Google AdWords can augment a mobile marketing strategy as well as a desktop marketing strategy
Fall can be a great time to review marketing campaigns over the past year and make adjustments, particular with the holiday sales season around the corner. But any time of the year is a good time to review results from paid and organic search. Not checking on how your site attracts customers can lead to no conversions –which means no online sales or downloads related to lead generation.
There are a few ideas can help your small business renew the focus of campaigns that lead to increased conversions.
Set analytics reports dedicated to monitoring changed contributions to website goals
Analytics reports can show which campaigns are effectively contributing to goals, as well as reviewing time on site and pageviews per visit to confirm that your ads are driving engaged visits to your site. Consider also specialty reports such as Google Analytics Multi-Channel Funnel to compare the value paid search contributed to site goals and how it changed from one period to another. This can reveal how to approach adjustment to keywords between paid and organic search.
Ensure campaign ad categories are easily distinguishable
You should create specific categories for paid search that can be reflected in the campaign and ad groups. Doing so makes campaign tagging simple to apply and permits better attribution of the ads that contributed to site goals.
Verify the budget allocated against the traffic created
Import your organic and paid search data into a spreadsheet and compare the amount of traffic against the percentage of ad budget allocated for the segment. Does it make sense for a keyword contributing 10% of traffic to receive 40% of a PPC budget? Creating a comparison table will answer this question.
Consider paid search as an augment for keywords targeted in organic search.
Some small businesses emphasize search in lieu of a PPC campaign, but many digital marketing research firms are discovering that a combined paid and organic search results for a given keyword can have a higher conversion rate than that for organic search results alone. Apply organic and paid search for your top terms that need more exposure. The lift in conversion rates overall should be higher than any slight cannibalization of search traffic from having an ad appearing alongside an organic search query result.
Use long tails keywords that could draw visits while achieving a lower spend on clicks
Conversion lift opportunities can sometimes lie in long tail keyword terms, attracting more relevant traffic with a lower spend than many highly volume terms. Long tail keywords are words with lower search volume than a head keyword – typically a branded term in some cases. But three and four phrase keyword terms related to your industry, product, or service can yield a better combination of relevant traffic.
Use Contextual Marketing to make ad spend more effective
To better ensure that the ads appear when customers are considering your services, consider networks that display ads in a more relevant setting to your targeted audience. For example, an ad offering DJs services can be displayed in a network that includes content for weddings – an event in which these services are needed. AdWords offers contextual marketing option by running ads on partner sites of the Google Display Network. Facebook Ads operate in a similar manner – The keywords in Facebook Ads are matched to profile activity rather than search queries. So an ad for an auto parts store would show for profiles containing an interest in automobiles. The end result is an audience being more receptive to an ad because the queries are occurring in a more specific online community or environment.
Create ads for specific events
If an ad budget is extremely tight for your small business, you should create ads for specific happenings. Seasonal events, such as a holiday sale, can be effective. Another approach is setting an ad for specific geographic region where your business serves but may not be receiving visitors.
Place ads on ads networks related to your referral traffic
Referral traffic from other sites may be complimented with ad exposure to gain better response leading to conversion. Sites like Linked In and Business.com offer ad networks specific for a business audience, while Yelp and YP.com may be helpful for sales offers. There are also publishers such as Adsmoke, a platform that display ads at the beginning of a YouTube video, which can provide opportunities to match your ad to the context in which it appears.
Scan your site for overlooked keyword ideas with CPC opportunities.
Site content can change over the year, especially if a blog is hosted as a site subdirectory and a high volume of posts are created. You can use tools to scan your site for additional keyword ideas. The results can lead to more affordable relevant words to use in an ad. Both Google Adwords Manager and Microsoft AdCenter can your website and generate a keyword list. You can compare the generated list with a keyword density list, to determine if a preferred keyword does not appear frequently in your site – thus a potential candidate for use in an ad to attract audience.
Gaining conversion takes time and investment. But evaluating campaigns with web analytics and segmentation brings an improved focus of your business’ marketing. Your ads will then tempt more potential customers, because they are being served to the customers you want for your products and services.
