When it comes to pay-per-click advertising (PPC), you already know that you pay only when a user clicks on your ad. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean that you have successfully registered a conversion. Getting that visitor to do the action you want them to do is what you should measure and focus on when managing your PPC campaigns and optimising them.
In this article, our Conversion Rate Optimisation experts will teach you the basics of conversion rate optimisation so that you can better understand why it is so important to have this indicator constantly monitored.
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Why Is the Conversion Rate so Important in PPC?
The conversion rate is everything in PPC, so to speak. It’s your ultimate goal: to get your visitors to do the action the ads were meant to encourage in the first place. To put that into even simpler words: the conversion rate shows you when your paid advertising actually makes money for you.
Before you can monitor and define your PPC conversion rate, you need to establish which actions are the conversion you are looking for when launching a Google Ads campaign, or a campaign on social media.
While the average conversion rate does give you an idea about the success of your PPC strategy, it’s all relative to how much revenue you get from one conversion, and how much it costs to get that conversion (see variables like the cost per click, conversion rate, click-through rate, etc.).
How to Increase Your PPC Conversion Rate?
For digital marketing experts, being able to define and track the conversion rate for their clients is one of the best ways to use the marketing budgets they are handed. As a business owner, you can leave it all to the experts, or get involved more in the process, especially when it comes to deciding what conversions to set (subscribing to a newsletter, signing up for free trials,/etc.) and how valuable each conversion is.
To increase conversions for your PPC ads, there are some simple principles that you can apply. We will go through the most common ones.
1. Match the intention of the ad with the landing page
One of the surest ways to fail when creating an ad campaign is to attract the user to a landing page that doesn’t match the ad. Not only will the conversion not happen if the visitor is confused, but they will also associate your brand with negative qualities.
Matching the ad copy with the landing page can be easily done by using the same keywords in the two places, adding the same, or similar graphic elements to the landing page (or page section that is referred to in the ad), using clear, concise language.
Online advertising still follows the basic ground rules of advertising in general: keep it simple, make it memorable, be reliable.
2. Always A/B test your copy, landing page, and other elements
A/B testing should be like breathing when it comes to paid search advertising. You shouldn’t launch the whole campaign before you check which variant would work best with a real sample within your target audience.
When you create ads campaigns, be prepared to do a lot of testing of different graphics, keywords, ad copy, and landing pages before you get an intuition on these things. And, believe us, even the most experienced marketer won’t skip A/B testing, simply because no stats or metrics in Google Analytics, GSc, or other tools can fully predict how your audience will react.
3. Make sure you are effectively targeting the right audience
One of the best things about advertising on Google or on social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram is that they give you advanced targeting options. One of the first things to do when following a marketing plan is to define your target audience. We at Australian Internet Advertising always start with this, as everything we do for our clients should reach its target in the most effective way.
Using negative keywords is part of keeping your campaign focused on the right visitors: those who bring in conversions. If you start noticing that you are getting bad leads from your PPC campaigns, it’s time to find out if your ad budget is going into a segment of the audience that you were not meant to target. The most common examples of negative keywords contain the words “free”, “cheap”, brands of competitors, or locations you don’t operate in.
4. Create different ad versions for segments of your audience
Targeting is one of the most important aspects of PPC advertising, and you should avoid putting all your eggs in one basket. Using multiple-segmented samples of your audience instead of addressing it all in one go is much more effective, as it allows you to refine your strategy better.
Segments of your audience can be defined by demographics (age, gender, occupation, income, etc.), or by other variables like geolocation, type of device they are using, and others. By knowing these details, you will be able to use them to your advantage to create different versions of the ads, each of them directed to a certain typology.
5. Be smart: use retargeting
A strategy that is closely related to segmenting your audience is remarketing or retargeting. This principle uses previous actions of the user to help you get them engaged in another type of action. For example, let’s say a visitor of your eCommerce website adds products to their cart, then abandons the website (for any reason).
Remarketing means targeting users that have already advanced on the sales funnel, giving them motivation to make a sale. You can send a reminder to their email about the products they have in their cart, adding a discount or special offer in the mix, if you feel it’s needed.
Remarketing, which contains website interaction segmentation, can be done when customers click your ads and browse the website, but don’t go through with the conversion, when they bounce off a page with less value for your campaigns etc. Letting these users go would be a mistake, since you have already used your resources to reach them. The secret is to be able to figure out where they wanted to go in the first place and add encouragement towards that.
As you can see, increasing your PPC conversion rate has a lot to do with how well you determine what your customers are looking for and how to deliver the right message to the right audience.
Do You Want Stellar PPC Campaigns That Actually Make You Money?
By investing in the services of an expert team of digital advertisers, you maximise your chances to get a high conversion rate with the budget you have, and the resources you can invest in the campaigns.
Our expert online advertisers at Australian Internet Advertising will avoid costly mistakes, will use verified methods of increasing the conversion rate and make the necessary adjustments to your website. Our services don’t just treat a problem, or aim at one single goal.
As we increase your PPC conversion, you will also get a better website, better content, more effective marketing strategies and better technical performance. Are you interested in what we can do for your business? Don’t hesitate to contact one of the best advertising companies in Sydney.
