5 Major Factors For Consistency in Google AdWords Conversions

Consistently Increase Your Conversion Rate With These Simple Google AdWords Solutions

Are you struggling to consistently meet a benchmark you've set for your monthly conversion rate on Google Adwords? It's not a great feeling when you continue to put hours of work into your Google AdWords PPC account, only to find the number of monthly conversions rising and falling. You can attribute this to seasonal traffic, holidays, back to school or anything else - but the reality is that there are ways to help find consistency in your numbers.

In this screenshot of one of our client's AdWords accounts, you will see that in the fall of 2016 their conversions (blue line) were sporadic. We were so excited to hit 117 conversions with the budget they had in August 2016, but were let down in the following months as the conversions fell. In 2017, we were able to slightly increase their online advertising budget (not just in AdWords) and make consistent changes which lead to consistently increasing the conversions, getting 111 conversions in July, 111 in August, 112 in September & 115 conversions in October.

Most smart AdWords advertisers are most concerned with these two things:

• Increasing the conversion rate
• Decreasing the cost per conversion

With numerous factors that influence these numbers, there are a myriad of ways to achieve these goals. Digital Marketing doesn't have any one-size-fits-all solutions - however, I'm going to outline a few of the major factors that will help any business consistently increase their Google AdWords conversions.

1. Display & Video Ads

In March we started a Youtube Campaign for this client. We've had ads running on the Display Network (affinity, interest, topic, keyword & remarketing targeting methods) since we first started with this client in 2015, but bringing videos into the mix gives us a whole new platform to reach potential leads. By using demographic, location & interested based targeting for video ads, we've consistently shown this client's service to his target market thousands of times in a whole new way. Our Youtube Campaign has brought in 90% new visitors - people who have never visited our site before. Using this to bring new potential customers to our website, our remarketing efforts will then come in to play reminding them of this product they were once interested in. This can in-turn increase your CTR & Conversions for both Display & Search advertising.

2. Remarketing Lists For Search Advertising

In March we also started an RLSA Campaign for this client - that is a campaign using Remarketing Lists for Search Advertising. This means that we now have a specific campaign on the search network, with it's own budget, specifically targeting people who have been to our website. We can now feel more comfortable spending money on broader keywords and phrases, because we're only showing this ad to people who have already shown interest in what we offer. Sometimes it takes people time to make decisions, and if they are going to google asking more questions, you want to be in front of them.  Though this campaign for this client doesn't have the highest CTR or Conversion Rate or the Lowest CPC - it's an affordable way to branch into "Brand Awareness" on the search network and works with all of our other campaigns to bring in consistent conversion rates each month. 

March is the month where we finally start to see our conversion rate stay steady around 10%-12% - whereas before it was dropping and rising month to month from 7% - 11%.

3. Consistently Adding Negative Keywords

When I look back in our AdWords Changes History for this specific client, I can see that around the first of August 2017 we started adding at least 20 negative keywords monthly to this client's Google AdWords account. This, no doubt, is a huge factor in seeing the monthly average number of Conversions, Conversion Rate, Click-Thru-Rate (CTR) and Position increase while seeing Cost-Per-Click (CPC) decrease. 

As we continue to manage and study Google AdWords we are realizing how extremely important narrow targeting is for getting consistent and increasing conversion rates.

If you have it in the budget to run a brand-awareness campaign, broad is great! But if you have a limited budget and want to make sure that at least 12 out of 100 people who click your ad call you or submit a contact form, you need to be specific.

This means that every week, or at least every month, you should be checking to see what people have searched for when they clicked on your ad. Then, determine whether or not you want to pay Google that $1 (or however much it is) for more people to click on your ad when they type in similar terms. Most often, if it has a CTR lower than 1%, you want to add it as a negative keyword. Learn more about the importance of adding specific keywords and negative keywords to your Google AdWords campaigns.

4. Facebook Ads

In August we also were able to get some extremely targeted Facebook advertising campaigns set up for this client and have been consistently spending about $300/month on Facebook ads. In 4 months it has cost $1,125 and brought in about 1,000 visitors to the website (it has on average a .91% CTR - some campaigns high into a 2% CTR). It has shown this client's brand & product to 50,000 people who have shown interest in products / services similar to theirs. Just like the Youtube Ads, it's using a completely different platform to bring in potential clients. It has also contributed to the AdWords campaigns consistently reaching their goal of over 100 conversions per month.

If you look at the chart you can see that in August 2017 we not only see the conversion rate stabilize more than ever, we also see the number of conversions go from a range of 50-90 per month to above 110 consistently. 

5. Increase Advertising Budget

In order to get all of these new campaigns running, of course we had to increase our client's monthly advertising budget. This money doesn't go to us for doing any more work - it goes directly to Google & Facebook and whatever other platforms are used. In 2016 this client was spending about $2,400 per month on Google AdWords campaigns. In 2017 that budget rose to $3,700 - that's a $1,300 per month increase. They also began putting $300/month towards Facebook. Altogether this was about a $1,600 / month increase in advertising spend. When a lead is worth $1,000 and you increase your leads by 20 per month, this is extremely valuable.

As I said earlier in the post, there are no one-size-fits-all solutions. I'm not saying if you do exactly what we did for this client it will bring in the same results or have the same value for your business. But regularly adding Negative Keywords and RLSA campaigns to keep your search advertising extremely targeted, running targeted display campaigns on other networks, and putting some of your budget towards brand awareness are definitely some of the first things to consider if you're wanting to hit a consistent number of conversions each month - and no additional advertising will ever be free, so you will have to increase your budget.