Google Ads – This post reveals best practices that will help make your Google ads profitable.
Here are things to start doing…
Google Ads
#1: Give Irresistible Offer & Discounts
What can you offer in your Google Ad campaign that is so compelling your prospect would be a fool to not take action? And how can you stand out from all the other ads your prospect is going to see in the search results?
The answer is your irresistible offer, which consists of the following 4 components:
Valuable Offerings: Your product or service must be more valuable than the price. That’s basic marketing 101. This doesn’t mean your offer has to be cheap. You just need to clearly define all of the value your product or service provides to your customer and make sure it outweighs your price tag.
Believable Offers: When you make an offer that appears to be too good to be true, then your prospect may be a little skeptical. So you must provide a believable reason for your offer.
For example, if you’re running a special sale, then you need to give a reason why you’re offering such a steep discount. The reason could be anything: clearing out inventory, end-of-the-year sale, celebrating an anniversary, opening a new store, your birthday, and so on.
#2: Reduce or Reverse Risk
Everyone is scared of getting ripped off online. One of the best tactics to minimize the risk to your customer is with a money-back guarantee. The money-back-guarantee puts all the risk on your business to deliver excellent service, or else you’ll have to give all the money back to the customer.
Whenever possible, we always recommend you include some kind of guarantee in your offer. It will improve your response rates and it’s another great way to differentiate yourself from your competitors.
#3: Use a Precise Call to Action
Keep it straight to the point, short and simple. I didn’t realize at the time, but those truly are words to live by, especially when you’re creating an irresistible offer for ads.
If you want your prospect to pick up the phone and call you, then make it crystal clear and simple to call you. Don’t expect your prospect to connect the dots or search around your website or landing page to figure out the next step. Use a strong call to action and keep it simple.
#4: Create a Compelling Ad Copy
With Google Ads search advertising, you pay only when people click on your ads. Therefore, your ads have two very important propositions:
- Attract qualified targeted prospects so they click on your ad instead of competitors’ ads.
- Exclude unqualified prospects so they do not see and click on your ads, wasting your ad budget.
That means more traffic, more sales, and less wasted money on unqualified traffic, which all leads to higher profits for you.
And there’s one more important job for your ads. Compelling ads with a high click-through rate (CTR) will boost your Google ads Score, which in turn will lower the cost per click of your keywords. So your ads will directly affect how much you pay per click for each of your keywords. Great ads will lower your costs while lousy ads will raise your costs.
There are 6 key components to your Google text ads:
- Headline
- Description line 1
- Description line 2
- Display URL
- Extension
- Call-outs
Headline
The headline is the most important component because it’s the first thing your prospect will read. Try to include your keyword in the headline of your ads because Google will bold the text, which makes it stand out from other ads. This also is the easiest way to ensure your ad is 100% relevant for the prospect searching.
Another great strategy is to ask a question in the headline. For example, if the keyword is “Los Angeles city surgeon” then a compelling headline is “Need a Los Angeles surgeon?” Not only is part of the keyword in the headline, but the question will get the prospect nodding her head yes. As all great salespeople know, just one yes is sometimes all it takes to start a chain reaction leading to the sale.
Google Ads allows 30 characters for your headline so make every letter count and use abbreviations whenever possible to keep your ads unique.
Description of Line 1 and 2
In your two description lines, reiterate the benefits of your service, state your USP, provide social proof, and/or describe your offer. And, of course, include your call to action. You only have 35 characters for each description line so again use abbreviations to fit more of your message.
Display URL
The display URL is an easily overlooked area of your ads. Don’t just copy and paste your domain name. Instead use your Display URL to include your offer, your call to action, your USP, or anything else that will make your ads stand out.
Here are three examples for a dentist to give you an idea of what you can do:
- domain.com/POP_Bags
- domain.com/Free_Cleaning
- domain.com/LA_Surgeon
Before we move on, I want to show you an example of a good ad and a bad ad copy, so you can see the difference.
Example of a Good Ad for the keyword “car repair”:
Same Day BMW Car Repair
24/7 Service… Within 2 Hours
$20% Off Coupon. Call Us Now.
As you can see, the advertiser is clearly targeting a specific niche – people with “BMW Cars”. They offer compelling benefits, including same-day repairs, 24/7 service within 2 hours. They have an offer of a $20-off coupon. And they have a clear call to action to call now.
