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Tag: CPC

  • How To Improve Your Google AdWords Quality Scores

    Quality Score (QS) is easily the most mysterious metric in Google AdWords. PPC gurus have passionately spoken about its importance. As digital marketers, we’re constantly working towards improving the QS of our keywords. Let’s take a look at how we worked on improving QS for a client who we’ve been servicing for three years.

    The client’s selected keywords were of medium priority in terms of conversions, but had relatively low QS. The only way to get the best possible results from them was to improve their QS and lower CPCs.

    How did we achieve this? The effort was twofold. The first and most important step was to ensure relevance between our ad copies, keywords, and LPs. We tested using the keyword in headlines and display URLs, and tailored landing pages to include the keywords.

    The second step was to ensure that we were giving the keywords a chance to see a good CTR through a better average position. This was done by increasing bids for a few days.

    One of our key phrases was “quick business funds.” The ad copy running at that time looked like this:

     Business Funding

    Get The Capital You Need Now.

    Fast & Easy. Sign Up Online!

    Xyz.com

     As you can see, the messaging was generic. We then introduced ad copy that included the key phrase:

    Quick business funds

    Get The Capital You Need Now.

    Fast & Easy. Sign Up Online!

    Xyz.com

    Did we notice an instant change in QS? No, but our patience and investments in CPC paid off. After a couple of months, we found that 11 out of 23 keywords had score improvements. The table below highlights the improvements in three of the tested keywords:

    QSThe improvements in QS had a positive impact on Average Positions, CTR, and Average CPC as you can see below. It’s important to mention that the bid prices for these keywords remained the same.

    QS 2

    A combination of ad copy testing and bids brought about the improvements we were chasing. In due course of time, we found our average CPC dropping, marginally at first, but significantly in the case of expensive keywords.

    The basis for such a strategy was to insert the keyword into the ad copy in a clever way. You’re often confronted by keywords that don’t directly speak to your product or service. But if these keywords can be highlighted with a unique perspective, there is a lot you can gain as a pay per click advertiser. For example, you’re offering just headphones for sale. Though you don’t offer earphones, keywords around that theme could be crucial for you. If you were to target a user with messaging such as “Why go for Earphones? Get more with Headphones”, you could possibly strike gold on Google. Your Quality Score is bound to increase for such keywords, provided your landing page offers the right experience.

    In addition to this strategy, never underestimate the importance of Ad Extensions catered to the keyword. Google offers advertisers an array of ways to connect with a user, given that there is only so much one can do with 130 characters worth of ad copy. Using Sitelinks, Callouts, Snippets, and other extensions, there are many ways to achieve improved  performance. Tailoring your extensions to a particular campaign, ad group, or even a keyword can help you boost Quality Score in unimaginable ways. The more relevance you earn, the more value you can obtain.

  • LinkedIn or Facebook: Where should you advertise?

    Facebook and Linkedin AdsLet’s face a fact.

    Both Facebook and LinkedIn are possibly the best advertising platforms digitally, not only socially. Want to target the mass, Facebook’s CPM rates are a boon for you and looking to target the CEOs and CIOs of the world, head to LinkedIn. This is basically how the world loves to classify social media advertising, which may not entirely be wrong.

    With minimum spending caps being ridiculously low as compared to traditional websites (news sites being the favorite), Facebook and LinkedIn have heralded a new dawn of reaching people. We’re not letting in Twitter in this discussion as the price points, reach capability and available audience type are very different as compared to the two in focus here.

    So as a digital marketer, where should you be heading to? What’s the best that you can tap in your available budget, objective and time frame? Let’s see which platform fits the bills in these three criterions:

    1. Budget
      At the very outset, let’s spill the beans that Facebook is far more affordable than LinkedIn. This can be safely said at least in the CPC and CPM factors. LinkedIn is still a couple of times more expensive than Facebook. There is a very critical reason here; LinkedIn is still a smaller and more focused community. Facebook is huge and really diverse, which gets the luxury advertising concept, that focus is expensive and mass is cheaper always. Want to target a niche segment or audience similar to your current customers? Spend more and go for LinkedIn. Want to build a huge brand affordably and by huge we mean, in terms of eyes only? Go for Facebook.
    2. Objective
      Brand building has traditionally been Facebook’s forte owing to its CPM capability and affordable rates. Brand reach and customer positioning is LinkedIn biggest win, thanks to designations and place of work data availability and correctness.
    3. Time-frame
      This is where Facebook wins hands down. There is a famous digital saying that you can become a Facebook hero in a few hours, overnight is passé. Basically, get a thousand dollars, divide it 80:20 to CPM and CPC respectively, set a time frame of two weeks and you might just be called to the next industry summit, all thanks to Facebook. LinkedIn, on the other hand, takes it slow but does the job really well. You need to hit the CEOs and stay exclusive, LinkedIn will do it so perfectly that there’s a possibility that no one below B-level would ever know of your brand.

    Plan your advertising platform smartly. It’s not always what messaging you put across; it needs to be on the right platform as well.

    Image Source: Screaming Lunatic Design Agency