As owners, there are many aspects of your business that has certainly divided your attention. You might have thought about how to roll out a new product or service, or you might have dealt with internal issues among team members. Whatever the case, sometimes something like knowing how to minimize CPC costs in Google Adwords would be the least of your worries.
How do you make Adwords work to your advantage? After all, your goal is to ensure the highest possible ROI. It all begins with Quality Score.
Google considers the following variables for determining what your Quality Score is:
- CTR – Click-through-rate
- Relevance of each keyword to its ad group
- Quality and relevance of the landing page
- Relevance of the ad text
- History of your Google Ads account performance
We will discuss, in detail, how focusing on areas such as CTRs, Quality Scores, positions, and impressions can greatly reduce costs and instead increase your profits.
Focus on SKAGs
Single Key Ad Groups or SKAG is the use of a single keyword for a particular ad group. You want to keep words to a minimum.
If you were to check Google, they advise users to instead use 10-20 keywords at least per ad group. They claim that this will maximize your ads:
Going against what Google claims to be an effective marketing strategy can help lower CPC costs because by simply focusing on a single keyword, a specific ad comes up whenever someone searches using that keyword.
Make Relevant Ad Copies Using SKAGs
When you have created single keyword ad groups, you can now focus on coming up with ad copies that are relevant to your SKAGs.
Let’s say someone wants to search for a debt collector. They go on Google and you type in “debt collection agency”. It so happens that this is also your target keyword and your ad comes up. Because you and the user are using the same language, and since your landing page also has the same keywords (more on this later), you are suddenly more relevant.
Simply put, higher relevancy means a higher click-through rate. The higher your click-through rate is, the more likely your Quality Score will improve. Because your Quality Score is higher, there will be lower costs per click, thus ensuring less spending per conversion.
Using an Ad Copy Formula to Improve CTR
Pay per click marketing works almost instantaneously and you can take advantage of this. By immediately following results, you can see how an ad campaign is faring. This gives you time to adjust accordingly and make changes to your strategy.
If you want to know if an existing ad campaign is working, use this ad copy formula. Split test your current ad with others that have have been slightly modified. You can improve CTR rates by doing this.
Take a look at this:
Study the graphic. What do you notice?
Ad A is your current ad. It is supposed to be performing well. Ad B uses another headline but has the same description as Ad A. Ad C, on the other hand, has the same headline as Ad A but its description is different.
What’s this supposed to do?
You want to see if Ad B or Ad C can outperform Ad A. Do this experiment and let it run for at least 1000 clicks. The longer you can let it run, the better; this means you have more data to compare and analyze. If at the end of this exercise Ad A is still the top performer, modify Ads B and C again and have another run. You want to able to come up with an ad that will surpass Ad A.
Don’t Forget About Your Landing Pages
Don’t get caught up in your ads alone; landing pages matter too!
Google computes your Quality Score based on your ad AND landing page. It needs to determine if there is the value attached to it. Google can give your landing page a score of below average, average, or above-average:
Here are some tips from Google to improve your landing page performance or landing page experience:
- Make sure your content is original and useful
- If you want to highlight a particular product or service, be concise about it on the landing page
- If you have more to offer, generic terms seem to work the best
- Be transparent so you can be deemed trustworthy
- Don’t be shy about yourself or your business. Be open about what you do or what you can offer
- Being able to clearly describe your product or service is so much better than asking a user to fill out a form first
- Make your contact information easily accessible. Don’t make it hard for users to contact you
- Mobile and computer navigation should be user-friendly
- Keep site visitors in mind when you design your website. Make it easy for them to browse through its content, whether they’re on their mobile or PC/laptop
- Decrease landing page loading time
- It can be a turn off when a landing page doesn’t load quickly after clicking an ad. Ensure that loading time is at a minimum.
Use Negative Keywords To Your Advantage
Negative keywords are words that you don’t want your ad to be attached to. Updating this list from time to time is crucial. This allows the search engine to churn out optimal searches over time.
Using negative keywords can help you determine relevant keywords. SKAGs will make more of an impact on your ad campaigns.
If you’re having a hard time deciding what keywords you believe are relevant to your business and ads, you’re not alone. It can be quite challenging to sift through the many word combinations and decide that “Aha! This is the one!”
This is how you remove negative keywords from relevant ones:
Say that you want your relevant keyword to be “debt collector”. Search results that would pop up are the following:
- debt collector
- small business collector
- debt collector jobs
- qualifications to become a debt collector
Based on the results, there are keywords that wouldn’t match your ad. An example would be “debt collector jobs”. This becomes a negative keyword. When someone searches for “debt collector” again, anything related to “debt collector jobs” would be excluded in their search results.
By taking advantage of this, you reap the benefits of spending less on campaigns because you’re focused on search terms that are relevant and your Quality Score improves because of keyword relevancy.
Conclusion
By zeroing in on keywords that matter and producing ad copies that reflect what you offer as a business, you now have a clearer understanding of who your target audience is. This select group of possible clientele you pour in money to costs that matter and will, in effect, make your business all the more profitable.
PPC Services from PixelRush always have you in mind. The goal is to always come up with effective ad campaigns that won’t burn a hole in your pocket. A reputable digital marketing agency always has results that speak for themselves so don’t hesitate to invest in a service that will be beneficial to you and your business.