Note that we could try to improve this ad by including the keyword in the title to make it more relevant to the search phrase.
Example of a Weak Ad for the keyword “car repair”:
[Name of Company]
family-owned since 1940 for all
your car repair needs. call now
The headline of this ad was the name of the company, which is not relevant to the keyword “car repair.” Unless you’re a big name brand, no one is going to recognize or even care about your name. It’s not compelling and there’s no congruence from keyword to the ad.
Also, “family-owned since 1939” is not a specific benefit. There’s implied benefit if the prospect puts two and two together and believes longevity equals good service. However, that’s a lot to ask and clearly does not follow the (keep it simple, stupid) KISS principle. Stick to explicit benefits rather than implied benefits in your ads.
Finally, the phrase “for all your appliance needs” is as vague as you could possibly be. This is an example of trying to be all things to all people, rather than solving a very specific problem for a very specific target customer.
#5: Build a Strong Landing Pages
At this point, your prospect has searched for your product or service. She found your ad to be compelling versus all of the other options. She clicked to learn more and landed on your website page. Now what?
Well, if you’re like a lot of first-time advertisers, then your prospect is now on your homepage scratching her head trying to figure out what just happened. The ad made a promise the homepage couldn’t keep.
That’s because your homepage is not an advertising landing page!
Homepages explain everything your business does, all of your products and services, and all of the different customers you serve. In other words, your homepage could never, ever, be 100% relevant to the keyword searched and the ad clicked. Do not make this mistake.
Instead, create a dedicated landing page that matches the keyword and the ad. The goal is to make the entire sales process easy, so your prospect is continually reassured they’re going down the right path.
The most important component on your landing page is your headline/Topic, which is the first thing your prospect will read. Your headline must grab their attention, reiterate the offer made in the ad, and compel your prospect to keep reading the rest of the page until they make a decision.
The copy of your landing page should again be relevant to the keyword searched and the ad clicked on. Include your Unique Selling Point, benefits of your product or service, details about your irresistible offer, social proof, the credibility that you’re a legitimate business, and a strong call to action.
#6: Measure Conversion Tracking
Conversion tracking for campaigns. If you skip this step, then you’ll never know which keywords and ads are generating sales and which are just losing money. In other words, you will not be able to optimize your campaign once it’s up and running.
Conversion tracking is simply the method of measuring sales generated by your Google Ads campaign. More specifically, you want to know which keywords and which ads are generating sales for your business. If some or all of your sales occur online with an e-commerce shopping cart, then conversion tracking is pretty straightforward. Just use the built-in Google Ads conversion tracking snippet.
The Google ads conversion tracking code can be found in your Ads account under “Tools and Analysis > Conversions.”
To create a new conversion, simply click on the [+ Conversion] button and follow the steps to define your conversion. Then add the small snippet of code to your order form thank you page or receipt page. This code is similar to Google Analytics code if you have that installed on your website, but it should be on only the final page after a customer completes her order.
Then, when a customer lands on your receipt page or thanks you page, Google will track the conversions in your Google Ads account automatically. There’s no reason not to install this before you turn on your ads, so you can get the data needed to monitor and improve your campaigns.
There is always that lingering question, what I an “offline” sales strategy, how will I track my promotions?
What if you generate your leads online, but you ultimately close the sale “offline” – over the phone or in-person – rather than on your site?
Well, you can’t add conversion tracking codes to your POS, so what can you do?
3 Tactics for Offline Conversion Tracking
- Create a conversion page in your sales process.
For example, send all of your customers to a special page to get their receipt, create an account online, or download an important document. Think of some way to get your customers to go to a web-page and add the Google Ads code to that page. Now you can track the sales.
- Use unique coupon codes in your ads and landing pages. If you use unique coupon codes in your ads and landing pages, then you can match the codes back to the ad and keyword that generated the sale.
- Use tracking phone numbers in your ads and landing pages. Unique tracking phone numbers can be matched to the calls and subsequent sales to the ads and keywords that generated the sale.
Over To You
Once conversion tracking is in place, then the time has finally come to log into Google Ads and set up your first search, display, re-targeting, or shopping campaign. We’ve come a long way and if you’ve been following along up to this point then there’s only one more hurdle to a profitable Google Ads campaign. The Google Ads interface makes campaign set up a breeze, but don’t blindly accept the default settings. A lot of them will get you into financial disarray if you do not monitor your active campaigns.
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