Every company wants to generate more leads for their business and Google Ads is a great method to do it. However, pay-per-click (PPC) is very costly if you do not know how to control it properly.
There are so many factors affecting PPC and probably you have not known how to control them yet. For example, different match types will create a huge gap in your budget, or highly relevant keywords increase traffic and decrease Cost-per-click (CPC). Those elements can help your business efficiently convert users into qualified leads.
In this article, we will give you five PPC tips that help your business generate more potential customers. If you just started with Google Ads, these hacks will be the key elements to drive more visitors to your company.
1. Quality Score
According to Google, a quality score is an estimation of the quality of your keyword relevance, click-through rate (CTR), and landing page. Quality score is one of the most important indicators on Google AdWords, and it is reported on a scale of 1-10.
Google encourages high-quality score advertising by rewarding them with a lower CPC and higher ad positions on Search Engine Results Pages (SERP).
As mentioned earlier, the quality score is the combination of keywords, ad relevance, and User Experience (UX) on the landing page. While ad rank is calculated by multiplying max bid and quality score:
AD RANK = MAX BID * QUALITY SCORE
For examples:
- Advertiser I has $2 for MAX BID and 10 for QUALITY SCORE
=> AD RANK = 2 * 10 = 20
- Advertiser II has $4 for MAX BID and 4 for QUALITY SCORE
=> AD RANK = 4 * 4 = 16
Although max bid plays an important role in ad rank as well as partially affects your CPC, it does not mean that by setting a high bid, your ads will have a higher position on SERP. Based on the CPC formula, the higher the quality score, the cheaper CPC.
Before improving the quality score, you need to know where to find out these indicators. The steps are very easy as below:
- Log in to your Google Ads account
- Go to the “Keywords” tab on the left sidebar
- You can check if there is a “Quality Score” column or not.
- If not, go to “Columns” tool => “Modify columns” => “Quality Score”. You can choose other indicators over here as well.
As reported by Larry Kim, the founder WordStream, using keywords about your brand will help Google easily recognize your business, increase the average click rate, and especially your quality score.
2. Ad relevance
Ad relevance or keyword relevance reflects how clearly and precisely your keywords relate to your ads. That’s why the keywords should always match your ads and user’s search.
According to Google, they set three levels of measurement for keywords:
- Above average
- Average
- Below average
“Average” and “Above Average” statuses mean that your keyword relevance is fine without any serious problems. While “Below Average” status works as an alarm for advertisers to manage the ad relevance when the ad groups might not be specific enough or contain too many topics.
As you know, ad relevance is essential because it is an element to evaluate the quality score. However, a keyword can have a high-quality score and low ad relevance or vice versa due to different other factors to identify the quality score. It’s better if you should check every individual factor to figure out which areas need to be improved.
So, how to improve ad relevance?
To enhance your ad relevance, Google Keyword Planner and KW Finder are the two best tools for you to start keyword research. Google Keyword Planner is free to use, meanwhile, KW Finder works as a SAAS service, so you have to pay some amount of money for each month. After doing some keyword research, you should create specific ad groups to increase the keyword relevance.
For example, if you are a digital marketing company and would like to offer some solutions for clients, you should create a different ad group for each tool. One for SEO, one for PPC, one for email marketing, etc. Do not put a mix of these keywords into one group.
Apart from it, you should choose the keyword thoroughly, one ad group should contain 5-20 keywords as a recommendation. Additionally, long-tail keywords are a secret weapon for every advertiser if they know how to utilize it effectively. For instance, instead of “email marketing”, using a long-tail phrase such as “email marketing tools for business”.
3. Keyword match types
Keyword match types help you easily control which searches from users on Google can activate your ads.
- Broad match: broad match allows your ads to show on SERP that include spelling mistakes, synonyms, and other relevant variations of keywords. For instance, if your keyword kid’s pants and people search for men pants or kids T-shirt might see your ads. This type can save your time from keyword researching, but still, gain a lot of impressions and clicks. However, it probably brings a huge number of irrelevant users to your website which lowers your quality score.
- Broad match modifier: This is similar to broad match, but an extra option with a plus “+” sign to put in front of a keyword, for example, +Vietnamese +restaurant. It will become close variants that include misspelling, abbreviation, singular, and plural form, but exclude related searches as the broad match does. In terms of synonyms, it depends on the word order whether to change the meaning of a phrase or not, then a broad match modifier can trigger your ads.
