Advertising on Google can often feel like a minefield. Driving attention to your product or service can be difficult, and lack of experience combined with intense competition can result in users failing to see a return on their investment.
And in today’s world, competitors from all over the globe are trying to reach the same prospects and customers too. That’s why it’s never been more important to create the right strategy to monetise your investment in Google Ads.
Here are five key tips to help you to rise above bad practice in Google Ads and score a better position for your adverts.
1. Utilise your ad extensions properly
This is a feature that shows extra business information with your ad, like an address, phone number, store rating, or different web links. By placing an Ad Extension, you provide more information, and the ad takes more space when displayed, therefore it is more noticeable.
Call extensions allow you to add phone numbers to your ads and can help you to encourage prospective customers to call your business directly. They provide great opportunities for meaningful engagement with prospects. These extensions work well for potential customers who do not want to spend time clicking through your website. Sitelink Extensions are especially important when you are directing a prospect to a landing page, it is crucial that you match their intent as precisely as possible.
When someone is looking for a specific product or service you can direct them to a specific landing page. With a single text ad, you can match several unique forms of intent. Each sitelink within a campaign or ad group must land on a unique URL. Callout Extensions help you to differentiate yourself from your industry rivals. Often, that translates into special offers. They let you include additional text to highlight specific information about your products and services. You need to create a minimum of two callouts, but Google recommends creating the maximum of four.
Structured Snippet Extensions have a similar logic to that of sitelink extensions. However, structured snippet extensions enable you to list specific products, services and drive more conversions. Snippets must be closely related to your header, otherwise they may not appear. Price Extensions are extremely useful for promoting your product/service. Price is a major factor, often the biggest factor, when deciding whether to buy something, getting this right can help you attract more clients.
Location extensions help people find your business. These extensions show your address and a map marker with your ad text. On mobile, they include a link with directions to your business. For location extensions to show, you must link your Google My Business account to your Google Ads account.
2. Choose your keywords carefully
Your ads need to have a proper structure, which implies that your keywords, ads, and landing pages align with your business goals. Keywords are one of the most important ingredients that can drive the right audience to you. There are few key factors to look at when choosing keywords: A keyword needs to have a good search volume for your niche. Not all industries/businesses have a good search volume, therefore you need to choose the right ones for your business.
Take into consideration what the keyword competition looks like. Although keywords with a higher number of searches can be attractive and drive more clicks, they are also much more competitive and expensive than lower volume keywords. Getting the balance right is art as well as science! Keyword Performance is essential. If the keywords are not delivering qualified clicks or leads, then it does not matter how many people are searching for them. You need to focus on conversion rate optimisation.
3. Include keywords in your ad text When writing the copy, keep a note of the keywords you want to target for a particular page and topic. By including your keywords in your ad text (especially in your ad’s headline) you show people that your ad is directly relevant to their search.
4. Review your landing page performance You need to make sure that your landing page performs well, and it is consistent with the copy from your ads. If you find a landing page with a high bounce rate, it’s most likely because either your landing page does not follow through on your ad text; or it might not have engaging enough content and clear navigation. You need to have a user-friendly landing page that does not make users think too much: easy navigations and a simple pathway means more conversions for you.
5. Test different ads It is crucial to experiment with different offers and call-to-action phrases to see what is most effective for your advertising goals. Google’s algorithm automatically rotates ads within an ad group and shows the better-performing ads more often. Over time, you will see that certain ads perform better than others, showing you which ad text is more effective.
