Address Account Level Issues
Identify account level issues. There are some basic metrics that you should be looking at in your PPC account before expecting conversions to increase. Here are some items to examine:
- Impression Volume: In order to see conversions you need to make certain that your ad is being displayed to a sufficient number of searchers. Pay attention specifically to number of impressions so that you can consider whether or not you are bringing in an appropriate amount of traffic that will potentially convert. For example, if you are only seeing 50 impressions, unless you have a fantastic conversion rate, you can’t expect to see more than 50 conversions.
- Click Volume: You can’t expect people to go from searcher to customer if they aren’t clicking through from your ad to your site. Focus on CTR to ensure that your ad isn’t just showing, but that it is actually capturing your searchers’ attention and enticing them to continue on to your website. A low CTR can be attributed to several problems, for example:
- That your ad is showing, but has a low ad rank, which is causing a lower amount of clicks than you’d like. Again, if you aren’t giving searchers enough (easy) opportunity to click through to your site then it’s making it a lot tougher to attain conversions.
- Your ad is showing, but the ad text isn’t appealing or relevant enough to your searchers. If searchers are consistently overlooking your ad because they aren’t interested in the ad text or offering, then you can’t expect them to convert.
Resolve account level issues. Now that you’ve identified your problem areas, here are some steps you can take to improve those areas and get closer to seeing more conversions:
- Insufficient Impression Volume: If you have a low number of impressions, chances are that your keywords that aren’t being searched for, or perhaps your match types are too restrictive. To combat this,
- Make sure that your keywords are relevant, yet not so long-tail that they receive no search volume
- If you have all phrase or exact keywords and aren’t seeing a lot of impressions, try broadening your match types so that you can increase your reach.
- Low Click-Through Rates: Make sure that your ad position isn’t hurting the number of clicks you are receiving. If your ad position is too low on the SERP, your competitors with higher ad rank are likely to be receiving the majority of the clicks. To be sure that your ads are appearing in competitive positions, set up ad extensions, adjust your bids and focus on improving your Quality Scores
- Optimize your ad text. It’s possible that your messaging isn’t as appealing as your competitor’s and therefore it is not garnering a high number of clicks. Sometimes simply changing your ad’s wording can help with CTR
- Add negatives to your account so that you aren’t showing your ad for rogue search queries that aren’t relevant to your product or service offering. You don’t want to waste your time on impressions or clicks from searchers who are looking for something that you don’t offer because this certainly isn’t going to help with conversions.
