How to get the most out of your AdWords campaigns

AdWords campaigns with poor ROI’s are usually as a result of poor set-up, poor management and optimisation.

If your campaign is not bringing in the desired leads or is suffering from a poor ROI, then you can still bring about improvements by following some of these simple steps:

Choose keywords wisely

When it comes to choosing your keyword list, a lot of advertisers will choose every possible keyword or phrase that is related to their product/service.

The problem with this is many of the people who click on your ads aren’t going to be your ideal customer which often results in a wasted budget.

You can improve performance by carefully selecting keywords that are most relevant to your potential customer.

Focus on long-tail or specific phrases. Use Google’s Keyword Planner or better still put yourself in your audiences’ shoes when compiling your keyword list.

By keeping your keyword list as targeted as possible you are likely to reduce the chance of wasted clicks which can often lead to costs spiralling out of control.

Match type targeting

Not choosing match types carefully can cause you to waste a lot of money as you could end up targeting irrelevant search queries or paying more than you need to for certain keywords.

As a general rule, use broad match for very specific phrases, phrase match for more general phrases and exact match for very generic phrases. These can then be optimised on an ongoing basis.

Another way to increase the relevancy of your traffic is to add the modifier (+) to your broad match keywords. Switching from high volume broad match phrases to modified broad match can also help you get conversions at a better ROI.

Use negative keywords

When using broad match and phrase match, there is the possibility that Google will show your ad for phrases which aren’t relevant to your offering.

You can filter out these unwanted searches and clicks on your ads by building a negative keyword list on a regular basis.

Keep an eye on your Search Query Reports and if you spot any phrases that are irrelevant to your business, add them as negative keywords.

Choose relevant landing pages

Landing pages have a big influence on conversions and quality score. Yet, it is still surprising the amount of advertisers who direct all phrases to the homepage.

If you offer more than one product on your website, then each phrase needs to point to the relevant landing page within the site with clear call-to-actions giving the searcher the information they need to complete the desired action.

Take advantage of device bid adjustments

Recently, Google has rolled out device based bidding similar to pre-Enhanced Campaign days.

This means that you can now bid separately for each device: desktop, tablet, mobile.

You can also choose to segment your campaigns by device too.

Since people are moving seamlessly among multiple devices, this is a good opportunity for you to bid smarter and create campaigns more tailored to intent, allowing you greater control and efficiency.

Use conversion tracking

This is the best way of identifying whether your campaign and keywords are successful and bringing in the desired return or ROI.

Some of the most common tracking tools are free to use, and can provide lots of useful information to help you make better decisions on your campaigns.

Optimise! Optimise! Optimise!

You’d be amazed how many advertisers set-up their campaigns and then very rarely look at them again.

Use reporting tools and conversion data regularly to assess the performance of every aspect of your campaigns and optimise to improve your quality score, click through rate and ROI further.

If you need help with your PPC campaigns, then please get in touch.