How To Improve Your Google PPC Ads

Creating a Google Ads campaign is one of the ways of increasing traffic, brand awareness, and sales. The ads are placed on top of the usual results in SERPs for the target keywords. With Google regularly updating its algorithm and policies, advertisers need to keep tabs on the changes to generate revenue from the ads.

Here are nine insane Google Ads hacks you can use to double your ROI today.

1. Optimise The Ads for Quality Score

Recently, Google published an article that aimed to change the perception about ads quality score. The search engine wants you to believe that QS has no substantial impact on the ad campaign’s performance.

However, numerous studies have proven that quality scores given to Google Ads directly impact the ad ranking and click-through rate (CTR). The search tends to offer low CTR to advertisers whose ads have a high-quality score compared to the rest.

Photo Credit: WordStream

From the above image, it’s clear that the top advertiser whose ads have a high QS pays less per click compared to other ads ranked below. 

Therefore, the quality score of your ads determines where they are displayed and which target keywords. Improving the score by one point can increase your impression share by 9% and vice versa.

As you strive to maximise your budget, it’s imperative to increase the quality of your Google ads to lower your CTR. Note that an algorithm automatically awards the scores. You cannot beat it, but you can come up with ways of matching its expectations.

For example, removing junk keywords and using more branded keyword terms will boost your average CTR significantly. Branded keywords result in high-quality scores compared to the ordinary ads that many other businesses in your niche target. 

While at it, get rid of keywords in the bottom performing quota of your account and use that budget to enhance your remarketing campaign.

2. Write Compelling Copy That Evokes Positive Emotions

If you have been running Google Ads for a while now, you already know the importance of having compelling ad copy.

However, you need to improve it to evoke positive emotions continuously. The truth is that 50% of Google ads are average. They contain similar copy and are not optimised to inspire the target audience to click on the link. 

Photo Credit: WordStream

The above ad is a perfect example of a high-performing Google ad. It’s relatable to the target audience because it piques their interest in the topic. 

The secret to creating compelling ads is by using words and phrases that make the target audience feel an urge to click on the link to find out more about the topic. To achieve this goal, you need to have a clear understanding of your ideal customer’s emotions. What do they love? What do they hate? Who do they consider their best friends or worst enemies?

Photo Credit: WordStream

The problem with most advertisers is that they craft Ads without first researching to understand the needs and expectations of the target audience. Be different by doing research to know everything about the customers before creating the Ads.

3. Leverage Bid Multipliers

When advertising using Google ads, it’s easy to get tempted to focus all your energies on getting the most clicks as possible. Unfortunately, that is the wrong approach and could result in low ROI if the clicks are from unqualified traffic. 

It would help to focus on clicks with a high potential for converting. Bid multipliers allow advertisers to achieve this goal by assigning greater worth to clicks made at specific times of the day, also referred to as dayparting.

Photo Credit: WordStream

In the example below, clicks on ads during normal office hours are more valuable to this marketer. This is because the company support team is available to respond to emails and calls during that period. And because it’s a B2B company, the audience using the targeted keywords are genuinely interested in buying and are already in the first or second stage of the buyer’s journey.

Using this information, they create a schedule so that bids on the target keywords are optimal during office hours. The scenario would be different if it was restaurant or a resort targeting clients during the holidays, weekends, or festive season.

Use the same tactic to get the most valuable and relevant clicks to your business. For example, you can decide to place a high bid value for a one-kilometre radius around your business or in the areas where you operate. Use market data to tweak the bid value for different audience segments.

Another benefit of using bid multipliers is that they allow you to adjust the bids based on the device used by the searcher/prospect. For example, clicks from smartphones are more valuable to your brand because the prospects are more inspired or motivated to do business with you. 

In a nutshell, desist from exhausting your ad budget by spending money on everything. Be more proactive in using bid modifiers’ potent ability to bid more on clicks with the highest potential for converting. 

4. Optimise the Ads for Mobile

The worst mistake you can make today is assuming that the target audience will search for your brand on the desktop only. More than 50% of all searches on Google will be done using a mobile device. Make sure that your ads are optimised for mobile to take full advantage of the many people who use mobile devices to search for information on Google.

