Google Adwords is a very powerful tool to market your business or service to highly targetted users online. If you are using Google Adwords to generate traffic to your website and you aren’t seeing the conversions or clicks you thought, then you MUST implement these 8 Adwords Hacks.
I am going to show you 8 incredible hacks that you can do to your Adwords campaigns right now to increase your CTR and conversions at least 5x! All of these ‘hacks’ are compliant with the TOS and simply are methods that we use to increase our Google Adwords performance.
Exact Match Targeting
Most people think that when you start a Google Adwords campaign, you throw in a million keywords and add whatever Google suggest.
This is the wrong way to do it!
To have a super optimized Google Adwords campaign, you want to start with as few keywords as possible. Use the exact match keyword you are advertising for so that only people searching for that exact keyword will see your ad.
This will ensure that your traffic is very targetted and doesn’t have any extra keywords in there that may screw with the ‘targetedness’ of the keyword. To add an exact match keyword just add brackets around your keyword like this:
[google analytics reports]
Now you can run this keyword and build off of it. Keep any keywords that are converting high and remove the ones that aren’t converting well. You should also remember that your landing page should have the same keyword for maximum conversion rates.
Increase/Decrease CPC per Device
These days, people can visit your website from just about any device. This means that you should be separating out each device and bidding on it accordingly. Luckily, Google Adwords has a great way to increase and decrease your CPC depending on the device.
Simply go to Settings->Devices in your Adwords campaign and you can see a list of device and a bid adjustment column where you can change bids depending on what device and how it converts. Here is an example of a campaign where mobile is converting much higher than desklop so we could increase mobile bids and decrease computer bids since not many convert from a desktop.
Now depending on which devices are converting the best on your website, you can increase your bids and the ones that arent, you can decrease them. This way you are spending more on ads that are converting and less on ones that arent.
Bonus Tip: The same thing can be done with Countries if you are advertising internationally. You can increase bids on the countries that are converting the best and decrease them on the countries that aren’t converting at all.
Add Special Characters to Your Ads
One of the most important things when advertising online is having your ad stand out! If your ad doesn’t look like everyone else’s then there is a higher chance that yours will get seen and clicked.
To make your ads stand out more, add special characters like @#$%^&* but make sure that you are using them is a non-spammy way or Google will suspend your ad. For example, you could add your twitter follow tag like @ninjareports to make your ad stand out more.
You can also add your phone number to your ads, to both make them stand out more and also build confidence in your visitors because you are showing them your phone number if they need any support. People like to know they can call if something goes wrong online or to test if a company is legit.
Out of these ads below, which one stands out the most to you? Even though the Qik Sense ad is the last ad, I bet it has the highest CTR of all these ads because they are using special characters.
Simply adding a Trademark or Copyright symbol can increase your CTR 3-6x. Our eyes naturally focus on things that stand out and are out of the ordinary so try adding symbols to your ads and see how much you can increase your CTR.
Add Sitelinks
Sitelinks are an awesome way to get more visibility on your ad. Sitelinks allow you to add smaller links under your ad that link to internal pages of your website. If we take the example above, the first result has sitelinks enabled and you can see that this gives it more space and makes it stand out more.
When you create sitelinks you are increasing the chances that you have what your customers are looking for. If you provide multiple services or have multiple products, you can use sitelinks to get people to those other services quick.
Have a High-Quality Landing Page
The #1 most important thing about your Google Adwords Campaign is your landing page. If you are sending customers directly to your homepage from Adwords, you are killing your CTR!
Creating a highly targeted landing page for your Google Adwords can help increase your CTR and conversions 10x.
Creating a targeted landing page for your Google Adwords can help increase your CTR and conversion.Click To TweetHere are some tips on creating a high converting landing page:
- Having an engaging CTA (call to action) on your website that is above the fold
- Add testimonials to increase authority and trust
- Include videos in your landing page. They help convert more
- Collect as much information as you can from your visitors
- Make sure your landing page works on all devices
If you are looking for an easy way to create great landing pages there are some good services out there like Instapage or LeadPages.Net. They make it super simple to throw together a high converting landing page that will increase your conversions 5-8x.
Name Your Price
Featuring your products or services price on your Google Adwords ad is probably the single most important thing you can do to increase conversions and CTR. One of the five reasons people leave your website is price, so if you can tell them the price up front, they know it going into the ad click. This will ensure that they know the price before they click your ad (and you get charged).
It also makes your ad stand out more because you can use symbols and numbers when showing the price of your product or service.
Use a False Negative
Negative comments and questions get a lot of attention because not many people do it. Saying things like “Don’t Click This Ad Unless You Want To Save a Fortune” can really get eyeballs on it because people respond to fear a lot more than the normal “Click here for great products”.
You must be careful when using this method as Google sometimes doesn’t like if you are too fear mongering. Make it somewhat light and playful and you will see some boosts.
Track Your Campaigns
Tracking how your Google Adwords visitors is one of the most important ways to optimize your CTR and conversion. Being able to see which ad groups, keywords and campaigns are bringing in the most revenue, clicks or downloads will help you better optimize your Google Adwords.
Installing Google Analytics on your website and connecting Google Adwords will allow you to see some really great information about your visitors. You can view which keywords are giving you the best returns and what traffic sources are converting the best.
It will even match up your Google Adwords data so its all viewable right inside Google Analytics. If you are looking to have the most optimized Google Adwords campaigns then you gotta be using Google Analytics.
