobile experiences of the targeted audience and boosting conversion rates as well.
Don’t think that your work is done after identifying campaign goals and implementing the plan of action. You need to test repeatedly and consistently to maximize the outcome of the campaign. Testing applies to the entire conversion funnel, right from identifying the relevant keywords to deciding the ad copy, landing page design, and optimizing the follow-on email marketing campaigns. However, you should run only one test at a time so that you can understand the impact of the change and decide which ad gets you the best results.
Now that you understand what goes into creating winning Google AdWords campaigns, you can actually create ones that add value to your online marketing initiatives. Effective campaigns can boost your profitability to a considerable extent. Even if you have to go the extra mile in creating them, you should not hesitate in doing so.
