Paid Search Strategy: Top 5 Tips To Improve Your Paid Search Performance
Paid Search Strategy: Top 5 Tips To Improve Your Paid Search Performance
Paid search is one of those things that businesses love, for many reasons. For one, it drives traffic to their website. For two, it delivers results fast. And if you’re a small business owner with products and services to sell, you don’t have time to wait for leads and conversions. However, it can be tough when your paid search campaigns just aren’t working the way you hoped they would. If your current paid search strategy isn’t bringing you leads, sales, conversions, or clicks, then it’s time to think of how you can improve your campaign. In this blog, we talk about the top 5 ways you can improve your paid search performance.
1. Add Call-To-Actions
Not only should you add call-to-actions to your copy, but you should make them intentional and clear. Some of the best call-to-actions, or CTAs, are things like:
- “Buy Now!”
- “Call 24/7!”
- “Schedule Today To Redeem [Offer]!”
- “Call Us Now!”
You don’t want your ad copy to just sell your business or talk about what your business does. You also want it to tell people what they should be doing next. Otherwise, you could be losing clicks and conversions if there’s no clearly defined action you’ve asked your customers to take. Using words like “now” or “today” is a great way of telling your customers that you want them to take action immediately. Words like that in your CTA’s create a sense of urgency. You don’t want people to take action tomorrow, next week, or a month from now.
2. Increase Your Budget – And Bids!
If you can swing it, increasing your budget will give you more room to improve your paid search campaign. While one of the many benefits of a paid search campaign is the ability to set any budget
you like, you shouldn’t get stuck on this idea. Remember that cheap isn’t always best – and good marketing is costly! However, good marketing also gets you leads and sales so many might say it’s worth it. That being said, it never hurts to increase your ad budget. If you’ve set a small budget for yourself, you may find that it’s depleting before a days end.
Not only should you look at increasing your budget, but you should also look at increasing your bids when possible. If you are bidding only a few cents on a specific keyword, for example, you may be disappointed to see a lack of clicks or impressions. This could be because your competitors in the same market and industry are outbidding you.
3. Pay Attention To The Keywords
When it comes to your paid search campaign, you should focus on the high-performance PPC keywords, build out your negative keyword list, and pause those keywords that aren’t performing well. One of the biggest struggles businesses face is trying to find the right keywords that drive quality leads and sales. Keywords need to be relevant to your business and to what you do. Not only that, but they must be targeted to a specific set of people you want to reach. This is why tracking the campaign and strategy is as important as the campaign and strategy itself. You can let the data tell you all you need to know about your keywords, so you can make the decision on what keywords to use and what keywords to put on the chopping block.
Remember that a paid search campaign costs you money, so you don’t want to waste that money on just anyone. Even though your goal may be to reach as many people as you possibly can, you don’t want to reach the wrong people. This only means you’re paying for clicks from people who never intended to use your products or services. Keywords can help you target the right people – the people who are searching for you and want to hear from you.
There’s also more to it than just that. If you want to earn high quality scores, your text ad needs to be relevant to those keywords you’re bidding on. These scores will help determine where your ad will appear and what your cost-per-click (CPC) is going to be. Consider putting the keyword you’ve bid on in the text itself to show Google and the person searching that your ad is relevant to their needs. Some questions to ask yourself when it comes to the keywords you’re using include:
- Which keywords are performing well?
- Which keywords aren’t performing well?
- Have you paused the keywords that aren’t performing well?
- Do you have a list going of negative keywords?
4. Revisit Your Landing Pages
Landing pages often get forgotten about in a paid search campaign because they’re not directly in the ads account. However, they play a crucial part of your strategy. Here are some ways you can improve your landing page to help improve your paid search performance.
- Make Your First Impression Count
Did you know it only takes 1/10th of a second for us to formulate an opinion, or a first impression? It goes without saying that first impressions are everything – even when it comes to your paid search campaign. You have one chance to grab your customer’s attention.
- Show The Social Proof
Don’t be scared to brag! Tell your customers how amazing you are – and prove it! In your landing pages, share your star rating, how many years you’ve been in business, the number of reviews you have on Google, badges and awards you’ve earned, and the number of customers you have.
- Use More “Don’t” Statements
Address their objections by using more “don’t” statements. For example, “Don’t Wait All Day For Service!”
- List Out The Benefits
List out all your benefits and what makes you unique. Why should people choose you? What is so great about your company? For example, maybe you offer same-day service, or maybe your phones are open 24/7. Whatever makes you great, talk about it.
5. Create New Ad Text
Remember how we said above that first impressions are everything? Well, it’s true. Perhaps your paid search ads aren’t performing because the ad text doesn’t make sense, or it’s lacking some 
important information the user is needing or wanting. In order to improve your paid search performance, you should be regularly testing and changing ad text copy. This can help you determine what’s working well and what isn’t. Not only that, but if you’re offering a sale or special, it likely changes all the time. You want the ad text to reflect the most current, up-to-date information, right? For example, if it’s summer and your ad still says “Get 50% Off This Spring!” then it’s clear the company isn’t keeping up with their marketing and that could turn people away. Your ad text shouldn’t be confusing or too much to digest. Make your ad text simple, to the point, with a clear call-to-action.
As a business, you should also look into adding sitelinks to your paid search ad. Sitelinks help generate more clicks and traffic. They are links to other pages, or sections of pages, that appear under your written ad text. These links can take people to other parts of your website that may be relevant. For example, you can link to your Contact Us page, your About Us page, Your How It Works Page and more.
But How Can I Do All Of This Without Any Marketing Experience?
You may be reading this blog wondering how you’re supposed to ever find the time or the resources to really focus on your paid search strategy. You’re a stellar business owner, but you don’t know much about marketing. By hiring a company that manages all of this for you, you can focus on your day-to-day without having to worry so much about how your campaign is performing. Paid search is truly one of the best ways you can generate leads, increase sales, and grow your brand. However, it’s only effective if you have the right tools and know how to manage it. At VitalStorm, we are experienced in all things home service and local services, and we have helped many companies with their paid search efforts. We are here to also help you with yours!