Is Your Google Ad Conversion Rate Any Good?
With all the talk about conversion rates and improving your website’s user experience, sometimes it can feel like a struggle to bring in new business. But, optimizing the way you work with your advertising campaign on Google Ads can have an immense impact on your profitability.
As Google’s Ads have become more sophisticated over time, the demand for higher click-through rates has also increased. In some industries, conversion rate optimization isn’t just a great practice – it is crucial to staying afloat in such a competitive market.
Google Ads: A (Very) Brief Introduction
First off, it’s important to understand that Google Ads still represents a large portion of the search engine giant’s overall revenue, with the overall revenue generated by Google Ads increasing substantially year on year. It’s not exactly a wild guess to say that Google really wants you to invest in what everyone once called “pay per click” marketing rather than search engine optimization (SEO).
Both will get your business seen on page one of the search results, but Google makes money off one and they don’t on the other.
Google Ads is a bidding-based advertising program designed to help advertisers promote their products and services to internet users. It’s considered one of the best CPC (cost-per-click) platforms on the web since it has a high rate of conversion combined with a low cost per customer acquisition.
It all begins with setting up a Google Ads account. This is where you’ll start to develop an understanding of the main areas you can optimize for, such as conversions and cost per click (CPC). Google Ads has five main conversion types – Lead Generation, Conversion Rate, Cost Per Action, Conversion Rate, and Cost Per Acquisition.
The data collected during each search involves several variables to measure conversion, including the number of people that click on the ad, the number of actions taken, and the cost per action. Advertisers can monitor these variables to determine which campaign strategies work best. And each conversion type can be further broken down into sub-types: landing page conversions, downloads, registrations, deals, and results. Conversion tracking allows advertisers to see what attracts visitors to the site, which then enables them to craft an advertisement that will lead to conversions and more business.
What Is A Conversion Rate?
Your conversion rate is a measurement of how well your ads are performing. It can tell you a lot about how relevant your ads are and whether or not you should continue to spend money on pay-per-click advertising. You’ll also find it easier to identify changes and make adjustments when tracking your conversion rate.
A conversion rate of 1% means your ads are being acted upon by up to one percent of your target audience. If you’re not getting very much action, you’ll want to consider increasing your conversion rate by paying more for the ad or getting creative with how you use it.
A/B tests are supposed to let you optimize toward the best version of your landing page. However, if you think about it, optimizing one landing page can potentially have you ignore millions of visitors who may have been potential customers. There’s got to be a more efficient way to improve our landing page accuracy. Through our analysis of this massive amount of data on landing pages and conversion rates, we were able to identify some common traits of the top converting landing pages. What do they have that you don’t? Believe it or not, there isn’t much standing between you, and conversion rates double or triple what you’re seeing today.
What Are Some Metrics You Want To Watch?
The statistics provided by Google Ads show a big picture of your paid search performance. You’ll want to make sure you understand what these numbers mean in terms of conversions.
Key data points include:
Average CPC (cost per click) – this number indicates the percentage of your cost for each impression of your ads (the amount you spend on each impression)
Conversion Rate – Google converts people who click on your ads into sales. It’s used to measure the performance of your ads, in order to determine the ROI (return on investment). By tracking your CPC, you can see which ads get your website the most visitors, and which ads are converting.
Cost Per Action – This is the cost for each visitor who takes an action on your site, such as making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or other services.
Consider Conversion Rates By Industry
There are industries where conversion rates are much lower than average. For example, legal professionals see an average conversion rate of 3.2%, compared to their e-commerce counterparts with a 10% average baseline. This is despite the fact that both have very similar opportunities for improving conversions with A/B testing and optimization.
However, e-commerce marketers looking at this data would be better served by comparing their performance against their industry’s peers to avoid getting envious of the high performers in finance and thinking they’re doing worse than they actually are.
For legal marketers, this could be a great opportunity for you to dig deeper and determine where your customers are dropping off in your funnel.
The most common reason for not hitting your average sign-up rate is due to lapses in communication. And there are several factors to consider when determining why your customers’ emails are not being opened. These can include:
Email Quality – Your ideal email should include valuable content with enough attention to detail that your audience will want to open and read the whole email. For more on this topic, you should check out Mailchimp’s blog.
Competition – The competition you face influences your rate of success. You might benefit from a higher conversion rate by targeting a more specialized niche or industry. But if you’re already losing your customers to more established competitors, it’s difficult to find an advantage in chasing an inflated conversion rate.
Offering a Discount – Your customers might be more likely to purchase your product if you provide them with a discount on their next purchase. If your clients never open your emails, consider offering a coupon or a discount coupon for this reason.
Customer Information – To convert visitors into customers, you must understand their buying habits. After signing up for your product, you should ask customers what they’re looking for, their problems, and what they’d like to buy. Using these questions, you can optimize your website and generate more leads. But it is important to make sure to keep all your customer’s information private and secure.
Final Thoughts
Hopefully, by now you’re thinking that Google Ads has tremendous potential to drive better results for your e-commerce marketing efforts. Or if you’re not using this strategy, you might be surprised at how much better e-commerce conversion rates can be achieved by adopting some of these practices. The key is in combining these proven strategies to create a comprehensive marketing plan for your e-commerce website that focuses on high conversion rate optimization.
Although it’s tempting to focus on earning higher returns from every marketing effort, it’s important to remember that conversion rate optimization is rooted in a holistic approach to content creation, web design, SEO, and marketing that ensures your website delivers a consistently high value to the customer. When you turn your website into an optimized customer journey, the total value you provide to your customers can be higher than your competitors’ websites at the same traffic volume. (Read more about how to determine the ROI of your digital marketing)
There are plenty of studies available that explain why you should implement these strategies in your marketing efforts. The most common reasons for doing so are:
- Improving conversion rates
- Attracting more customers
- Increasing profits
- Identifying weak spots
We hope this article has helped you better understand what strategies are available to improve your conversions and has given you more clarity in your decision-making process. When implementing any campaign, it is important to be sure you are getting the most out of your efforts. You should plan your testing and optimize your campaigns to increase conversions. This will also increase your customers’ retention rate and reduce your costs.
