How to Maximize your PPC Spend with Conversion Rate Optimization

Here are 3 interesting facts for you to mull over:

• Google Pay-per-click (PPC) ads offer 200%
• Businesses are expected to spend up to $137 billion on search ad spending by the end of 2022.
• Users never see 90% of all PPC ads.

The data makes two factors evident:

1. PPC ads can skyrocket your business.
2. Businesses aren’t utilizing the same even though they’re spending a lot of money on it.

The solution? Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO). However, before you go and hire a PPC expert, read this article to make an informed decision.

In the next five minutes, this article will share 7 ways of maximizing PPC spend with conversion rate optimization.

Note: the information is true at the time of writing. That’s July 2022.

7 ways of maximizing PPC spend with conversion rate optimization

1. Filter users before they click

If the users click on your ad but never convert, the PPC conversion rate will go down. Thus, you need to qualify your audience before they click on your ad.

Here’s how you can achieve the same:

 

• Is your offer more expensive than your competitor’s? Choose words such as ‘High quality’ and ‘Premium’ over ‘Affordable’ and ‘Cheap.’
• Is your offer exclusive to digital marketers? Mention the same on the ad copy. Furthermore, mention any other restrictions such as age, income, or industry as well.
• Does your offer run on a freemium model? Mention the benefits the user will receive on both the free and paid versions.

Attract the right type of audience and the Google ad conversion rate will take care of itself.

2. Find the target keywords

Scan the landing page you want to target your ads to and figure out the relevant keywords from the copy.

Check for four types of keywords:

 

1. Generic terms: Keywords related to services or products you offer such as sneakers.
2. Brand terms: Keywords that have your trademarked and brand names such as Nike shoes.
3. Competitor terms: Keywords containing the brand names of your competitors offering similar services or products as yours.
4. Related terms: Keywords that aren’t directly related to your offer but the keywords your target audience might be searching for.

3. Add local and negative keywords

Negative keywords are keywords you don’t want your PPC ads to show up for. Negative keywords keep your ad targeting relevant and prevent spending extra on your ad budget.

Here’s an example for you.

If you sell premium quality handbags, you wouldn’t want your ad to show up for keywords such as ‘free’ and ‘cheap’ as that will lower the average conversion rate.

Follow the below-mentioned tips to find negative keywords for your PPC ad campaign:

 

• Analyze the search query reports. If you find words that aren’t ideal for the ad campaign in the report, add the keywords as negatives.
• Opt for broad match negatives to rule out queries containing your chosen negative keyword such as ‘free.’
• Opt for exact match negatives to rule out specific queries containing long-tail keywords.

You can find negative keywords that fit across multiple PPC ad campaigns.

 

4. Optimize the PPC account structure

Optimized PPC ad accounts streamline ad campaign management and help to create a relevant user experience. While there’s no one-size-fits-all structure for PPC ad accounts, you can follow these steps:

• Figure out how you want your PPC ad account to be structured — based on the offered services or products, based on the structure of the website, or based on locations.
• Conduct detailed keyword research. Go for the keywords that aren’t too low in search volume or quality but aren’t too competitive either. You can use tools such as Google’s Keyword Planner for the same. Opt for 10 to 20 keywords for each ad group as choosing more will lower the chances of getting traffic.
• Build ad groups and campaigns to mirror your website’s structure. Doing so aligns the ad groups with landing pages.

5. Choose the language you want to communicate in

“Say it with a smile.”

“Sorry is a magic word.”

“Never say no.”

These are age-old templates for communicating with customers. How do you mould your language to impress the customer online?

Figure out the language your customer talks in. What’s important for them? Do they take action based on FOMO or based on trust and care? Craft your copy according to that.

Here’s an example for you:

Only one seat left! (Creates FOMO and a sense of urgency).

We saved one seat for you (Creates a sense of care and trust).

Furthermore, choose specificity over vagueness in your copy. Don’t write ‘your website traffic will highly increase.’ Write ‘you’ll see a 5x growth on your website traffic.’

Follow these and the conversion rate in Google ads will take care of itself.

6. Optimize the landing page

A prospect sees your ad and enters your landing page. They find the offering and content of the page don’t match what they’re looking for. The prospect leaves.

You lose a lead. The quality score will drop; leading to higher CPC and lowered ad rank.

The solution? An optimized landing page. Here’s how to make one:

• Write a headline that’s relevant to the target keywords and hooks the prospects to stay on the page and read further.
• Concise and targeted copy that communicates the offering and uses keywords associated with the ad group. Furthermore, use lists and bullets to make the copy scannable.
• Opt for an uncluttered design that’s easy to navigate. Customers want to purchase products, avail services, and find what they need without much hassle.

Check out the landing page of Piece of Cake and see how easy they make it for their customers to share their personal information:

7. Optimize the PPC ads for mobile devices and voice search

Mobile devices generate 70% of all PPC ad search impressions.

Thus, you must optimize PPC ads for mobile devices.

Here’s how you can achieve the same:

• Opt for expanded text ads. The feature is specifically designed for mobile devices and offers more space for ad texts. You can upgrade to expanded text ads from regular text ads for free.
• Opt for ad extensions to show additional information about your business including phone number, address, and links to specific web pages.
• Opt for a mobile landing page that mirrors the CTA in the ad text and offers an easy-to-follow path to take action.

Furthermore, over 27% of online users choose voice search on mobile.

Thus, optimizing the PPC ads for voice search becomes essential.

Here’s how can you achieve the same:

• Analyze the search terms report to find out keywords that are already performing well. Choose queries that contain the phrase ‘Hey Google’ or ‘Ok Google’ numerous times.
• Opt for high-intent keywords such as ‘Local’ and ‘Nearby.’
• Guess which questions your target audience can ask and offers answers to them.

Maximizing PPC spend with conversion rate optimization — bring higher sales

PPC ads generate 50% higher conversions than organic searches. Thus, if you can opt for maximizing PPC spend with conversion rate optimization, you’ll generate even higher conversions and revenue.

We hope the article has offered you a direction to work on the same.