Getting Clicks But No Conversions — How to Find the Culprit

Are you struggling with high CTR but no conversions? It’s a common concern for many marketers, especially when you start out with Google Ads. It can be even more alarming when you see that your ads are attracting plenty of clicks, but they don’t translate to conversions.

If you find yourself in this frustrating situation, then it’s time to do some investigating. Let’s see how to improve conversion rate in your campaign.

How to Improve Conversions in Google Ads

This problem really boils down to one of two things — either your ad campaign or your website. One of the two is poorly-optimized.

Your website may look good on the surface, but it may be lacking in conversion rate optimization, which means it’s doing a poor job of nurturing trust with visitors and isn’t offering the best user experience.

Similarly, your campaign may be fully set-up, but inconsistencies in your ads, keywords, and landing pages can disrupt the flow, ultimately making your ads miss the mark with your target audience.

So, how can we fix this?

The Ad Campaign Checklist to Improve Conversions

Let’s consider each element individually. Firstly, you should put your ad campaign under the microscope to see if it is truly on point. Make sure you’re on top of the following:

Relevancy Matters

1. Balance your match types. By relying heavily on broad match types, you can get lots of traffic, but it will be unqualified, and less likely to convert.
2. Negative keywords are quality filters. Keep an eye out for irrelevant search queries and add them to your campaign as negative keywords. This will improve targeting so you attract more relevant traffic. Check the PPCexpo Search Query Report to discover new keywords and negative keywords.
3. Don’t overuse ad extensions. They can boost your click rate, but conversions are more important so don’t keep extensions on if there is no significant return in conversions.
4. Use dynamic keyword injection (DKI). This feature can boost relevance. Alternatively, you can try the responsive ads feature.

Targeting

1. Verify location. You want to be sure that your ads are being shown to the right people. Otherwise, you’ll just be getting vanity clicks that are useless to your bottom line.
2. Timing is crucial. People may be interacting with your ads at a certain time of day, but they have no intentions of following through. By running a click performance report, you can determine the best time to run your ads.
3. Long-tail keywords are best. Bid high on these and set them as an exact match. This will attract very targeted traffic, bringing in users who are further along the customer journey.
4. Think about devices. Your ad may be underperforming on a certain device. Try bidding low in these instances, and invest more of your budget on the devices that are generating better results.

Analysis

1. Enable conversion tracking. It’s imperative that Google Ads data is being synced with your Google Analytics goals data.
2. Consider business objectives. Your campaign should be aligned with your goals. For example, if you want more brand awareness, try video ads to see a surge in engagement.
3. Check for click fraud. It may be possible that your clicks are fraudulent, and therefore invalid.

How PPCexpo Can Help Your Campaign Checks

PPCexpo has an array of reports you can use to gain valuable insights from your campaign. Try running these two to enhance your optimization:

• Account Audit Report — This measures more than 60 critical settings, generating in-depth analysis in less than a minute. You can review these results and optimize where needed.
• What’s Changed Report — Testing is a major part of PPC advertising success. This report is ideal for analyzing the life cycle of your ad campaigns.

The Website Checklist to Improve Conversion Rate

After someone clicks your ad, they’ll arrive on your landing page. Immediately, they will begin sizing up your business, your brand, and your products. If your landing page isn’t ready for such scrutiny, then people will be quick to judge, and almost as quick to leave.

First impressions matter big time in online marketing, especially when you are trying to sell products and services. The biggest challenge is instilling trust in your brand, as without it, nobody will ever buy from you.

Take a good look at your website now, and ask yourself the following questions to determine whether or not your site is one that people will believe in.

Relevance

1. Strong brand messaging. You only have a few seconds to grab your visitors’ attention. Make it count.
2. Consistency between ad and landing page. The language, keywords, and offer should be aligned because if it’s not, people who clicked will quickly lose interest.
3. Clear calls-to-action. It should be strong and clear, speaking directly to the needs of your audience.
4. Less is more. Don’t overwhelm people with oceans of text and superfluous details. Give them only what they need.
5. Recency matters. Keep your landing page up-to-date, and tie it in with current affairs or recent developments where applicable.

User Experience

1. Engage through interaction. A blog can help establish your brand voice and position as a thought leader, and through a live chat or forum, you can instigate a conversation with your audience.
2. Speed is vital. Remember that you only have a few seconds — a slow loading website is the bane of any marketer’s hopes of conversions.
3. Design should delight. With a clean and clear user interface, your website can have an attractive look that keeps people engaged, and also makes it easy to navigate.

Perceived Value

1. Competitive pricing can sway the undecided. High prices are a huge deterrent, and sometimes all it takes is a little reduction to convince people they are getting value for money, which helps you get more conversions.
2. Perks encourage purchases. Slogans like “free delivery” or “lifetime warranty” can push more people through your sales funnel.
3. Name-drop major affiliates. If you have already sold your product to big brands, mention it. This instills more confidence in your brand and their products.

Social Proof

1. Include trust indicators. Add customer testimonials, trademarks, awards, and achievements to your site to nurture more belief with prospects.
2. Brand awareness is important. Nobody is going to buy from a completely unknown quantity. By building brand awareness online, people will soon get familiar with your company.
3. Social interaction counts. Don’t be a stranger online — if someone interacts with your posts on your social media channels, make the effort to respond and engage in conversation. This will help humanize your brand.

Traffic Means Little Without Conversions

Getting people to your website is just the beginning — you need to convert that traffic for your ad campaign to be a success. This takes considerable time and patience to learn and requires you to adopt an analytics-driven approach to your marketing.

With frequent analysis and optimization, you can identify problems in your campaign and on your website, and make changes when and where they’re needed to improve conversion performance.