One optimisation hack that works like a charm is including the CTA alongside the ad to allow the target customers to call the support team right from the SERPs.

Photo Credit: WordStream

Typically, clicks on ads from mobile devices have a higher intent. The users are on the go and often want to complete the purchase right away. Another benefit is that you won’t lose potential customers through the process of visiting your main website to find the contact information or submit a query via a form. 

Photo Credit: WordStream

However, competition for the top spot on mobile SERP is high, but that should not deter you from optimising and testing your ads to know which strategy works best. Your goal should be to get your ads listed in the top three positions to be seen by as many mobile searchers as possible. 

How do you get the top spot? Increase the quality score as earlier discussed in the first hack. If your ads are listed in the low spots, you will pay more for clicks than the top-ranked ads.

5. Focus on Remarketing

Remarketing is defined as the process of displaying targeted ads to potential customers who have already shown interest in your business by either visiting your website or taking other actions, such as subscribing to the newsletter. 

Google ads are widely used for remarketing campaigns. In some sites, 97% of website visitors leave without converting. Such a high bounce rate hurts the conversion rate and site ranking. 

Google perceives sites with such a high bounce rate to have poor quality content that does not meet the visitors’ expectations – that’s why they leave without converting or interacting with the page elements.

Remarketing is a sure way of getting back the lost customers and convincing them that your product or service is the best in the market. 

Usually, cookies target the visitors and remind them of the offer available on the website as they browse other websites or even check their email on Gmail. 

Concisely, remarketing using Google Ads will not only crank up your site’s conversion rate but also increase brand recall and brand awareness. Take time to group the website visitors based on their interests and actions on the site. Then, create custom ads for each group and use Google network sites such as YouTube and other features like DoubleClick Ad Exchange and AdSense Publisher Network.

6. Do You Know In-Market Segments?

One of the hurdles of doing remarketing is that you require an audience. So, how does a small business that recently launched and the website doesn’t have much traffic run a remarketing campaign?

In-market segments enable such businesses to target potential customers who are already interested in the products or services even though they may not be aware of your brand.

Google bots are intelligent and have mastered the art of monitoring audience behaviour. The search engine has a huge database of users’ search habits, demographics, and other information that helps it decide which kind of websites to display in the SERPs. 

That explains why two people in the same office get different search engine results for the same keyword phrase.

By leveraging in-market segments, you can display a treadmill demo video to someone Google identified to be already interested in buying a treadmill. This is just one of the many capabilities that give this search engine an upper hand – the possibilities of fine-tuning remarketing campaigns are literally endless.

Use in-market segments to connect with motivated customers who have already shown intent to buy. You don’t need to have a custom remarketing list; Google already has one ready for you to use.

7. Use Gmail Ads

Gmail is undoubtedly the most prominent email service provider in the world today. It has more than 1.8 billion users globally. 

Google recently launched Gmail Ads specially tailored to display to the email users. They allow advertisers to create a compelling subject line and teaser copy to encourage the target customers to take action. You can now display a full HTML email to the prospects, unlike before. 

Use these ads to target potential customers with remarketing ads. Some of the parameters used for targeting are domains they often receive emails from and personal interests. Narrow down to the specific details when grouping the customers to get qualified leads from the ads.

8. Leverage Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA)

You cannot limit yourself to only high-value keywords as an online advertiser. If you do, you will be losing customers to competitors who are not afraid to target keywords that others consider low-quality, such as navigational terms and names of competitor brands.

Start using remarketing lists for search ads to bid on broad terms. However, these terms attract low clicks and can negatively affect your ads’ quality score. One sure way of avoiding that is by using RLSAs to target only people who have recently visited your website. 

If you opt to target one of your competitors’ names, only do so to your specific remarketing list. That is, the search ads should be displayed to people who have interacted with your website in the past. The chances are that they were doing a comparison, and so they are familiar with your company and website.

When they search for information about a competitor, your ad is displayed with a custom message to convince them that your product or service is better than the competitors. Take full advantage of their high intent to generate more sales. 

