Let’s be honest: there are a lot of articles out there offering tips and strategies on how to make the most of your AdWords campaigns. We’ve written our fair share of these articles too.
As great as all this information can be, it can also have an unintended negative consequence: that you get so focused on this flood of tips and tricks that you begin to forget some of the key strategies that helped you lay the foundations for success in the first place.
Obviously, you don’t want this to happen—and neither do we! That’s why we’ve assembled a list of 5 essential AdWords strategies that you may have forgotten in recent months. By remembering (and incorporating) these essential strategies into your AdWords campaign, you’ll be able to improve your return on investment and gain new leads and customers.
1) Ad Extensions
Just about every marketer tinkered with ad extensions when they were first launched—with location extensions, product extensions, extra site links and more, there was a time when just about every AdWords article seemed to be focused on what these add-ons could deliver to your campaign.
The thing is, that wasn’t the end of ad extensions. Google has continued to release new extensions to help make your ads more engaging than ever before. With affiliate location extensions, structured snippets and other new features, there are myriad ways to gain the attention of your customers. There are even promotion extensions that highlight current sales or deals to encourage potential customers to take immediate action.
On average, implementing a new extension will increase your clickthrough rate by 10 to 15%. The fact of the matter is that you should try any and all ad extensions that relate well to your company—and implement them on all your AdWords campaigns! Adding extensions at an account level will ensure a higher clickthrough rate for every campaign.
2) Rotation Optimization
One of the biggest challenges of any AdWords campaign is determining which ads perform the best for reaching your campaign goals. This is especially true when testing different calls to action. Because of this, many campaign managers decide to rotate their ads evenly—an option offered for AdWords campaigns to provide consistent delivery of different ads.
The problem with this tactic? Rotating your ads evenly fails to take into account key pieces of background data for individual searchers. It also tends to result in a more time-consuming process for determining which ads work best—quite often, busy campaign managers don’t have the time or resources to decide which one was truly the most effective.
A better option is to select an optimized ad rotation. With a single click, you can let Google do the work for you by either optimizing for clicks or conversions. With this solution, Google will automatically account for vital information such as a searcher’s device, search history and even time of day to determine which ad will best help you achieve the highest number of conversions and clicks.
3) Test Multiple Copy Options
You might be tempted to brush this off as one of the most basic facets of AdWords, but an optimized ad rotation won’t do you much good if there’s only one active ad for each campaign.
If you’ve been working with AdWords for a while, it’s understandable that you might think you don’t need to work with multiple copy options anymore. If you’ve crafted an ad that seems to be delivering solid results, there isn’t much need for you to keep coming up with new copy, right?
Wrong. With only one set of copy, your messaging limits your potential reach and engagement. For example, let’s say you were running a course to teach people how to use AdWords. What are your primary selling points to generate clicks and seminar signups? For some people, it might be a low price. For others, it might be a course that can be completed in multiple sessions, or in a short amount of time.
With multiple copy options, your ad rotation settings will be able to optimize your content based on what will best appeal to the individual searcher. If low cost is a top priority, your “low price” ad would be the best fit. But if you limit yourself to a single ad that highlights how quickly your course can be completed, that potential customer might overlook you altogether.
4) Brand Bidding
With so many other keywords to focus on, bidding on your brand name might seem a bit redundant. This is a trap that frequently ensnares both new and veteran AdWords users.
The reality is that even if your brand is relatively well-known, bidding on your brand keywords should be a top priority. If you’re not bidding on your brand terms, there’s a good chance your competitors will do exactly that in an effort to entice your customers to use their services instead.
Not only does brand bidding help you keep your competitors at bay, it can also lead to an impressive spike in your own clickthrough rate. One study found that companies that also had a branded ad appear when someone searched for their brand terms experienced a 157% increase in clicks.
Best of all, brand terms typically have a lower cost per click, allowing you to dramatically improve profitability on your AdWords campaigns.
5) Adjusting Match Types
Selecting keywords for your campaign is one thing, but the wrong match type can completely derail even the best ads. Have you considered how your campaign’s match types are affecting your AdWords results recently?
Many marketers choose an Exact Match Type when first starting their PPC campaigns. This is a good idea when your budget is limited and you can’t afford to waste money on clicks that don’t turn into conversions, but this isn’t necessarily your brand’s best option for long-term success.
As your budget increases and you learn from your current AdWords campaigns, sticking with an Exact Match Type could ultimately limit your potential reach. Neil Patel suggests that rather than taking a “set it and forget it” attitude, experienced AdWords users should experiment with broad match modifiers and negative match types to expand your reach without hurting your budget.
Fine-tuning your match types may require some trial and error, but it could significantly improve the reach and effectiveness of your ads.
Conclusion
As you can see, many of these AdWords strategies are surprisingly simple — some of them only require a few extra clicks to set up and implement! Unfortunately, some marketers fall into the trap of confusing simplicity with unimportance. Don’t be one of them.
By giving these small details the attention and respect they deserve, you can dramatically improve your clickthrough rate, conversions, and other key metrics that matter most to your company. Don’t wait around! Now that you’ve remembered these strategies, start using them today.
