Google Ads Campaign Optimization: Strategies to Boost Your PPC Conversions

Google Ads is a powerful platform that has been used to grow many successful online businesses. However, it would help if you approached it the right way. Specific strategies can help you avoid time-wasting and boost your profits.

Experience and intuition are powerful factors in this endeavor. But everyone gets it wrong sometimes. And in marketing, you’re going to get it wrong a lot.

This article will look at the various ways to use data, experience, and intuition to your advantage. That way, your Google Ads campaign optimization will use the right balance of art and science that makes Google love your ads and your audience click on them. The result will be more fun and profitable in your campaigns.

Power of Data

Data is an incredibly valuable tool for modern businesses in determining strategy. Any company that’s not using this to their advantage is losing out on a lot of potentials.

You need to be able to accurately track results to understand the impact of the changes you’re making. According to research, the top three changes that have affected decision making have been:

• Greater use of specialized tools and techniques.
• Employing a dedicated data analytics team to inform strategic decision.
• Relying on enhanced data analysis.

Now more than ever, data can directly drive increased business performance. By measuring, tracking, and analyzing past performance data, smarter and more effective decisions can be made to deliver improved results moving forward.

In fact, certain core categories of data that most businesses already have can be directly applied to increase the return on investment (ROI) in your pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns, and drive higher revenue. Here are some other questions worth asking to evaluate your data mechanics:

• Historical Data – If you’re using a newly deployed bid management platform, does it integrate and apply enough historical data to fuel intelligent decision making right away?
• Funnel Cycle – If your click to conversion journey takes days, weeks, or longer, does your bidding solution intelligently address the lag and make informed and proactive decisions based on predicted performance?

Achieving peak performance in PPC is hard. But more than anything, the foundation to achieve it requires investing in a platform that collects the right quality data. Moreover, the ideal system enables you to unlock the potential of that data by applying sophisticated algorithms to automate bidding optimization at scale. Being data-driven in paid search demands it.

When And Where Does Experience Come In?

While the power of data analytics has clear benefits, it is still a tool, and therefore it’s only as good as the person who wields it. Deciding what data to assess, the intended results, and how to go about the process will come down to the decision-maker.

Digital marketing decisions are never made in a vacuum. Putting the results of data analysis in context is how a proper strategy is developed.

While data analysis is essential, digital advertisers’ experience and intuition are what’s needed to apply that information to strategies that serve the larger organizational goals. This ability takes on even greater importance when the data is split, with multiple paths forward or no clear correlations at all.

Even in today’s analytic-driven world, there will always be times of doubt, when advertisers have to make decisions without a clear answer in front of them. That’s where the experience comes in and helps you to figure out the meaningful insights from data.

Combining Data, Experience, and Intuition

Experience and intuition are guiding lights in any marketing endeavor. But at the end of the day, the numbers tell the full story. They are the ultimate determinant of whether or not your campaign is working.

This is why it’s so important to use data in conjunction with your gut feelings. That way, you can build a system that relies on facts — the money that is coming in (or not) — instead of shooting in the dark.

Difference Between Data-Driven and Data-Informed

Successful digital marketing finds its competitive advantage in data. Tracking fundamental metrics and success metrics vary between organizations. However, one common thread is the ability to apply smart thinking to the data. That way, you can amplify your results.

There are two helpful approaches to this:

• Data-driven – You let the data guide your decision-making process.
• Data-informed – You let data act as a check on your intuition.

Having a data-driven approach — or letting data drive your decision-making process — is typically a safe bet at first. You can leverage accurate models and find trends that you wouldn’t have otherwise. But there is a catch.

When you only look at data for Google Ads campaign optimization, unfortunately, you will be limited. It can never tell the full story, as a business is not just a series of numbers. You’re dealing with real people and real emotions.

Many businesses fall into the mistake of optimizing the little things by chasing the data forever, rather than letting their own intuition guide them. That’s where data-informed approaches — or those in which you make hypotheses first and let the data prove or disprove it — can be so useful.

