Brad Koetz
Brad is a veteran growth marketer and paid search expert. He's worked with brands like MakeSpace and fuboTV to deliver a profitable return on ad spend.
If you want to maximize your PPC spend, one of the first places to look is CRO or Conversion Rate Optimization. CRO is the process of increasing the percentage of users or website visitors to take the desired action. There are numerous ways to improve conversion rate, both pre- and post-click. We'll go through a few industry-wide strategies to boost your conversion rates and lower your acquisition costs.
To improve the quality of your paid traffic, optimize your ad campaign, pre-click. Ask yourself: What motivation would a user have to click on my ad? Am I enticing the right type of prospect with my messaging?
Prequalify your ads with messaging that may dissuade poor-quality users from clicking on your ad in the first place. Remember, PPC = pay per click, so you want to make sure you pay for the clicks most likely to convert.
With PPC, you want prospects to be as informed as possible before you pay for their site visit. Ultimately this comes down to transparency and understanding your audience.
Account structure is one thing I see clients get wrong time and time again when auditing new businesses. An organized account structure not only streamlines campaign management but also allows you to create the most relevant experiences possible. Each company has its nuances, but a general rule of thumb is to feature one product per campaign, segmenting your ad groups by keyword category, search intent, and match type. This allows you to create relevant ad copy and landing pages, negate irrelevant searches, and bid more efficiently.
In the above example, when campaign and ad group names are split, they are categorized in an organized fashion. For this business, someone's location intent is essential, but this can vary from business to business.
Account structure all comes down to relevancy. When the journey from impression to click to purchase is a consistent experience, you can improve conversion rates and maximize your ad dollars.
The days of 13-hour Napster mp3 downloads and 5-minute load times for a website are long gone. People's attention spans are the lowest they have ever been, as news, entertainment, and communication are instantaneous. Especially if your business is a low consideration product, page speed is vitally important. There are endless statistics that correlate increased conversion rates with decreased page load time, but what can you do about it?
Google PageSpeed Insights is an excellent resource to provide you with insight into what is slowing your website down and how to fix it.
If you do not have developer resources, you can also utilize a landing page platform such as Instapage or Unbounce (among others). They'll have AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) capabilities that provide a quick-loading mobile experience and other tools to ensure your web experience is as fast as possible.
We covered how to set up your campaign structure for relevant landing page implementation. Now, once a user gets to your page, how do we know it is set up for conversions?
Whether this is anecdotal product knowledge, keyword research, or customer surveys, it is vital to understand why customers should spend their money on your business vs. a competitor. Make sure that your landing page has a clear and concise headline that addresses your value propositions.
Calls to action above the folding feature short text that makes it clear to a user what the next step is when they click a link.
Only capture as much information as needed for leads. Try implementing a register with Facebook or Google account to streamline the account creation process.
Your site should be clean and easy to navigate. The design of your site is arguably the most significant influencer on conversion rate and brand perception.
Check out these two moving companies:
Which company are you more likely to submit your personal information to? Given the fluid experiences that users have daily with companies like Google, Instagram, and Twitter, users expect to quickly and easily purchase a product or find what they need.
Optimizing your conversion rate on PPC is the quickest way to lower acquisition costs and scale paid media. Take some of these strategies to reduce friction in your conversion funnel and improve the user experience to grow your business efficiently.
