Google AdWords is a great way to capture new leads and increase sales. However, if your campaigns are not set up correctly, it can cost you a lot of money with little return on investment. Below are 5 ways to maximize conversions using Google AdWords to help your business work more efficiently with pay-per-click advertising.
1. Set an Ad Schedule- By default, AdWords chooses to show your ads all days and hours. If you find that a click is most likely to convert during business hours, visit the Campaign Settings tab and change the Ad Schedule to have your ads show only during business hours. This way, you will not be wasting money at 3am on users who are least likely to buy your product or service.
2. Utilize Bid Adjustments– Similar to the Ad Schedule, if you find that a conversion is more likely to occur between 10 AM and 12 PM on Tuesday, you can tell AdWords to bid higher during that time. Similarly, you can use bid adjustments for devices and locations. We recommend starting with a 10% bid adjustment and then increase or decrease the amount when necessary. Visit the Campaign Settings tab to add a bid adjustment to your locations, ad schedule or devices.
3. Don’t forget to add Negative Keywords- A negative keyword is a one that will prevent Google from showing your ad when anyone is searching for that phrase. Negative keywords are important to make sure the searches that your ads are being triggered to show are as relevant as possible. Take a look at the Search Terms section in the Keywords tab to see if your ads are showing for irrelevant keywords and add them to the Negative Keywords list. When adding negative keywords the default setting is by ad group but most often it is beneficial to add them to the campaign not just an ad group.
4. Watch the Quality Score- Google defines Quality Score as an estimate of how relevant your ads, keywords and landing page are to a user viewing your ad. The higher the Quality Score, the lower the cost per click and higher the ad position. To improve the Quality Score, make sure your keywords are in ad text and clearly written on your landing page. Add the Quality Score column to the dashboard to keep up with where your keywords rank.
5. Always be testing- One of the key benefits to using Google AdWords is the ability to run experiments and alway be testing new changes and ideas. Running experiments with two different sets of ad copy or landing pages at the same time allows the top performer to run and lower your cost per click and cost per acquisition. Continuously improve your advertising after finding the top performer from each experiment to tweak ad variations for the next top performer.
Need help with running successful campaigns on Google AdWords? Contact the Google Partners certified specialists at Off The Wall Media to maximize your conversions and grow your business with pay-per-click advertising. Call 503-452-1082 or visit our website.