Take a long hard look at your AdWords campaign, big or small, and be honest about its effectiveness. Are you getting click-throughs? Are people staying on your landing page? Are you getting conversions? Be honest with yourself, diagnose the problem and correct it.
Optimization
AdWords provides analytics to help you identify problems in your campaign. Your goal should be to have passive website visitors engage with your content and become active users that purchase your product or service. These four analytics will help you see if that is happening.
• Bounce Rate: This is when someone sees only one page on your sight. Most likely they hit your landing page, don’t like what they see and leave. This is called a bounce.
• Average Session Duration: This measures the average time someone spends on any one page. The longer they stay the more engaged they generally are.
• Pages per Session: This tracks how many pages a visitor views. Obviously, the more the better.
• New Sessions: This estimates the percentage of first-time sessions.
Landing Page
If your landing page is terrible then visitors are just going to bounce off. First impressions are so important after that first click. The page needs to be deep and clearly show value to your visitors. Do this by showing how your product or service solves a problem.
Keywords
Knowing how general or specific your keywords should be is challenging. In the end you want to make sure your ads are seen by people who want to see them. Also, not all keywords cost the same. Use the best keywords at the lowest price that get maximum return. You do this by tracking your ads performance using A/B testing. Write two ads that are identical except for one keyword difference. Run those ads simultaneously and see how each performs. By process of elimination you will soon know exactly what keywords resonate with your customers and how to target your ads to those that want to see them.
Call to Action
Your call to action (CTA) should answer three questions: What do I want my customer to do? How will they know how to do it? Does it benefit them? A solid CTA starts with solid content. Good content leaves the reader wanting a CTA. It drives them to action. Also, using repetition within your content can give your CTA more wait, but too much repetition acts like a dripping faucet that annoys people.
Who is Your Audience?
Do you really know your audience? Do you truly know who is searching, looking at and buying your product and service. This gets back to optimization. Search the analytics to find out who is looking at your page, what sites they are coming from and where they go afterwards. There are many analytic tools within AdWords that can help you find out this information but it takes effort and has a learning curve. It might be worth spending the money on a professional analysis to objectively pinpoint your specific audience. You might be surprised.
Now that you have identified some issues to consider, use a three point checklist for your ads.
First, state the value of your product or service plainly. Here is where the old adage, “Don’t tell me the problem, tell me the solution,” applies. Someone should see your add and know exactly what the solution your offering is and why they need it now.
Second, have an effective call to action. It’s that plain and simple.
Third, use proven keywords. Keywords target consumers. Know what your end user is looking for and give it to them. Target your keywords so you are not spending ad time and money in places you shouldn’t. Do the research and testing needed to keep keyword costs down, targeting on point and conversions up.
The number of tools in AdWords is immense and can be daunting to learn and use. But taking a good hard look at your AdWord campaign and using those tools can help you reap huge benefits.