As pay per click costs increase 20% year over year and the ambiguity of Google’s Quality Score, it becomes more and more important to be able to maximize your ROI when running your paid search marketing campaign. Here are some of the things to look out for in order to get the ROI where you need it to be:
Opt-Out on the Google Content Network – Can advertising on this network show great results? Yes it can but it needs a ton of work hours and testing/optimizing to occur. Google includes you in content network by default so opt-out for now, get standard search optimized and showing great results then come back to content network if need be.
Track what you need to track based on lift time value – Most track on the obvious such as pay per click, cost per acquisition or similar but most will not track past that. What is the life time value (LTV) of your customers? Repeat sales, referrals, and email building are something you need to add to the value of a customer in order to get a true value of your paid search marketing. Granted, these are things that do not come after a week or two but as your business moves forward you should be able to apply these to your business.
Keyword research never stops – businesses change, new parts are added, new buzzwords are created, and your customers search differently over time. You need to stay up on expanding your keyword terms. I used to sell custom floor mats for cars, trucks, and SUVs a while back. My supplier had contracts with some of the major car manufacturers to use the official logos of each model. They signed a new deal with BMW (and mini) that now allows me to get custom embroidered floor mats with those logos. I was not bidding on those terms before but would need to now.
Become a negative match expert – Exact match is where I suggest all search newbie’s to start. It is easier to manage these campaigns and not much ad writing is needed while keeping Quality Score as high as possible. As you move forward you will need more traffic and broad match will hand this but at a level that your budget and ROI may not be able to handle. This is where negative match comes in. For example, I am running a cake topper business and have lots of cake toppers but do not have cartoon ones such as the Flintstones or Sponge Bob. So I want to make sure I am still performing a broad match on “cake toppers” but want to stop my ads from showing up for “Flintstone cake toppers”. This way I can save money, stop from disconnecting with a potential customer, and not make a profit. Many people are shocked when they notice their ads are showing on search terms that do not fit their products or services and unfortunately Google does not give you much information other than using negative matching so make sure you are using this tool to the fullest.
Implement landing pages optimization at the keyword level – Google offers their free testing tool, Google Website Optimizer and even though I am not a huge of Google’s tool it is worth using if you are on a limited budget. Users’ intent can be different between two keywords so you should be using a different landing page to convey that messaging.
Ad testing on your most important keywords – I am a big fan of ad testing if done correctly. Changing the order of the words is not ad testing but conveying a different message is and failure to test within your important keywords or ad groups is just throwing money away. Again, Quality Score is heavily based on click through rate so the better your CTR is the better your CPCs are.
Bid on your brand – Hopefully this will be one of the top organic placements you get for your site but bidding on this as well is necessary for a few reasons. Studies have shown that having top organic and paid placement leads to more organic clicks. It will also give you more control to improve total click volume and conversion rates on these paid clicks.
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