PPC is a critical part of the marketing fleet. For the third straight quarter in a row, paid search is seeing double-digit growth in 2015: spending grew 22% on paid search year-over-year in Q2 2015 and that number is expected to rise in Q3, particularly on mobile devices. With so much being spent on PPC, it’s necessary to optimize your campaigns to ensure you have the highest ROI possible. Avoiding the following 5 PPC mistakes and using the actionable insights I describe should help you get more ROI out of your PPC campaigns – and keep your armada afloat and charging ahead.
Mistake #1: You Aren’t Taking Advantage of Bid Adjustments
Using bid adjustments is key to reaching the audience that you know has a higher chance of converting into revenue. If you aren’t using bid adjustments it’s likely that you are missing out on clicks that turn into revenue for your competition and it’s also likely that you are paying for clicks you don’t need.
For example, after analyzing the locations that your PPC conversions are coming from, you can use location adjustments to increase bids in geographical regions that you know convert at higher rates. You can decrease bids for cities or regions that tend to spend money but not convert. You can increase bids for locations, devices, times of day, and more that you know have a tendency to convert into revenue. To save money you can decrease bids on clicks that you know are less likely to convert based on your analysis.
Locations aren’t the only way to use bid adjustments; in AdWords, bid adjustments can also be made based on device (more on this in #4), time of day, topics, interests, remarketing lists, and more.
Mistake #2: You’re Targeting the Wrong Locations
On the campaign level in AdWords you can target specific locations that want your ads to appear in. This feature is ideal for businesses that serve certain locations and not others, or for businesses that have a specific list of companies they are trying to target.
For businesses that only serve specific regions or cities, you can target your campaigns to only show ads in a specific location. AdWords will tell you the estimated reach of that audience (i.e. 185,000 people). In the same vein, you can exclude regions where you do not want your ads to show.
For businesses with specific companies they would like to focus on, radius targeting can be really useful. This feature enables advertisers to enter a place name, address, or coordinates and target their ads to appear within a specific radius of their criteria.
If you aren’t using location targeting you may be spending money on an audience that just doesn’t make sense for your business to target. Spending more money for clicks that don’t convert will be a detriment to your ROI.
Mistake #3: Optimizing for Click Through Rate, Instead of Conversion Rate
CTR can be an indication of good campaign health, but if your conversion rates are low you may be making optimizations in the wrong places. High CTR and low conversion rate is often an indication of poorly structure landing pages. Instead of continuing to make adjustments to your campaigns, keywords, and ad copy, in this case it’s time to make optimizations to your landing pages. Be sure the keywords you bid on and the keywords in your ad copy also appear on your landing page. Make the CTA clear and easy to understand. Limit the paths to exit the landing page without converting.
Optimizing for higher PPC conversion rates typically lies within your landing pages. Optimize and test them constantly: it’s a never-ending challenge.
Mistake #4: You’re Ignoring Your Mobile Audience
According to eMarketer, advertisers will spend more than $12.85 billion on mobile search ads in 2015, which is more than 50% of all digital search ad spending. If you’re ignoring your mobile audience, you’re missing out on huge opportunities to generate positive ROI. PPC mobile optimization requires many things: mobile-friendly ad copy, a responsive or mobile-optimized website and landing pages, mobile bid adjustments, and more. But the best way to optimize your PPC campaigns for mobile devices is to make it easy for this audience to call you.
Since mobile searchers are typically on smartphone devices, it’s easier for them to call your business than it is for them to fill out a form. Giving mobile searchers a prominent phone number that they can click on to connect with your business – either within your ad or on your landing page – is key in helping these searchers convert into leads and revenue.
Making it easy for your mobile audience to call you is only half the battle: next you need to be able to attribute those calls to paid search to be able to prove ROI. Using call tracking software, marketers are able to attribute every call their marketing generates to the source that drove it: PPC, display, social media, email, and more.
Internally we did an analysis of our own PPC campaigns to see the split between conversions from mobile devices and form submissions. The analysis showed that 46% of our conversions over a one-week period were from phone calls and the remaining 54% were from form submissions. Here is what our internal analysis showed:
- 27% of conversions were from Google call extensions
- 7% of conversions were from call-only ads
- 11% of conversions were calls from landing pages
Had we not been tracking these mobile call conversions from PPC, we would have misattributed 46% of our conversions from paid search.
Mistake #5: You Aren’t Using Call Extensions
Google call extensions generate hundreds of millions of calls to businesses in the U.S. each month, and 70% of searchers have used them to call a business from their mobile device. The audience here is huge and growing fast. Mistake #4 goes hand in hand with mistake #5. One of the ways you may be ignoring your mobile audience is by not providing them call extensions to get a hold of your business.
With DialogTech Call Analytics solution for Google call extensions, marketers are able to accurately attribute calls from call extensions to the keywords that drive them. What’s more, exclusive workflow tools make it easy to configure call extensions in AdWords using call tracking numbers, helping save marketers who manage thousands of Adgroups or client accounts a ton of time and a lot of headaches.
To learn more about tracking calls from Google call extensions watch the free webinar: Get Started With Call Attribution for Google Call Extensions.
With so much being spent on PPC, marketers can’t afford to make these 5 common mistakes. If you’re interested in learning more about how DialogTech can help you optimize your PPC campaigns and generate higher ROI, give us a call today.