- Phrase match: Phrase match allows your ads to display on SERP that match a keyword phrase or close variations, the phrase is put in quotation marks “ ”, for example, “red shoes”. Ads will not display if a word is added between the phrases. This is the most popular type that advertisers use for their campaigns.
- Exact match: ads will show on SERP when users search for the exact term or the close variations of that exact term and the keywords are put in square brackets, e,g.:[shoes for men], [bathing suit]. Close variations contain the keyword with the same meaning as the exact keywords, the addition or removal of prepositions and conjunctions, and synonyms, without changing the meaning of the original exact keywords. This type will gain fewer impressions and clicks, however, increase the CTR with more qualified leads.
Restricting or broadening your keywords too much might negatively affect your ad campaign. You should test different keyword match types with different ad groups to have a basic idea of how it works, then improve next time.
4. Ad copy
Ad copy is an essential part of generating qualified leads for a business. Targeting the right keywords not only helps to improve CTR, but also quality score.
Source: WordStream
Responsive Search Ads:
- This is the latest updated format of Google Search Ads with high flexibility and efficiency. You can create up to 15 separate headlines together with 4 descriptions.
- Responsive Search Ads give you three headlines with 30×3 characters and two descriptions with 90×2 characters.
- This can help you increase the CTR, quality score, and conversion rate because of the relevant keywords. However, it is not trackable for each ad copy because of no report about the performance of any combinations.
Dynamic Search Ads:
- This format of search ads will display when a user’s search queries are related to the content or phrases on your website. The headline and the landing page URL will be dynamically generated by Google Ads based on search queries.
- Dynamic Search Ads help advertisers save time for creating ads, bidding, and keyword searching. Users clicking on ads are directed to sites of the exact products or services they are looking for. That’s why more qualified traffics and leads will be generated.
- To work efficiently, these search ads require regular site maintenance and optimization. Make sure that the landing page content is available; otherwise, users will bounce in a second.
There are both benefits and drawbacks from these search ads, you have to clarify your objective before choosing any of them to start an ad campaign. Read our blog to improve your copywriting skills.
5. Landing page optimization
Landing page experience is one of the factors to evaluate the quality score of your ads, bad user experience can partly affect your ad rank position and the overall budget. According to Google, there are 4 key elements that every landing page should be: relevant, trustworthy, easy to navigate, and reliable. Here are some tips for you to improve the landing page:
Make the landing page relevant:
- Direct users to a relevant landing page instead of sending them to a home page.
- Use similar keywords, value propositions, and call to action to unify the customer experience as well as build their trust.
- Show off your business’ exclusive features to take advantage of competitors, that’s why customers purchase products or services from you, not your rivals.
- Use ad groups to categorize your products and services keywords, it helps Google easily identify the right customers.
Make the landing page trustworthy:
- Be straight about what you are selling and offering to clients. Customers only feel safe if they can see transparent information such as additional fees on your sites.
- Display contact information, customer reviews, and testimonials to build trust. Additionally, make sure that your text on each page is grammatically correct. Psychologically speaking, broken language is the first sign of a scam.
- Do not use pop-ups due to their annoyance. If you want to ask for customer information, be clear and about why.
Make the landing page easy to navigate:
- The ultimate rule of a landing page is to show a customer what they want, so make sure that the page is easy for them to find their options.
- Use bullet points to deliver the information precisely. Besides, do not use complex text, get straight the main points that customers are looking for.
- Make your content conveniently shareable such as videos and photos.
Make the landing page reliable:
- Make sure your website is mobile-friendly. Test it here.
- Regardless of a tablet, desktop, or mobile, you have to provide a consistent experience to customers, such as screen size, simple navigation, responsive design, etc.
- Optimize content on the landing page, videos, and images in particular. Besides that, do not overuse high-context copy or academic writing on your landing page. It does not sound welcoming and encouraging people to purchase your deliverables.
Landing page experience plays an essential role in your ads, specifically your quality score, so you should take time to focus on your optimization.
Conclusion
In a nutshell, Google Ads is one of the best tools to generate qualified leads. However, you need to know some tips to minimize the budget for each campaign you launch. Throughout this blog, you have gained the five pro hacks to level up your Google Ads Campaign. But, if you do not optimize your landing page well, then all of the efforts in Google Ads will be wasted. Therefore, be well-prepared for your landing page first and get ready for the next level of lead generation.
Follow these tips to generate more leads for your company. It will be a huge advantage for every business to develop their lead generation plan. If you think this blog is helpful, do not hesitate to subscribe for more digital marketing knowledge and business insights!
