Use Common Sense When Selecting Keywords

In order to build out a successful AdWords campaign, you need to select the correct keywords to target, and in order to do that you must completely understand your target customer. 

While some keywords might have large search volumes, that doesn’t mean they are the right “buyer-intent” keywords you should be targeting.

You need to know your customer and what they want, and you need to use a little common sense when selecting keywords.

Don’t rely on software or AI-generated suggestions. You have to think like your target customer and ask yourself, ‘What would I type into to Google if my intent was to purchase this particular product or service?’ 

Keyword volume and cost-per-click is important to consider, but whether or not the keyword indicates buyer-intent is more important.”

Google’s Keyword Planner as a base point, and then use your understanding of your target customer as well as common sense thinking in order to make wise choices.

Take Full Advantage of Available Ad Copy Space

When Google rolled out ETAs (expanded text ads), it gave brands the ability to better explain their product or service. 

Before, the limited character space made storytelling near impossible. Don’t be lazy and just throw up ads without taking full advantage of all the information fields available to you.

With so much competition, it’s important that you take every opportunity to create ad copy that describes your product or service and the problem it solves. 

Remember, with AdWords, you are competing with other PPC bids, but also the organic results as well.

Organic search results can be a great source of inspiration when it comes to writing PPC ad copy. 

If you look at the descriptions of the top results, you can see the kind of calls-to-action that are working for the main players in your industry, which you can then turn into copy for your PPC ads for the same keywords.

Make Sure Your Landing Page Is Relevant

You might be able to identify great keywords, with low CPC (cost-per-click) that drive a lot of traffic to your website, but if that traffic isn’t converting into sales, then the campaign is a failure.

You need to have a seamless flow, from the ad copy that triggers the click, to the landing page, which needs to feature relevant text and essentially repeat what you said in the ad. 

Someone is clicking on an ad because it commanded their attention, so increase the chance of converting each click by presenting the same message and offer on the destination landing page.

You should also optimize your landing pages to be highly relevant to your ad copy, as it has a positive impact on your quality score (QS). 

A higher quality score, results in more impressions and lower CPC.

Build Mobile-Specific Campaigns

Mobile traffic numbers continue to rise, with no sign of slowing down. 

This makes it very important that you create mobile-specific campaigns that cater exclusively to mobile visitors. 

When you create mobile-specific campaigns you are able to create ad copy and landing pages that are designed for conversions on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

“Your conversion data will quickly tell you whether creating standalone mobile campaigns for specific products or services will be beneficial. 

If a certain product or service converts very high on mobile devices, you can copy the existing campaign and then negative bid down desktop clicks in the new mobile-only campaign, and then mobile clicks in the old campaign.

You should always experiment with lower bids for mobile clicks. 

In many instances, CPC can be 25% lower for clicks on mobile devices when compared to desktops. 

Slowly move mobile bids down as low as possible while still maintaining the same traffic volume.