9. Run Ads on YouTube

YouTube is the second largest search engine, and despite having millions of daily active users, some brands still don’t use the platform for marketing. The platform offers different ad formats, such as the TrueView ads preferred by millions of people. 

TrueView ads record the highest clicks as they are played before the video, and the users can skip after watching it for 5 seconds. The targeting options are superb, and you won’t be charged a penny if the users decide to skip the ad.

To get the best results, target customers who frequent this platform using interests, keywords, search history, specific channels they have subscribed and more. 

• Bonus Tip: Run A/B Tests

A/B tests will help you know which ad format and copy results in the highest number of clicks and conversions. Use the test results to improve your Google ads, and don’t be afraid to experiment with new formats. 

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Recently, Google Adwords made some improvements to their quality score reporting thus making it easier for advertisers to create better and relevant PPC ads.

Thanks to the new improvements, users are able to do the following:

1. Watch results better thanks to the quality score component
2. Provide access to historical quality score performance data
3. Ability to export data making it easy for advertisers to analyze data

Quality Score Calculation – How Google does it

Google uses quality score to determine where Google PPC ads will appear in paid search results. Furthermore, it helps to reveal how much the advertiser will pay per click.

Three components are used to determine quality score. They include

1. Relevance of the Ad
2. Landing page performance
3. Expected CTR

Using Quality Score in Reporting

Thanks to the improvements made by Google, advertisers have the opportunity of viewing quality score at key phrase level. As a result, advertisers can create custom views especially for their clients. The custom views can be saved for analysis and future use.

That is not all. SEM agencies in Singapore have the ability of changing time periods providing more details for making better decisions. Not only that. One can change date ranges thus determining below average ad relevance quality score.

Here is an in-depth look at the three components of quality score.

• Relevance of the Ad

What every advertiser should know is that Google uses the connection between key phrases and an ad copy to determine keyword relevance. The closer the connection, the better the results. There are times when poor ad relevance is created. The cause has been attributed to people who lack PPC experience because he or she copied from another ad group without editing the keywords to suit the new ad.

To ensure success, the advertiser must configure the ad with relevant key phrases. Furthermore, one should incorporate the key phrases in the headline, body and URL.

• Landing page performance

Landing pages play a crucial role when it comes to attracting more online visitors to the website. This helps to improve the chances of converting online visitors into paying customers. To ensure success, you need to make your landing page easy to navigate which means advertisers should feature the ad clearly on the page.

Furthermore, if there is an email list sign up form or download button, it should be clearly indicate what will happen next for example downloading of an eBook. It is also important to make the content on your landing page to be relevant and informative. This will help to improve your quality score. You need to make your landing page responsive. This has been found to improve accessibility across devices.

To show page speed for your landing page, Google has incorporated this feature on the dashboard plus desktop and mobile friendliness. According to Google, half of your visitors may leave your mobile site within the first 3 seconds especially if it loads slowly. Problems attributed to a slow loading mobile page include multiple redirects, large page size or slower server.

To improve your landing page performance, optimize your web pages and use content delivery networks.

• Expected Click Through Rate

Google Adwords utilizes unique algorithms in order to calculate the Click Through Rate. This has been found to represent the impressions that an ad receives when it’s clicked.

What you ought to know is that Google does not take into consideration the following:

1. 1. Ad rank
   2. Ad extensions

According to Google, expected Click Through Rate represents estimates based on the performance of key phrases. There are times when advertisers will experience below average CTR. One reason behind this is that the ad is not related to the key phrase.

There are times when the key phrase and the ad may be related closely but due to irrelevant searches, the key phrases maybe triggered. To know if this has happened, advertisers can check the search terms reports under individual queries and triggering ads. Advertisers can prevent this by doing the following – creating negative key phrases and improving match types.

Final Word

As an advertiser, you can always make smarter decisions and better Google paid ads. How? By utilizing the historical quality score data available at Google Adwords page. Not only is it helpful in identifying the much needed optimization for your webs pages but it helps to improve your ad relevance, landing page performance and your expected CTR.