In the paid search world, you learn by testing. You test your CTAs, your ad copy, your images. You test your headlines, your placements, your keywords.
With all that testing, it’s easy to get worn out and think you’ve tried, well, everything to improve performance and increase conversion rates.
Don’t worry: you haven’t.
Whether you’re a business owner trying to grow your business, an account manager looking for new strategies, or a PPC specialist exploring tricks to have powerful campaigns, these six often-overlooked optimizations can increase your PPC conversion rate.
1. Run a branded campaign
Branded campaigns are essential when you’re in a competitive market. If you’re not bidding on your own name, there’s a chance your competitors are. A branded campaign will help you protect your brand name against competitors and deter them from getting your clicks, impressions, and conversions!
So how do we get started?
Here’s an example from one of our clients. First, we looked at our Search Terms Report and found a trend in searches that included our client’s branded name.
We did a search for the branded terms and didn’t find our client’s ads; instead, there were three of their direct competitors’ ads in the top positions.
Within a three-month timeframe, the branded campaign increased the overall conversion rate by 10% with 27 conversions!
Looking at the Auction Insights below, we found that competitors had 100% of all the branded traffic before we created a branded campaign for our client.
Although people are looking for your particular brand, if you’re not the first ad in the paid search, you’re giving the user a chance to look at a competitor. That might be enough for them to go to your competitor instead of scroll through the search engine result page (SERP) looking for your website.
Pro tip: Exclude converters so you don’t target the same people who are looking to purchase a second time.
2. Test branded ad copy: H1 vs H2
Now that we’ve set up a branded campaign, we are looking for the next opportunity for conversion rate optimization. It’s time to make an impact.
In this new era of shorter and distracted engagement, users are looking for a direct solution to their search at a glance. If you’re not giving that to them, they’re either scrolling past your ad or searching a new query.
Chilling.
With a branded campaign, we know users are searching for your brand, so why not put that immediately in the H1 where it’s the first copy they read?
Branded in H1:
Results showed a huge spike in conversion rate with the brand name in the H1!
The conversion rate for branded H1 compared to the branded H2 was almost a 9% increase in conversion rate.
Search impression share is another effective yet simple way to increase your average conversion rate. This metric shows you the percentage of impressions your campaign (or ad group or keyword) receives, compared to the number of impressions it was eligible to receive.
If you have a high-converting campaign with a low impression share percentage, this is a hidden gold mine. You’ll want to add more budget to increase the impression share and get your ads to show up more often.
Within two weeks, our conversion rate TRIPLED, and the campaign’s search impression share grew.
Landing page CRO is one of my favorite facets of PPC.
Because the conversion rate was at a low 2.70%, we wanted to test our button theory.
Variant W, the original landing page.
Variant U, the new variant landing page.
Within one week, the new variant with smaller video play button with added testimonials had a 9.32% conversion rate as opposed to the original variant that carried the 2.70% conversion rate.
Keep this test in mind next time you want to test a small change but aren’t sure if it’ll make any difference. Small changes can still produce huge results!
Why?
They provide a more granular view of a visitor’s behavior. You’ll be able to see which groups convert higher for your business and so forth. Most importantly, in-market audiences give you the power to advertise to the right people at the right time.
The campaign’s conversion rate did increase, but the CPA also dropped by 36% compared to the previous month!
I’m sure we’ve all been there at least once.
The intent behind someone searching for “sponsors/sponsored” has language that is speaking from a consumer or personal intent.
We looked at our ads to see if they satisfied a consumer or business intent.
The language in the headlines, “corporate” “sponsorship” and “event,” tells the searcher that these sponsorships are for businesses who may be on a corporate level.
Next, we checked out the landing page to see what language we were using…consumer or business?
The landing page itself reflects the intent for “sponsorships” and NOT “sponsors” or “sponsored.”
Pro tip: Find a high converting keyword in your campaign. Go to your landing page, CTRL + F the keyword to see how many times it’s mentioned on the page. Take note of the number of times it appears.
You should find that your highest performing keyword is placed on the landing page several times. Then do the same for a high-cost non-converting keyword. You’d be surprised at how little the keyword is mentioned on the page (if it’s mentioned at all).
We added the below keywords as negatives and expected conversions/CPA to decrease. In return, the conversions we do get should be higher qualified leads.
Results were astonishing.
The average conversion rate quadrupled from 2.39% to 8.22%, and lead quality improved! Since we were no longer showing up for empty promises (searches that gave us high impressions or clicks but no conversions), Google was able to show our ads to those highly targeted people who were converting for business sponsorships and not consumers looking for sponsors.
Here’s a comparison of what the search terms looked like before the negative keywords were added versus after the negatives.
If you’re a paid search specialist seeking new strategies, an account manager looking to expand, or a business owner simply learning the ropes, these six overlooked optimizations can increase your PPC conversion rate. Have fun and ride the wave!
If you have any questions or tried these optimizations, please reach out and share your results!
Author the author
Athena Pham realized early on she wanted to pursue digital marketing as a career and took a leap of faith and left formal education to take her freelancing skills to the next level. She found a home at Directive, a leading search marketing agency specialized in the B2B and enterprise space, and took her skill set to the next level. At Directive, she thrives as a PPC specialist and creates tangible ways to help her clients increase conversion rates daily.
This content was originally published here.