Staying on top of your Adwords campaign can be a tough job. You’re probably thinking, Duh! Knowing that people are constantly searching different words on the internet. Certain trends come and go. Keywords that are working for your campaign now, may not work in a month. As a matter of fact, they may not even work tomorrow. Markets change and people behave differently in different areas. To top it all off, the cost of branded keywords seem to keep going up despite weak click growth. This is leaving companies stretched thin when it comes to their campaign budget. So what is this problem, and what can you do about it?
Branded Keyword Costs Are Up
If you’ve heard that keyword costs are on the rise and you’re scratching your head trying to figure out why, you are not alone. In the past several weeks, the cost-per-click of Google AdWords has increased by up to 141%. The cause of this is unclear, and Google does not seem to be helping to find an answer. Google has provided stock, unsatisfactory answers that have not seemed to totally answer the “why” part of the issue. Sound familiar?
One possible explanation for the cost of branded keywords sounds simple.
Because the search company sells AdWords to businesses based on branded keywords, the cost of certain keywords can go up based on how many people are bidding on certain keywords. Obviously, this can cause problems for companies because they are paying more for keywords, while the conversion rate is the same. This means it is critical that traffic conversion is optimized.
This rising cost of branded keywords has some companies barely breaking even because their cost per customer acquired is too high. For those, it may seem like a losing game.What is the general response? Sadly, some are lowering their AdWords budget, but of course, this lowers traffic. Some are even stopping their use of branded keywords, but this isn’t working either and is not a preferred way to handle the problem.
To combat the cost of rising keywords, it’s important that companies start planning to optimize traffic from every campaign, if they aren’t doing so already. This includes your company. Let’s start talking about what we can do about this problem.
What To Do
You can’t control the cost of keywords.
But you can control your approach to getting the best conversion rate.
You can still make plans and take measures to decrease the pain of rising costs. Regardless of whether certain keywords are high, these are all good practices to make habits in having a successful ad campaign.
#1 Enable Ad Extensions
This is probably the easiest of all. Start by enabling all appropriate and relevant ad extensions for your non-brand and brand keywords. The use of these extensions has been an official part of Google’s Ad rank partly because of its success in driving up click-through rates and lowering brand CPCs. In tackling the conversion problem, Google even expects you to use extensions. If you don’t, you will probably see lower Ad Rank and higher CPCs.
#2 Landing Pages
Landing pages are critical. It’s important to send all traffic from AdWords campaigns to specific dedicated landing pages. On top of that, you need to keep a/b testing these landing pages for best results. A good landing page should be optimally designed to include a unique header. It should also include target keywords and relevant photos from the Google search. Lastly, don’t forget a clear call to action that is easy to find. Keeping a variety of pages, which are diverse, on your website is important, too.
#3 Scheduling
To be successful, you’ll want to have your ad campaign running 24 hours a day, seven days a week. After all, customers can shop at any time of the day and you’ll want to take advantage of that. But certain times of the day generate more expensive clicks but little purchases. One way to maximize ad campaigns is to use AdWords to report on the hours of the day, and certain days of the week when you have the highest conversion rate. For example, it may benefit your company to schedule ads for e-commerce campaigns that don’t run during the early morning hours. For many companies, this time of day does not rake in the conversions. It can take a little tinkering, but find the time of day that works best for you and schedule ad campaigns for this time frame.
#4 Location Target
If you’re planning a nationwide campaign designed to target multiple locations (such as different states, cities, etc.)then it’s important to take time to figure out where your conversions are coming from. You’ll probably find that users behave differently in various locations, and it’s probably better to target them with different tactics. The AdWords Dimensions tab gives you feedback on a location’s performance.
#5 Rotate Ads
This is a basic feature that you can put into place when you’ve already acquired a certain amount of conversions that have started converting regularly. Having this feature provides you the power to rotate through several different versions of ads to find out what certain set of keywords works best for your company.
#6 Analyze AdWords Campaigns through Google Analytics
Have an e-commerce website? It’s critical that you use Google Analytics to ensure that the transactions tracking are set up correctly. Google Analytics will provide plenty of data to make sure you are successful with your campaign. Once your AdWords account is hooked up to your Google Analytics campaign, you will be provided with the following information: bounce rate, visit duration, per keyword, revenue driven per ad group and per ad. When you analyze your AdWords campaign, it can be rather eye opening. What you thought was a successful conversion campaign, could actually be one that is not bringing in more revenue. Google Analytics will help you determine which keywords and ad groups are giving you the most revenue and which ones need more improvement.
#7 Pause Non-Converting Keywords
One habit that is important to get into is to perform ad campaigns at the end of each month, every three months and every six months. You’ll have a better idea of how an ad is doing during certain times. It also helps you identify historical trends and areas of opportunities.
Allocate a budget to focus on what is being productive. You might have a campaign with over 200 keywords, but only half of those are productive. Start by analyzing and looking at your campaign at the keyword level. Then create a customized filter to show those keywords that are not converting well. Create another filter for those that are converting at a higher CPA than the actual goal. You will probably be surprised at the amount of keywords you’ll see in the filter, and just how much money has been wasted on those keywords.
After you have accessed keywords, pause the keywords that are not performing and focus your budget on the more productive keywords.
#8 Identify Killer Ads and Replicate Them
What’s a killer ad? It’s the one that kills it and does better than all the others. You’ll probably find that there is one that always does better than others and you need to find out why. Is it a certain description line, the result of a call to action or a benefit mentioned in the ad? If you’ve identified a driving factor of success, start comparing this ad with other ads in your groups. Use what is successful with that killer ad in your other ad campaigns. Hopefully, you’ll have several killer campaigns that can knock it out of the park.
#9 Use Converting Keywords from Other Sources
When you set up goals in Analytics, you can figure out what sources are more productive, whether it is through Direct Channel, Google Organic or Google CPC.
Google Organic is one of the most competitive sources. It’s wise to exploit this campaign and add benefits from that Google Organic to the AdWords campaign. One way to do this is to review Google Organic Source to find what certain keywords are driving conversions. Search for a time frame that is bigger than the last 30 days, and start comparing them to other keywords in the campaign. If you add them to your campaign, you’ll see results if you implement them using the best practices.
Dealing with the rising costs of branded keywords can be frustrating.
If anything, it can keep you on your toes when it comes to staying on top of your campaigns. It may just be the perfect opportunity to analyze what works and what doesn’t work for your company to turn your keywords into more conversions. If you find yourself stuck in an AdWords campaign box, it’s time to be analytical and creative. Think outside of the box! You may find that you’ll have success in your marketing efforts.