How to Optimize Google Ads Campaigns in 2021

How To Optimize Google Ads Campaigns In 2021
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Google Ads is a great advertising platform. It enables businesses to get their adverts in front of the right people at the right time. However, without careful monitoring, adverts are shown to the wrong people! People who are searching with a different intent or for slightly different services or products.

Learn how to get the most from your Google Ads campaigns for the least amount of money.

Google Ads campaigns can quickly become expensive and unprofitable. Optimization is crucial from the get-go. We look at some essential optimization tips for everyone, from beginners to experienced Google Ads consultants.

Ad Copy Qualifiers

Whilst click-through rate (ad impressions – number of times your ad appears, divided by ad clicks) is a metric related to quality, it is also a metric that needs to be reviewed and monitored carefully. Advertising in some niches and for some keywords is costly, sometimes up to $100 per click.

With this in mind, you only want people who are serious about making a purchase or signing up for a service to click on your ads.

Ad qualifiers can help in this instance. For example, if your service is a premier, top-of-the-range, and expensive one, it may help emphasize this in the ad text and consider adding a ‘from’ price into the ad copy.

Prices and other “qualifiers” will stop people who want a cheap version of service from clicking on your ad.

If you are a world-class, pioneering personal trainer who charges $100 per hour, for example, you may not want the average 17-year-old student looking for a little help getting started in the gym, with a small budget, clicking on your ad.

Bear in mind with this, however, that there does appear to be an ad rank threshold. Meaning that if Google deems your ad to be of low quality, it may not show it. According to the guys at the Paid Search Podcast, Ad Rank is now a lot more complicated than it used to be. You can check out their podcast discussing Ad Rank in 2021 here.

Some other quick tips about ad copy are to add your keywords (the words or phrases people are searching for) in your ad headlines or descriptions. Google is currently highlighting keywords when included in the descriptions, which can draw a user’s attention to your ad. As with most things digital marketing-related, always test your ad copy, have 2 or 3 ads in each ad group, and update and tweak when you have significant amounts of data.

Create an Awesome Landing Page Specific to Each Service

A landing page is a page on a website where users are sent via an ad or a listing on Google that has the sole purpose of converting people into leads or sales directly.

A landing page should be specific and have a specific goal.

Have an evident value proposition. If people do not know what is in it for them, they are less likely to sign up or buy.

Have a clear call to action. Tell people what they need to do – e.g., “Sign Up” or “Fill in our Form,” tell them what they need to do.

Landing pages should also keep people focused by limiting elements on the page. Too many options, too many elements on a page can be distracting.

Have the main image, which evokes emotion if possible. The image should not be a stock image and should relate to the product or service.

Social proof is compelling. Include reviews, video testimonials, and other trust-signals such as awards and memberships.

Landing page design will also depend a lot on the cost of your product or service. If you sell flowers for under $25, you may not have to go into too much detail about the product. Whereas if you sell vacations, cars, or trucks, people will want to read more information and contact someone before committing to a purchase. Websites promoting high-value products and services can benefit significantly from a managed live chat service. Users can get help with specific questions, and live chat agents can capture contact details whilst building rapport with a potential customer.

Google Maps Ads

Google’s local listings, or local pack, show near the top of the Google results and take up a large portion of the ‘above the fold’ area.

You can show up at the top of the local pack by turning on the “location extension.” You will also need to have a Google MyBusiness account setup and verified.

Enabling the location extension also means that your address can show up on a standard text ad. It has a few implications. For more information, please watch this YouTube video for a complete understanding.

Negative Keywords

As part of your Google Ads account’s maintenance, it is essential to check your search terms report.

Even if you use exact match keywords in all of your campaigns, Google will still show your ads to people searching for slightly different words and phrases.

To find the search terms report, click on a campaign, then click on “keywords” and then “Search terms.”

When you see a search term that you don’t want your ads to show up for, check the box next to the keyword and then click “Add as a negative keyword.”

How To Optimize Google Ads Campaigns In 2021 2

Devices

As part of your account maintenance, always check the cost per click and the cost per conversion for each device.

You may typically find, for example, that mobile conversions cost more than desktop conversions. This is not always the case and can be a little misleading, as sometimes cross-device-conversions come into play when people check your website out via an ad on a mobile, then come back on a desktop computer to make a purchase.

Either way, always check the device reports and consider making bid adjustments to reduce bids on devices that perform poorly.

 Audiences

Audiences are compelling. You can target individual demographics, interests, life events, intents, and you can also retarget people who have visited your website. By using segments inside Google Analytics, you can also import many different remarketing audiences into Google Ads.

“In-Market Audiences” – these are people in the process of researching a purchase or a service and are specifically looking for businesses like yours.

Not all audiences are available for search campaigns at this time. For example, when writing “Customer intent,” audiences are only available for video and display campaigns.

You can set your campaigns so that your ads only show to people within specific audiences. Using the “Targeted” setting, you will significantly reduce your ads’ reach and choose particular types of people to see your ads. This should give a much better return on ad spend.

To choose “Targeted Audiences,” click on your campaign, then click on “Audiences,” then click the pencil icon and select “Targeting.”

Be aware that this setting is recommended for Display campaigns but generally not for Search campaigns. However, it can still be highly effective, and if used correctly, can reduce your cost per conversion dramatically. It can be a good thing to test using an experiment.

For more information on experiments, please see this YouTube video by Paid Media Pros.

Conclusion

Setting up a Google Ads campaign and just letting it run can waste a lot of money. You must take the time to run reports and optimize your account to get the best return on ad spend. Keep in mind that Google may also prompt you to choose settings that make them money, but not you – and they reserve the right to go way over your daily budget at times.

 

Thank you for reading!