The Google Ads platform is continually changing its algorithms in favour of automation and because this is their newest built-in tool for their ads platform, they push the use of it a lot. But what if you have tried automation in the past and not had the best experience? Or what if you want to keep a hands-on approach to your account management style?
Then you’re going to be limited to optimisations through audiences, demographic characteristics, devices, and topics.
Finding the right adjustments to make can be difficult in the ads account or in campaigns that have been recently created. A key resource to utilise is previously-gathered data from your website’s Google Analytics account. Data from this platform allows you to get an idea of trends, to see what works and most importantly – where you can improve.
Even with a new ad campaigns, there are a few techniques to put in place so the initial ad spend is not wasted.
Get into the mindset of the user (searching) and think about the keywords and phrases that might trigger your ad that you don’t want to spend money on. Terms that are not relevant or beneficial can be added to the negative keyword list within each ad group. We often find users that search for terms like address, postcode, careers, or jobs aren’t useful to the campaign, and can be excluded through a negative keyword list. Improving your relevancy can help to reduce your avg. CPC (cost per click) and improve your average position. Also by limiting the keywords you bid on and keeping them similar in each ad group, you are able to better improve the likelihood of a higher click-through rate (CTR) than the industry average of 3.17% for search campaigns. We often find the search campaigns we work on reach an average CTR of 8.86% or higher.
Next, optimisation requires some common sense. With ad scheduling, it’s quite self-explanatory in that you simply limit the days and times your ad is visible. This is a great tool when you know your target audience are individuals working office hours, Monday to Friday. This simple change can ensure spend is put towards the correct times of day, which generally leads to better rates of engagement.
Make sure you have been collecting data for your website through Google Analytics. Google’s Analytics platform, when linked to Google Ads, offers great insight into the characteristics for which you can optimise your ad campaigns around. This is most apparent with conversion optimisation. Developing a conversion-driven audience type based on past data can be crucial in developing current and future campaigns.
One area to analyse is demographics. Google Analytics shows you who is converting on your website based on age, gender, location, and language. If you are able to see that a certain age group has a higher conversion rate, then this is valuable information to use to optimise campaigns around. Use Google Ads’ bid adjustment to increase bids on that age group. You may not want to completely exclude all other age groups though, as they could still be used for awareness and may still convert.
There are a variety of optimisations to be made on campaigns – from creating audiences types to targeting individual users within a mile of a single location. It’s about creating a structured strategy that is supported by conversion data. We recommend familiarising yourself with Google Analytics and Google Ads to make sure you can find the right data that enables you to make the right ad optimisations.
We often see an increase in conversions through campaigns that have had these basic optimisations applied to. When we compare the industry average conversion rate of 3.75% for search campaigns to the 5.21% average of search campaigns managed by ADAO, it shows that making changes based on the recommendations above can help to improve conversions. Our experts through their certifications have learnt other techniques to make the most of a digital marketing budget.
In conclusion, take time to analyse which users are converting on your website to enable you to limit the audience targeting through your Google Ads campaigns. By taking this approach, you can make your monthly budget work harder which should lead to a stronger ROI.
If you wish to learn more about how we can support with your Google Ads campaigns, to gain optimal visibility on Google; feel free to contact us here. Our Google Ads experts are here to assist if you have questions or you are interested in our broader digital marketing services for your business.