3 Keys to Search Advertising Success
Are you familiar with the 3 Keys to Search Advertising Success? Even for experienced AdWords users, it can be valuable and important to take the time every now and again to step back and see what you can do to tweak your campaigns, experiment a little, and optimize as much as possible.
This can yield tremendous returns in the form of better CTR (Click Through Rate), lower CPA (Cost Per Action) and increase the value of your campaigns for your business.
But where does optimization begin? What are some steps you can take right now to improve your AdWords campaigns? Let’s have a look.
Create, Complement, Capture: The 3 Keys to Search Advertising Success
Firstly, before we get into specific strategies, one cannot overstate the importance of mobile in this day and age. The average person now spends three hours each day on their mobile devices. That’s an eighth of a day! Despite this gigantic chunk of time spent on their phones, people also generally decide whether or not to make a purchase online in a mere twenty seconds. Bearing these two facts in mind, the wise advertiser will not only make sure their ads are mobile friendly to catch all of those mobile users, but will make it straightforward and intuitive to make purchases from clicking on the ad. The window of opportunity is so narrow, you must make an opening at just the right moment to get that conversion you’re after.
Now, onto the big strategies. There are three, to be exact:
- Create compelling ads that meet your business goals
- Complement your ads with extensions to highlight your message
- Capture user attention when it matters
Create Compelling Ads
Before you can manage your campaign to success, you’ll need to create a solid foundation to build atop. This means rethinking the creative content of your ads, tailoring them to the message that resonates most with your prospective audience. For search, these means writing effective text ads that convert.
A great way to start is by ensuring that you have at least three unique ads in each ad group in all of your campaigns. By doing this, you’ll be able to test them against each other, gaining valuable data and teaching you how best to make your case to your potential customers.
In case you needed any additional encouragement, Google has found that ad groups with three or more ads as opposed to two or less can yield up to 15% more clicks and conversions! It’s not hard to start experimenting, either. Just try changing up your ad text, think of what your potential customers might be looking for the most.
Complement Your Ads with Extensions
In general, you’ll now want to complement your ads to enhance your message. This generally involves taking advantage of ad extensions effectively to give your ad some extra punch. Extensions are helpful in a myriad of ways, but first and foremost: they increase your ad’s size and visibility. By simply making your ads more prominent, they stand a better chance of success than your competitors.
Three extensions that can benefit all search advertising campaigns include sitelink extensions, callout extensions and structured snippets. Additional ad extensions such as review extensions or location extensions may be more applicable to highlight 3rd party reviews or drive app engagement.
Extensions also better qualify your customers. By having various extensions in place, you make your ads more appealing and can encourage a user to consider your ad when they otherwise might not have. Once again as with having multiple ads in your ad groups, Google has found that utilizing extensions fruitfully can lead to gains of up to 10 – 15% in both clicks and conversions.
A final note here: remember that not all extensions are right for every business. If your business is not set up to receive phone calls, it probably doesn’t make sense to have a call extension. On the flipside, if you want to highlight some general facts about your business, callouts are perfect.
Capture Users Attention
Finally, it is essential in internet advertising to make sure you’re capturing a user’s interest with your ad at precisely the right moment. Any number of distractions can pull a potential customer out of your grasp at any moment. The best advertisers can do to combat this is to make sure their ads are generally showing at good times, and spreading the message in an effective manner.
The first pitfall you’ll want to avoid is having your ads be limited by your budget. While it’s true that you don’t want to overspend on your campaigns, it’s important to make sure your ads have the financial backing they need to appear at all of the times you want and need them to. AdWords is very helpful at suggesting reasonable budgetary changes that can decrease the total of lost impressions you’ll experience, but even the best system needs oversight and that’s on the advertiser.
Finally, remember to schedule your ads for hours, days, weeks, months and so on, that apply to what it is you’re advertising. If you have a special summer sale, make sure your ads promoting it are not showing in the winter, for example.
3 Keys to Search Advertising Success – The Movie
For those that want some additional details, the following educational video from Google might be just the ticket.
By following these three keys to success, you’ll be optimizing your AdWords experience in no time.
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