OK, you’ve posted your campaign, set up a budget that will enable you to reach the desired number of potential clients and you’ve established a list of relevant keywords with which to bring in the ‘clicks’. Phew! Now the hard work is done you can sit back, relax and wait for the conversions to roll in…
…Well, unfortunately, it’s not quite that simple. In order to really reap the benefits from your PPC campaign, it will require your continued attention in the form of weekly analysis and constant reevaluation. So needy right? It’s not as if you have a business to run or anything. Don’t worry Freelancetosuccess has it covered.
Below is a comprehensive yet concise collection of ideas to help your campaign maintain its connection to your potential customer base.
Stay involved
The most important thing, as already stated, is to keep on it. Logging into your account on a regular basis will ensure that you stay up to date with performance. It will also keep you aware of what is and is not working for your campaign. By maintaining a constant appraisal of the campaign’s characteristics, you will be able to make the necessary changes required on a regular basis.
Keywords
The ongoing assessment of keywords will be of paramount importance if you want to ensure your campaign is performing at its best. Which of your chosen keywords are underperforming? If it’s not working, fix it! Whether that be via optimisation or by simply cutting it. You need to be continuously reevaluating and considering what combination of keywords yields the best result in terms of drawing the right client to your door.
Click Through Rate (CTR)
Keeping tabs on how often customers are accessing or quite simply ‘clicking’ on your ad enables you to generate a strong understanding of your campaign’s effectiveness. The number of ‘clicks’ your ad receives is divided by the number of times the ad is shown (also known as ‘impressions’) and results in a metric known as the ‘Click Through Rate’. The better the CTR, the more relevant and appealing your ad is.
Landing Pages
Imagine you owned a shop which was housed behind a beautiful, eye-catching, art-deco doorway, but the inside looked like a disorganized dump. Sounds a bit counterproductive. Try to think of your landing pages the same way. Once potential clients have clicked your ad you will want to make a positive first impression. An organized, attractive and easily navigable landing page will increase your chances of getting more conversions.
Of course, it’s quite difficult to remain objective when considering our own creations. Whilst, to you, the page may appear to tick all of these boxes ,there is a more objective way of discovering what tweaks you may need to make. Using Google Analytics you can interpret your landing page effectiveness in terms of ‘average time on site’, ‘conversion rate’ and ‘bounce rate’. These will clue you up as to how long a potential client has spent on your page, which visits have resulted in conversions and the amount of single page visits.
Making New Friends
Another aspect to be aware of when evaluating the effectiveness of your campaign is understanding the importance of ‘New Visits’ data. With information on your page’s new arrivals gained via Google Analytics, you can learn whether your Ad is connecting with enough new clients or is predominantly bringing back returning users. More importantly, you can also ascertain what percentage of these visits result in conversions. By exploring these statistics, you should be better able to collect information on your users and what role they play in overall returns for your business.
Relevant Ad Text
Not only do your keywords need to be constantly assessed but so does your Ad Text, i.e. the text which appears when someone searches for one of your keywords. This consists of the display URL and a significant character count that includes space for Headline’s 1, 2 and 3 plus description lines 1 and 2. The headlines and description allow you to give customers all the information they need to want to click on your ad. The text needs to be concise, attention-grabbing and, at the same time, relevant to the service you are providing. You also want to highlight what is unique about what you offer and what stands out about your company in a manner that will entice potential clients to visit your landing page.
Quality not Quantity
Ever feel like you’re being judged? Well with Google you are. The search engine ranks Ads according to a Quality Score, the results of which can have an impact on how effective your campaign is. Taking into consideration the quality of your landing page, the relevance of your keywords and Ad text and the past performance of your Adwords account, Google applies a mysterious algorithm to calculate your score. Unfortunately, nobody is quite sure what percentages of these factors go into Google’s calculations. However, what we do know is a good rating will result in higher ad rankings and lower cost per click, so it’s a good idea to do what you can to optimize your Quality Score.
Are you Mobile Friendly?
Statistics show that nowadays more online searches come from mobile apps than from laptop or computer access. It’s true! Nobody is walking into lamp posts or nearly getting run over because they’re trying to Google the location of the best Italian in the area on their laptop. So, it would be sensible to make sure that your Ad is optimized for mobile access. This means brief and enticing headlines and ad extensions highlighting the location of your business, phone number and products.
There you have it.
Eight fundamental ideas which will hopefully get you thinking about how you can maintain interest in your PPC Campaign. In future blogs, Freelancetosuccess will be visiting some of these ideas in more detail and thinking about how a deeper understanding of some of the PPC metrics can give you an advantage over competitors. For now, however, don’t forget to give your campaign the ongoing attention it needs to really ensure your money and effort results in the return you were looking for.