Google AdWords has been around since 2000. It offers a great way for businesses to strengthen their online marketing and SEO efforts, sometimes even doubling or tripling a business’s ROI (return on investment). In fact, according to Google’s Economic Impact Report, businesses make an average of $2 in revenue for every $1 they spend on AdWords.
But competition with AdWords is fierce; appearing first in search rankings and advertisements doesn’t come cheap, and now goes well beyond selecting ideal keywords. Below are a few strategies your enterprise business can utilize to bolster a competitive edge with AdWords without breaking the bank.
“My key takeaway from the rise of local based
searches is that granularity is key to a successful paid
search account.”
– J. Baum
Develop a Well-Thought-Out Budget
First and foremost, businesses should know what budget goals they want to maintain with their AdWords campaigns, as well as how much revenue they want to acquire through their them. Each business should think about how much traffic and money they want their AdWords campaigns to generate. You’ll never be able to gauge the effectiveness of your AdWords campaigns if you aren’t sure how much revenue they’re generating or how much the campaigns are costing your business at the end of the day. Remember that simply driving high click-through rates doesn’t mean much if your business isn’t making any money from the click-through traffic in some way. And maintaining a budget that accounts for a certain ROI will help you know if your AdWords efforts are generating a profit or advantage to your business, even if your campaigns and business goals change over time.
Use Smart Bidding
Smart Bidding, also known as “auction-time-bidding,” is a set of automated bidding strategies that use Google’s machine learning to maximize conversions in every auction. Smart Bidding takes your AdWords campaigns beyond usual manual or enhanced cost-per-click bidding. It’s designed to optimize your bidding strategy in relation to your daily budget. Here are common smart and automated approaches for bidding that will optimize conversions:
- Cost-Per-Acquisition (CPA): Increase conversions while targeting a specific CPA.
- Return-On-Ad-Spend (ROAS): Grow the value of each conversion by optimizing for a specific ROAS.
- Maximize Conversions: Automatically increase the total number of conversions your campaigns receive.
Another way to bid smart (without using automated technology), is to bid on well-known competitors that don’t have a strong online presence. There are a ton of businesses that have a strong offline presence via television ads and direct-mail campaigns, but they don’t have a website or strong online following. By bidding on your offline competitors, you’ll be able to exhibit how much stronger your online presence is with AdWords.
Explore Dynamic Search Ads
AdWords experts know how hard it is to keep campaigns seamlessly in sync with a website. For instance, it’s time-consuming and challenging to be constantly creating new keywords, new ad groups, and new ads inside an AdWords account for an e-commerce site with thousands of products that are changing all the time. Google created Dynamic Search Ads (DSAs) to address this issue. DSAs let you display ads to ideal prospects who might be searching for items you sell on your site, even if you don’t have a matching keyword for them in your AdWords account. This increases additional relevant traffic to your site, while providing you with new search terms that people are using to find your site which you can later add to your keywords list in your AdWords account.
Enable Campaigns Optimized for Mobile
Optimizing your AdWords campaigns for mobile devices is critical if you want a higher ROI. According to Google’s research, 69% of smartphone owners turn to mobile search first when they need something. 76% of those searchers visit a related business nearby with in a business day. And 28% of those mobile-driven searches result in a purchase.
First, add localized messaging in your ad copy so that your business locations come up when prospects are searching for your products or services. Then use “near me” campaigns and the location extension in AdWords. And set up call-only campaigns. Call-only campaigns are a great way to increase mobile-driven conversions. They enable your prospects to call your business directly with any questions or to place an order, right from their mobile phones.
Using the right AdWords strategies listed above, is a scientific artform perfected by professionals at CrossLeaf. Contact us today, so we can get started on your next marketing campaign.