A data-informed approach relies more on the human side of things. You can still let data give you objective criteria, but you’re starting by thinking harder and more in-depth from the start. If you know your products and users well, this is often a better place to start.

Pros of Data-Driven Approach

• Decision making is essentially out of your hands. The data tells you what to do for the most part. This can help you prevent bias.
• It’s easier to achieve results for clients who may want to have too much input on the decision-making process. You can appeal to the data as the ultimate authority in their Google Ads campaign optimization.
• You can identify trends in advance. It helps you uncover potential opportunities for the future or disasters to avoid.

Cons of Data-Driven Approach

• Focusing on data can sometimes cause you to miss the bigger picture. For instance, if you only focus on specific metrics like clickthrough rate (CTR), you might end burning through your budget too quickly.
• If you don’t have data that is statistically significant, it could hold you back. If you’re operating in a truly data-driven environment, you need to make sure you’re collecting enough data over a specific period to reach statistical significance.

Pros of Data-Informed Approach

• It’s easier to take the big picture into account. You can use other inputs to understand what’s going on and help you make a decision based on the whole landscape, not just one piece of data.
• You solve problems with out-of-the-box solutions. With data being only one input, you can use your experience and creativity to develop solutions that might not be obvious through data.
• You’ll be able to stay on top of trends. Early changes in user preferences rarely show up in data. If you’re solely focused on the data, you might miss a competitor or industry change that’s causing people to question the value of your product.

Cons of Data-Informed Approach

• Data can be cherry-picked to support the outcome you want. In a data-informed environment, your personal biases might come into play, whether or not you realize it.
• You might get choice paralysis because of too many inputs. When you’re allowed to use several sources to help make your decision, you’re going to end up with conflicting information. That can be hard to reconcile.
• Outside decision-makers can more easily sway you. This can lead to a lax approach to tracking and monitoring data in immature organizations.

Using a tool like PPC Signal helps you use the power of data and machine learning. You can handle larger accounts much easier, making this a hassle-free part of any online marketer’s arsenal. If you use it just a little bit each day, you’ll start to see excellent results over time.

Google Ads Campaign Optimization with a Data-Driven Approach

Due to the recent growth and advancement in digital advertising, data-driven decision making has become a crucial part and parcel of most businesses. Data-driven decision making entails making decisions that are backed up by hard data rather than making decisions which are only based on observation.

Using a data-driven approach for Google Ads campaign optimization can provide better ROI.

Let’s look at an example:

In the above picture, you’ll be able to see a signal which tells you the cost-per-conversion is moving 5 points upwards since Aug 26, 2020. It also shows the current and previous cost-per-conversion value, which is $798.3 and $57.6, respectively.

Being a digital advertiser, you know that having a high value of cost-per-conversion results is draining your budget so quickly. You can also see different factors, such as the fact that cost-per-conversion goes up if your quality score is getting worse.

Now let’s look at some critical factors to improve Google Ads campaign optimization:

Preliminary Market Research

Market research is the lifeblood of any PPC campaign. Unfortunately, far too many marketers jump into their campaigns without understanding who their target audience is.

There are some crucial steps you need to take when looking to understand your market better. If you neglect them, you risk wasting money as you invest it in the wrong area. Let’s look at some core steps and strategies to wrap your head around who exactly you’re serving and why:

Customer Avatars

A customer avatar is a representation of your ideal customer. Your market may be incredibly niche, or it could be broad. For instance, if you sell security systems to auto dealers, this is much more niche than selling sneakers to the masses.

However, regardless of how broad your market might be, you still need to break down your communication strategy to a 1-on-1 concept. Imagine the ideal person who is most likely to need, appreciate, and buy your product or service.

Your target market age range might be 18-40. Still, your ideal customer avatar should include a specific age and other characteristics to make your message more powerful and cut through the noise. For instance, a company that makes sneakers for men could have a customer avatar like so:

• Age – 31
• Country – USA
• Income – $40,000 USD
• Interests – Sneakers, pop music, soccer, pizza

Of course, your avatar will be more fleshed out. You’ll want to start with demographic information like above and get into more in-depth psychological profiles as you go on. It’s a key component of Google Ads campaign optimization.

