You’re ready to advertise online. You’ve set up an account with Google Ads, or maybe your ads have been running for a few months, and… nothing. What now? If you’re overwhelmed trying to manage your digital ads and aren’t seeing results, read on for the top 5 mistakes we see people making and our tips on how to use Google Ads.
How To Use Google Ads So You Actually Get Conversions
1: You’re not optimizing your Google Ads often enough.
When was the last time you went into your Google Ads account to check and see if your keyword bids were high enough, or if your ads were being impactful? If you’re not doing this regularly, you may be missing out on a chance to optimize your ads and generate more leads.
Here are two things you should do to get started optimizing your ads:
- Check your bids.
Visit the keywords tab regularly to change any bids that need to be increased. - Check Google’s recommendations. In the sidebar, select “recommendations” for ideas on what else you can do to encourage people to click on your ads, including adding ad extensions. (Just keep in mind that sometimes Google makes suggestions that will lead to you spending more money with them, so take their suggestions with a critical eye.)
2: You’re only using broad match keywords without modifiers.
Broad match keywords seem exciting because they mean your ads will show for variations of your keywords, not just the keywords on your list. However, they can also tank your click through rate and quality score by leading Google to show your ads for irrelevant searches.
For example, if you sell chocolate cake, using chocolate cake as a broad match keyword may also lead search engines to show that ad to people who are only looking for chocolate, or for other flavors of cake. That’s no good if you’re only looking to sell chocolate cake.
If you’re running ads for the keyword chocolate cake, try adding a + to the most important words in the phrase. Our sample keyword would be written as +chocolate +cake. Using keyword modifiers like this will make sure your ads show for phrases that include all of the words in your keyword, or close variations thereof like acronyms, plurals, and misspellings.
In the example above, your ads would show for chocolate wedding cakes and chocolate birthday cakes, but not vanilla cake.
3: You’re not using conversion tracking.
How do you know if someone becomes a customer after viewing one of your ads? If you’re not using conversion tracking, you don’t. It’s hard to prove the ROI you’re getting from your ads without this.
Your web developer can help you set this up using Google Tag Manager.
4: You’re directing traffic to your home page instead of a specific landing page.
You want to make making a purchase as easy as possible. People love instant gratification, so the more you ask them to do, the more you decrease your chances of getting a conversion.
If you’re advertising a particular product or category of product, create an ad group that sends them directly to that page, not your site’s home page.
5: You’re not allocating enough funding for the ads to be successful.
If your budget is too low, your ads will stop running when the allocated budget runs out. If your ads have already exhausted their daily budget by the time your target audience gets home from work at 6pm, then they’re not reaching their full lead gen potential.
Click on your ad campaign’s daily budget for an idea for what results you can expect from a higher budget, and what the spend would be. When we run ads for our clients, we highly suggest starting with at least $500 spend per month.
With the right strategy and optimization, you can turn a struggling Google Ads campaign around and start reeling in new customers for your business. If you still have questions about how to use Google ads and would like a professional ad strategy for your business, reach out!
Learn more about how we can work with you to help you see better ads results.