Adwords Click Through Rate: How To Improve Yours

Not getting the level of traffic from Google Adwords that you expected? Here’s some practical help to improve your Adwords click through rate (CTR) so you can start to generate qualified traffic from search engines to your landing pages. Organise Your Adwords Campaigns Per Impression, Per Lead, Per Acquisition.

One key factor in improving your Adwords click through rate is differentiating between the different purposes of search campaigns. There are three reasons why you would invest in PPC:

  1. Brand awareness
  2. Lead generation
  3. Customer acquisition

 

Once you understand your business goals and decide on a campaign, your ads, keywords, message and call to action should be built around one single purpose, to maximise your Adwords click through rate and quality score.

Adwords gives you three marketing options to choose from and it’s up to you to decide which is best for your campaign…

  1. Cost per thousand impressions (CPM) – good if you’re running a blog with external advertising
  2. Cost per lead (CPL) – if your sales process starts on your website but cannot be completed there, e.g. bespoke solutions
  3. Cost per acquisition (CPA) – someone clicks on your ad, visits your website and signs up for a newsletter or places an order

Choosing whether to use CPM, CPL or CPA largely depends on the nature of your business, but it also depends on the specifics campaign you run in Google Adwords.

Here are 3 examples of how a business can choose different campaign options in Google Adwords:

Your business installs bespoke kitchens, and sells a range of kitchen appliances. You run a campaign to increase brand awareness and opt for the CPM structure with broad keywords. You’ll want to keep the daily spend relatively low.

 

At the same time, you’re marketing a new range of products with the option to complete the purchase on your website, and you will use the per acquisition (CPA) model. Your keywords should be specifically targeted to people already looking to buy. You’ll want to spend a bit more here.

For your bespoke kitchen installation service, where your customers can specify their requirements on your website but the actual sale takes place in their home, you will use the per lead (CPL) structure. Again, target people looking to buy and set your daily spend accordingly.

Ideally you would run a mix of these, to keep developing your brand awareness for long term sales, and marketing your current line for immediate results.

Adapt To Your Audience

Even if your ads are on the first page, that doesn’t necessarily mean you will also get results. The most important aspect of your ad campaign is your message, which needs to be concise and engaging.

Write them from the view point of potential customers: what would encourage your target market to click your ad, rather than your competitors’?

In order to get your message across and improve Adwords click through rate, you will have to spend considerable time re-wording and re-working your messages. Ads that go straight to the punch get more clicks, but you need to be specific, too. Regularly review all your ads and keep improving on your messages in order to enhance your Adwords click through rate.

AdWords Quality Score

Your click through rate affects your Adwords Quality Score. If you have a maximum bid of £1,50 and an AQS of 10 (the score can be between 1 and 10), and your competitor bids £4,00 but has a score of 6, your ad will be shown even though you’re paying less than your competitor.

Improving your ads and Adwords click through rate not only generates more business, it also has the potential of reducing your search marketing costs over time.

Three Tips To Improve Your Adwords Click Through Rate

1.Keep your ads per adgroup to the bare minimum Because ads in the same adgroup compete against each other, your time is best spent creating two or three great ads that speak to your audience. Analyse which ads are performing well and why, and build on their success.

2. Consider your call to action Offer a solution to a problem instead of simply promoting your product or service. ‘Save 20% on your weekend trip to Paris‘ is far more effective than ‘Click here for Paris weekend breaks‘.

3. Continuously review your campaigns Although time consuming, success in Adwords click through rates largely depends on continuous analysis of keyword performance, adgroup performance, and applying your insights to your campaigns. Search trends change constantly, and your competitors work hard to improve on their results, too.

Are you generating good success with your Adwords click through rate?

Are your clicks translating into business profit?

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