As
you can see, in the first month we drove 22 conversions for a cost per
conversion of $69. Those numbers improved steadily through September
when we drove 98 conversions (increase of 345%) for a cost per
conversion of $51 (decrease of 35%).
How
did we generate these big improvements in such a short amount of time?
The
answer is by utilizing 3 Google Ads cheats. These are going to sound
simple, but I promise if you apply these to your campaigns, you will
see dramatic results very quickly. Of course, these cheats are only a
fraction of what you need to do to maintain a healthy Google Ads
campaign. Just because you have 30 lives in Contra doesn’t mean you’re
going to win… A lot of skill is still involved, but it’s a whole lot
easier when you have those extra lives!
Let’s
dive into each of the 3 cheats…
1. Budget Optimization
Of
all 3, budget optimization is by far the most important. But before you
can even use this cheat, you have to first structure your campaigns
properly.
There
are a nearly infinite number of ways you could structure a Google Ads
campaign. You can structure campaigns for each of your core products or
services, for each of your target locations, for top performing
keywords versus test keywords, for exact match keywords versus phrase
match keywords, and the list goes on and on.
When
we launched the ads for our client, we had 5 main campaigns organized
by the different types of prospective clients we wanted to attract.
Each prospective client had different keywords and we weren’t sure
which was going to perform the best. By separating them into 5
campaigns, we had the ability to allocate our total budget across them
differently.
This
brings us to budget optimization. We quickly determined that some of
these campaigns were performing better than others so we allocated more
of the total ad budget to the top performing campaigns (and reduced the
budget for the poor performing campaigns).
Over
time we actually paused all but 1 of these 5 original campaigns. That
dramatically improved the cost per conversion because we were focusing
all of our budget on the top performing campaign.
It
sounds so simple, but this was a huge factor in the overall account performance.
2. Schedule Optimization
Now
that you have the proper budget allocated across your campaigns, it’s
time to look at your ad performance during different times of the day.
This is called Schedule Optimization.
Typically,
when you launch a campaign that is driving phone calls you’re going to
only show ads during normal office hours. That’s an easy “cheat” to
avoid spending your budget during hours when no one is available to
answer the calls.
In
our case, our client wanted to drive leads via a webform so it wasn’t
obvious which hours to block. Rather than guess, we let the data
decide.
As
we started to collect click and conversion data, we were able to
determine which hours were most effective for our campaign. We found
weekdays between 5 am to 11 am worked best so we boosted bids during
those time slots and lowered bids during other times when performance
wasn’t as strong.
Again,
a simple edit that had a big impact on ROI.
3. Device Optimization
The
3rd cheat is device optimization, which is now critical for every
business. Did you know that more people are searching in Google on
their mobile device than on their computer? And depending on your
industry Google Ads performance per device can vary drastically.
For
our client, we found there was much more search volume for mobile
devices versus computers or tablets. When I look at performance from
June through September, then here are the conversion rates for each
device:
·
Mobile = 7.42%
·
Computers = 9.69%
·
Tablets = 4.81%
Clearly,
our bids can’t be the same across all devices if the conversion rates
are so different. That’s why we used device optimization to adjust our
bids per device and ensure we’re getting the most conversions at the
best price for each device.
Conclusion
Like
the old Nintendo game, Contra, Google Ads can appear to be impossible
for many businesses. However, once you apply the 3 “cheats” above, I’m
confident you’ll be well on your way to a successful ad campaign.
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