As ad budgets get smaller and traffic sources get more expensive, the onus is on business owners, marketers and agencies to figure out how to get more out of their respective PPC spend when it comes to investing on Facebook Ads or Google AdWords.
In fact, more than 98% of all ad spend is wasted amounting to billions of dollars in wasted ad spend, according to Lucy Handley of CNBC.
As a small business, you don’t want to throw your money into the drain. You want every dollar to work hard for you and to get the results you seek. In short, you want to make your Google AdWords campaigns work for you.
Start with these tips to squeeze the most out of your Google AdWords campaigns and PPC spend.
Start with a low budget
There’s no telling what the results of your campaign are going to be. No one saw the future, for one. Secondly, no one knows how the markets behave. Third, consumer behavior today is more complicated than rockets could ever be.
Your initial play with campaigns shouldn’t even be about results – it should always be about data. By running campaigns, testing them out and gathering data, you’ll learn how your campaigns perform, how they stack up and what works (and what doesn’t).
Since your aim is to do initial A/B testing and optimization for your campaigns, it doesn’t make sense to throw out thousands of dollars per day when you should only spend $10 or $20 per day.
Don’t ignore message matching landing pages
One of the main reasons why most campaigns don’t work properly is because despite the rallying cry to “not” point ads to websites, most paid ad campaigns are set up exactly that way. Let’s assume that you are (hopefully) not doing that and that you are pointing to well-built and focused landing pages.
Even then, you might be missing out on something not only crucial, but also something that’s easily overlooked: message matching landing pages.
Message matching landing pages continue the story that your ads start. If you are promising something in your ad, your message matching landing page ensures that the promise is carried over to your landing page.
With message matching landing pages, there’s a match. There’s relevance. There’s continuation. And there’s a vote of confidence.
Information on landing pages: Too much? Or too little?
Having a landing page with no information on it is just as bad as having a landing page with way too much information on it (long landing pages; do they work?).
Your aim is to only have as much information as needed to persuade your visitors to take action.
Make your landing pages too long or too short and you miss out on potential conversions, leaving money right there on the table.
That’s why creating landing pages that convert is a delicate balancing act between piquing curiosity while still eliciting interest.
The good old advertising principles, like AIDA (Attention. Interest. Desire. Action), still apply.
Use dynamic keyword insertion on landing pages and ads
When you create ads on Google AdWords, you have the option to use keyword insertion to ensure that your ads show up as highly relevant, targeted, clear and almost as if on cue.
Let’s say you were an exotic car rental service in New York; your keywords could be “exotic car rentals,” “rent exotic cars,” “rent supercars,” “supercar rentals.”
Your ads will normally show when any of those keywords are used to search. But your conversions will go through the roof when you append the exact keyword your users type in to find your ad.
Google AdWords lets you do this by using “keyword insertion codes” within your ads.
The keyword code will look like this:
Rent {keyWord: SuperCars}
Buy {keyWord: SuperCars}
Ride {keyWord: SuperCars}
Experience {keyWord: SuperCars}
Similarly, your landing pages can be tweaked dynamically each time a user visits your landing page using Dynamic Text Insertion. Make your landing pages hyper relevant by making a part of your copy rephrase what your visitors typed in to find your landing page.
Use IF, THEN functions and other special conditions
It’s not just plain old and boring text with Google Ads. Google AdWords allows you to use conditional logic while you create your ads, specifying that certain words are used when a user searches on a mobile device versus searching on a desktop, for instance.
Using If, then conditional logic, it’s possible to show one type of a message to mobile users compared to those who search using a desktop.
You also have countdown timers and other condition types that can make use of your business data, audience data and more.
Take time to use these functions within Google AdWords. Just the fact that you are using them already enhances the way your ads will work.
Don’t ignore extensions
See how MailChimp’s regular ad on Google now looks bigger, with two extra links “pricing plans” and “advanced reporting” showing up on Google?
These are ad extensions.
By far, extensions are underrated and often ignored, even by some of the more experienced marketers. Businesses that advertise on Google AdWords immediately get access to more real estate on search results pages – just by using one or many of the extensions available within AdWords.
You can call extensions, site link extensions, call outs, review-based extensions and so much more.
It takes 15 minutes more to use extensions than just launching your regular ad. Those 15 minutes will make a world of difference to your ad performance.
If you’d like to learn more about lead generation (through AdWords or other traffic sources), be sure to check out our ultimate lead generation template.
Rather, would you like to get on a call to discuss your AdWords Management, Funnels, or Marketing? Get in touch with us now!
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