Five smart ways to use Google Adwords

Google AdWords is a great way to generate a large amount of inbound traffic to your landing page. Making smart use of a Google AdWords campaign can often result in a significant impact on the amount of leads converted into sales, without an increase in budget.

This post is on five smart ways to use the platform easily and effectively.

Tip 1: Modify bids according to geographic performance

To optimize Google Adwords, remember to modify your bids according to the geographic performance of your advertisements. Simply put, track the geographic performance of your advertisements to better understand how they are doing in different locations.

The idea is as follows: red T-shirts might sell better at regions where red is considered a lucky color, as compared to regions where it is not. The performance data can help you decide as a digital marketer where to put more of your efforts, attention, and advertising budget to maximize the total sales of red T-shirts. Therefore, less profitable areas use up less of the budget that can then be allocated to the most profitable geographic areas. A/B testing is key.

To modify bids, go to the “location reports” in your AdWords account — these reports give you information on where your customers are physically located or the locations where they showed interest. In the event where location extensions are used, it is possible to use distance reports to find out how each advertisement is doing.

Tip 2: Use Google AdWords A/B testing tool

All marketers have a limited Google AdWords budget, so A/B testing is useful to increase key metrics such as conversion rates and clicks. Use the Google AdWords A/B testing tool to achieve this on a systematic basis. Use a calendar to make split testing part of your job scope, so that you can improve as time passes.

Do always remember to take some time to decide on what the objective of your digital campaign is.

Here, there are three variables: Ad copy, keywords, and bids. Are you deciding between two very similar sales copies and aiming to measure which does better through A/B testing? Are you looking to see if a marginal increase in AdWords bids can increase the conversion rate? Or are you testing out a new keyword that was previously not used by either yourself or a competitor?

After clarifying these variables, you can then use the Google Adwords A/B testing tool. Decide on a “control group” and then a “variable group.” Here are some pointers you can use to guide yourself when you are changing each variable.

Ad copy

The inclusion of certain words such as “new,” “first,” and “get” attract more clicks and, subsequently, conversions. Try this out in your A/B testing; include one version with these words and one without.

Google also recommends the capitalization of each word to make the title stand out. Do this in split testing and let us know how it goes!

Bids

• Is it necessary to place high bids on a specific keyword? Test with alternative synonyms.
• Is it worth it to increase a person’s bid to result in a higher conversion rate? Does the marginal cost outweigh the marginal benefit?
• What is the conversion rate of bidding on your most competitive keywords?

Keywords

If you usually use generic keywords, A/B testing allows you to test which other keywords are more competitive.

Tip 3: Pay attention to new negative keywords

Negative keywords are defined as keywords that are irrelevant to what you want to rank for. For example, if you want to sell “Japanese (wine) glasses,” then negative keywords include “Japanese eyewear.” Negative keywords will help you exclude certain search terms from your Google AdWord campaign.

Look at your search term report after one round of advertising. It will inform you what sort of keywords help readers find your advertisements. From these keywords, you will find both profitable and unprofitable ones, so keep the profitable and put the unprofitable under your list of negative keywords. This will maximise your ROI further and stretch the effectiveness of your budget.

Tip 4: Look at bounce rate, time spent on site, and page views

It might sometimes be useful to look at engagement levels too. Indicators that measure this include the bounce rate, time spent on site, and page views. This is because an engaged audience might convert to actual paying clients later on, even though they do not buy anything now.

Therefore, look at the average time spent on your site. If it is too short, you might want to consider working on your content marketing to deliver more compelling content to your target audience.

Tip 5: To maximize reach, use auction insights

Google provides an auction insights report with every campaign, which informs you how many times the campaigns show up higher on Google with a higher bid. This report also informs you which keywords are highly competed for and makes recommendations on how to allocate the budget most effectively.

Therefore, in order to maximize your reach, be sure to use auction insights to see where you can consider putting your money next. You can definitely stretch the dollar with useful information!