Seven Ways You Can Use AdWords to Meet Your Goals This Year

No matter how widespread, niche, or specific your target audience is, you can bet they are using Google. You can also bet they are seeing Google Ads, and if your business is not advertising on AdWords, you are missing a key opportunity to put your website in front of your audience as they conduct online searches (and browse the web in general.)

AdWords campaigns are more than what meets the eye. The insights you gain from AdWords can give you key information about online behavior and your targeted buyers. If you take advantage of these insights and apply your findings to content throughout your content marketing strategy, you can see more conversions during each step of the buyer’s journey. Don’t view your AdWords campaign as exclusively a way to promote your products and landing pages through text ads. The possibilities for earning more revenue through AdWords are endless.

If you aren’t using the following tactics to create a more effective digital strategy, it’s time to take a closer look at your AdWords campaign.

Promote Your App and Physical Products

AdWords provides more options for businesses than just a text ad at the top of traditional Google searches that links to a landing page. If you have an app, for example, you can promote app downloads as users are scrolling online. Shopping campaigns allow businesses with physical products to display images and information about those products at the top of Google search results. Google Shopping is a huge part of AdWords; over half of all retailers’ ad search clicks came from Google Shopping ads.

If you have different goals for different products or services, don’t worry. Google allows you to compartmentalise and segment different ads and apply different bidding strategies and display options. The ads you run to generate leads, for example, could consist of a completely strategy than the ads to remarket customers and bring website visitors back for a second look. Each landing page on your website can have separate ads and strategies if you want.

The best way to use all of these opportunities to your advantage is to really explore what Google AdWords has to offer and what your goals are for your AdWords campaign. The process of finding what works best for you cannot be done overnight; for many businesses, they will have to experiment with many different options, take AdWords courses, or consult with professional AdWords marketers.

Increase Store Visits and Phone Calls

Text ads can also include ad extensions that display contact information and other relevant information about your business (opening hours, additional text, etc.) Google doesn’t charge any extra money for ad extensions, so take advantage of this extra opportunity to communicate with people who are viewing your ad.

Google can take the reins and apply ad extensions where appropriate, but you can also manually add and manage ad extensions. Before you plan your ads, think about your goals online and offline. Do you want more people to visit your store? Do you want more app downloads? Phone calls? Think about your buyer personas. How do you buyers prefer to get in touch with businesses? Are they local, or make purchases on their mobile devices? What other websites can you put Google ads on so you can reach out to these buyers?

Again, the possibilities for creating an effective ad are endless. Luckily, Google has many options for data collection and analytics that can help you create better ads and create better content to accompany your ads.

Keyword Research

AdWords has a Keyword Planner tool that helps you discover new keywords that can reach users who may be interested in your landing pages, products, or services. The Keyword Planner make suggestions, shows metrics relevant to keywords you may want to use in the future, and helps you budget accordingly once you add or delete different keywords.

The Keyword Planner tool is a feature of AdWords, but this research can also benefit you as you create content outside of AdWords. If customers are searching for a keyword (i.e. “redecorating your home,”) you can certainly bid on an ad for those keywords. You can also create blog posts, eBooks, or landing pages that focuses on that keyword and other related phrases (“10 Tips for Redecorating Your Home,” “Decorate Your Home this Winter,” etc.) If your content appears right below your ad, users are more likely to notice you and click. The more you can integrate relevant keywords into your content and marketing materials with keyword research, the more likely you will be able to reach people who are searching for those keywords.

Split Testing (A/B Testing)

Google AdWords allows you to conduct split testing to learn more about what ads and bidding strategies will yield more favourable results. Splitting the bidding strategy will give you a better idea of how you can minimise costs while still reaching your clicks or conversion goals.

Splitting ad copy can help you create more effective ads and more effective copy throughout your marketing strategy. You can test Google ads by changing the:

• Headline (Title)
• First line text
• Second line text
• Display URL

Like keyword research, conducting split testing with your ad copy can give you insight about how to write more effective copy on other marketing materials. If a specific call to action is significantly more effective for generating clicks on your ad, you may find similar results when you add that language to your landing page or social media content.

Remember that split testing isn’t just a one-time process. A/B testing only changes one element at a time, and even though four lines of text may not seem like much, you have a lot of options for optimising your ad copy and increasing clicks.

Learn Why People Aren’t Clicking

AdWords and Analytics allows you to see what keywords people are using when they click on your ads. Sometimes, these clicks are completely irrelevant, but this information is crucial to building stronger ads and understanding why your conversion isn’t as high as you might hope.

Let’s look at an example. Your home redecoration services are advertised and marketed online, but your keywords come up with a lot of results for services that you don’t offer (renovations, demolition, etc.) This information can help you take a good look at your current marketing materials and see how you can communicate your specific services in a way that reaches more high-quality leads or potential customers. How can you adjust your strategy so that you are focusing more of your investment toward people who are looking for your services?

Optimise Your Landing Pages For Next Steps

Clicks aren’t usually the end goal for businesses on AdWords. A click is not a sale. There can be many steps between consumers seeing an AdWords ad and actually making a purchase. AdWords insights can help your business see which of these steps consumers are making, and what steps are turning people away. Look at the bounce rate, session duration, and where consumers click once they arrive on your landing pages. If consumers aren’t taking the right next steps, it’s time to take a good look at your landing page and optimise your conversion rate.

Remember that your landing pages have a direct impact on how your ads are ranked and how customers move through the buyer’s journey. If your landing pages are not optimised for relevant keywords and don’t generate conversions on their own, you may not see your ads ranked where you want them.

Remarketing

Not everyone who clicks on your ad is going to convert, but the ones that do may be the users worth chasing. This is where remarketing comes in.

Google AdWords allows you to target users who have specifically completed certain events on your website. For ecommerce business, these events could be adding items into a cart or even making a purchase. For other businesses, the event could be clicking on certain CTA buttons, leaving contact information, or just visiting a website in the first place. Targeted ads will appear in front of these users as they search on Google or partner websites. This gentle reminder is sometimes the final nudge that consumers need to become customers.

Optimise Your AdWords Campaign With Digital Squad, your local SEO Auckland

AdWords requires constant monitoring, testing, and adjusting to make the most out of your budget. This can be an exhausting process to learn and apply. Give your AdWords campaign to experts who can refine your campaign with expertise and knowledge of how search engines work even beyond AdWords. The team at Digital Squad can take your ads to the next level with optimised, results-driven AdWords campaigns that meet your goals for clicks, conversions, and more.

Our combined knowledge of AdWords, SEO, and the Google Algorithm allow us to apply insider knowledge to different digital campaigns and create a seamless user experience from the moment they first view your ad to the moment they become a lifelong customer.  

Learn more about successful AdWords campaigns that we have set up for previous customers, and how you can get started boosting your revenue with Google AdWords and Digital Squad. We are a b2b marketing agency with expertise in SEO services, Facebook marketing Auckland, LinkedIn marketing, AdWords management agency Auckland and more. 

Megan Okonsky is a copywriter and content marketing specialist with Digital Squad. She is originally from Philadelphia but has landed in Melbourne after traveling for eight months in Southeast Asia and New Zealand. She also teaches vinyasa yoga online.