If there’s one thing holding marketers back when advertising online, it’s their budget. However, you may not need to constantly increase your budget to improve results. Instead, you just need to make your money stretch that little bit further. Today, we’re going to investigate some of the most effective ways to achieve just this.
In 2021, PPC is critical to the digital marketing strategy, but you don’t need to put yourself into financial jeopardy just to afford ad campaigns.
Calculate Impression to Conversion
Do you ever feel as though the metrics provided by Google are lacking somewhat? Well, we happen to agree. Therefore, we recommend adding your own metric to your analysis, impressions to conversion.
When measuring the performance of your ad campaigns, you probably look at conversion rate and click-through rate. However, it’s often difficult to decipher performance because campaigns can have a great CTR and a poor conversion rate (and vice versa). What happens then? Should you prioritize the campaigns with the higher conversion rate or the higher click-through rate?
In our opinion, it’s better to drop both and get the answer from one metric instead. As you’ve probably guessed, this metric is impression to conversion. With just one column in Google Analytics, you learn which campaigns are performing well and which are struggling.
Essentially, this metric determines the number of conversions you receive compared to the number of impressions. Normally, it’s presented as either a percentage or as the number of conversions for every impression.
Adding ITC to Google Ads
If you don’t have much experience with Google, please don’t click away just yet because you don’t need to know much. Instead, head into your Google Ads account and you should see ‘Columns’ toward the top. Once here, there’s an option to modify columns and choose a custom column.
Luckily, Google accommodates those who want to add custom columns, so you only need to enter the calculation before then naming your custom column. To prevent confusion, it’s best to name the column ITC or ‘impressions to conversion’. For the formula, it’s simply the number of conversions divided by the number of impressions. Once you’re ready, click on the ‘Save’ button and you’ll see the column appear in your analytics. Now, it’s easier to determine the performance of your campaigns and make better decisions. Ultimately, this means making your budget go further.
Remove Vanity Metrics
On a similar topic, we find that some marketers and businesses pay attention to metrics that add no value to the overall strategy. However, the issue with vanity metrics is that they may not be as cut and dry as first thought. For example, there isn’t a universal list of vanity metrics because it differs from one strategy to the next.
This year, we encourage you to think about what you’re trying to achieve - in this case, budget optimization - and whether your metric columns contribute to the story. If they don’t, get rid of them. One way to identify vanity metrics is to consider your use of them; if you haven’t looked at a particular column for several weeks, you probably don’t need it anymore.
Remember, you now have impressions to conversions to learn about the performance of ad campaigns. From here, only keep those that contribute to budget optimization. Often, marketers complain that there’s too much data and not enough time to consider it all. Well, that’s because you don’t need to consider it all. Instead, you only need to consider the metrics pertaining to your goals.
If you’re on a small budget, for instance, you won’t find much value in the Search Impressions Share metric. Why? Because you already know that competitors are bidding more money than you; you can’t do anything about this.
When you focus on only the most relevant metrics, you make better marketing decisions because there are no more distractions. As you know, better decisions also mean an improved utilization of your ad budget.
Focus on Exact Keywords
Next, those with a small budget should also think about focusing on exact keywords this year. In fact, you should be doing this already because it makes sense for businesses of all budgets, but it has even more value for those tightening the purse strings.
In addition to adding exact keywords to campaigns, consider also researching long-tail keywords. Why? Because you can bid lower on these keywords due to the less intense competition. However, there’s a non-financial reason to bid on long-tail keywords - it allows for content that resonates with precise audiences.
So, you should focus on long-tail exact keywords. But what does ‘long-tail’ mean? In our experience, anything between two and five words offers the best opportunities. When you focus on single-word keywords, conversion rates are normally low, and the competition also drives up prices. On the other hand, keywords containing over five words aren’t worth competing for because the traffic is so low. Meanwhile, keywords between two and five keywords find the balance between competition, price, and traffic.
As an example, let’s say that you sell hats for people who like running. If you were to target hats, you’ll struggle to compete because this market includes all those selling winter hats, tennis hats, and all other types of hats. If you extend this further, you might target running hats. This is better because you’re now only competing against services in your niche. However, you can go even further with the following examples:
With these examples, you should find that there’s enough traffic to make the effort worthwhile, but you won’t have to spend too much money to place.
How do you find the right keywords for your strategy? If you’re using the Keyword Planner Tool from Google, we highly recommend clicking away instantly. Since it’s the most common tool, you can guarantee that all your competitors are also using It. Therefore, they find all the same keywords as you and you’re no better off. Furthermore, you’re also more likely to waste time with irrelevant keywords when using this Google tool.
Instead, try Ubersuggest, Google Search Console, or Trapica Suggest. With the latter, just type in a keyword and you’ll find alternatives in seconds. As well as suggestions, Trapica also highlights the audience size and the overlap compared to the original keyword.
When using the Google Search Console, we recommend searching for the keywords that send lots of traffic to your website. Then, learn more about why they’re so successful and how you can recreate this with other keywords.
Use In-Market Segments on Google Analytics
Finally, those who haven’t already got their Google ad accounts connected to Google Analytics should look to do this as soon as possible. Once you’re finished with this article, go into your ad account settings, and link it up to Google Analytics. Why is this so important? Because we want you to click on the Audience button when in Google Analytics before then selecting In-Market Segments.
If you haven’t been in this section of Google Analytics before, we think that you’ll appreciate this goldmine of information. Essentially, what you’re looking at is the segmentation of your website visitors. Ultimately, Google splits them up depending on what they’re seeking.
After adding a goal to the report, compare conversion rates between the different audiences. Once you find the best audiences, bring them into your campaigns and adjust bidding so that they have room to shine. Since you know that these audiences convert, it makes sense to increase bidding on them to generate a positive ROAS.
As an example, you might analyze the numbers and find that the best-converting audience is searching for ‘marketing services’. Not only is the group converting well, but the conversion rate for this market is above the average conversion rate for the whole campaign. Depending on your strategy, you might offer campaigns for this segment a 20% bid adjustment.
What does this mean? Well, Google can automatically recognize when somebody belongs to this audience. Rather than sticking with the universal bidding strategy, it adds up to 20% to the bid because it knows the importance of the individual.
When utilizing in-market segments, it suddenly becomes clear where you should spend your money because you’re aware of the audiences that are converting. Also, don’t think that you can’t use this strategy just because you’re using CPA bidding. We don’t think it’s ever a bad thing to know more about your audience and the converting groups. Over time, you’ll know which audiences to focus on and which to exclude from campaigns.
Improve Budget Optimization Today
With this, you have some fantastic advice for budget optimization in Australia (if we say so ourselves!). While following this advice, also think about using automation tools like Trapica for optimization in real-time. You don’t need a higher budget this year, you need to spend your money more wisely!