Eventually, you’ll be able to map about what their day looks like, their fears, their desires, and other realities. Sometimes, you need to run campaigns and let other data come in before you’re ready to make such determinations. However, do not skip the avatar step. Even though it is time-consuming, it’s worth its weight in gold.

Competitive Research

A great way to get insights about your market is to look at what your competitors are doing. Look for what keywords they are commonly using in their ad copy, landing page, and more.

Go one step further by using spy tools that are available in the market. These let you input keywords and see who is bidding on them, how much it costs, and what kind of traffic they’re generating.

An added benefit of competitive research is that you can see the difficulty of bidding on a keyword. A particular keyword might have a massive amount of traffic, yet reliable Google Ads campaign optimization is all about bringing in leads and sales at the right price.

Google Ads campaign optimization Forums and Online other communities

This method doesn’t lend itself to automation. However, browsing online forums is a great way to see the kind of problems or desires your market has, as well as the language they use to describe it.

Sometimes, you can almost copy and paste this into your ads. If nothing else, you get to dive deeper into the psychology of the people who want to be clicking on your ads.

Persuasive Copy

If Google Ads campaign optimization were as easy as finding the right keywords and haphazardly putting them into a campaign, then every marketer would be a millionaire. However, that isn’t the case.

What you need is to study the foundational principles of successful advertising copy. There are four things to keep in mind that form the structure of any successful campaign. This is true whether you have a one-time sale type of product (shoes, clothes, sports supplements) or a longer sales cycle (driving leads to a consultation call).

These four steps are as follows:

i. Attention

If you don’t have attention, you don’t have a marketing campaign. Your Google Ads need to capture attention right off the bat. Remember that merely stuffing the right keywords in your ads won’t get the clicks you want. You need to use the right language and speak to their problems right away.

ii. Interest

Getting the initial attention is an important aspect, but you need to follow it up with details and information about your product. Buyers want as much information as possible before making a decision.

iii. Desire

Cold information and facts aren’t enough. It would help if you had a way to invoke desire. This includes photos, videos, and language that shows you empathize with your customers’ situation. Purchases are emotional actions.

iv. Action

Speaking of action, you can’t leave it up to your customers to know what to do. Furthermore, the simple act of saying “buy now” has a profound emotional impact.

Remember that you should always be leading your market through your funnel with demands and calls to action. That way, they know exactly how, when, and where to solve their problems by purchasing your product.

Analytics and Data Reviews

Periodic reviews of your data are crucial. You can have the best marketing mind in the world and the highest quality tools, yet you need to check in regularly. It helps you determine if you’re getting the results you need to justify your campaigns or not.

Have a team member compile a weekly report that shows problem areas and campaigns that are working well. That way, you essentially have an online sales funnel that only gets smarter over time.

Don’t be afraid to try out new ad types when you realize that they are converting better, even if there is a lack of data to prove their efficacy yet. You could uncover an opportunity for explosive growth.

PPC signal is an AI-based powering tool through which advertisers can identify the hidden opportunities and risks in their campaigns. The power of machine learning algorithms behind it provides an advertiser with complex data across different contexts. From keyword discovery to campaign optimization, PPC Signal is there to make your process more efficient.

Try PPC Signal now and find those things in your account which you never knew before.

Wrap Up

When it comes to Google Ads campaign optimization, you need to use all of the tools and strategies available. Data analysis, visualization, and more can all be powerful ways to boost your conversions.

In today’s world, you aren’t just competing with other local shops and businesses. You have global competition, and you need to do something that sets you apart from the rest if you’re going to capture your market’s attention and convert them into customers.

Tools like PPC Signal can be your secret weapon. You will be able to dominate your industry and work less in the meantime. That’s how you go from a small operation to scaling your business in a way that creates a massive opportunity for everyone on your team.