Adwords Hacks

Top Hacks for Adwords

1. Optimise Quality Score
Add 10% branded keywords to increase CTR
Delete the bottom performing 25-30% of your account, reallocating that budget to remarketing

2. Write ‘Outstanding’ Ad Copy
Most ads are boring; and very similar to all the competition.
Try ads that appeal to people’s emotions, like some of these:

PPC Hacks — http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2014/09/30/adwords-hacks

Use the Swiss Army Knife Technique to build emotional Ad Copy:

Adwords — http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2014/02/11/average-click-through-rate#hunting-unicorns

You can appeal to searchers emotions if you can establish things like their ‘enemy’ and what things a potential customer loves.
You must write interesting copy, that includes a USP.

2b. Test Ad Copy
To find the most effective copy, you must test, test and test ad variations.
The average small-to-medium-sized-business has just 18-20 ads in their whole account.
Try and test 40-50 variations of your advert, even if it’s done over the space of a year.
Try different punctuation, capitalisation, try emotional ad copy, try hyphens, try different calls to action. If you can do this, it’s not hard to outperform the competition in most niches.

According to WordStream.com, 5% of adverts, generate 85% of adwords impressions.
If you can focus your efforts on your top 2 or 3 ad groups, and really test and get them performing optimally, you can see a great ROI and CTR.

3. Optimise for Mobile Ads
Forget CTR for mobile ads, calls from ads convert 3 times more than clicks. Do everything you can to get people to call from your mobile ad – by clicking the click-to-call button.
You must be in the top 3 positions for mobile ads to be effective. Focus on quality score in order to be able to achieve this.

4. Delete the bottom third of your account and spend on Remarketing
The cost of the average click varies and is lower in several niches, for the Display Network than it is for the Search Network.

In some niches, the conversion rate for remarketing in the Display Network is also higher than in the Search Network.

If you get rid of your more expensive Search Network Ads and move that spend to display network remarketing ads, you should see a much great ROI

Try a free account audit from somewhere like WordStream

5. Use Bid Multipliers
Carefully select the best clicks for your business. So if you are able to convert enquiries more effectively during the day, ensure you bid more competitively during this time.
Bid Multipliers also let you bid more for specific devices like mobiles.

6. Remarketing Again
Segment visitors based on their interests, and write specific copy. Experiment on every network including Youtube, DoubleClick etc.
Remarketing is a must!

7. Remarketing List For Search Ads
Great for bidding on really broad and competitive terms, including competitor brands. These broad terms, can really hurt your quality score.
Use RLSAs to target only people who have visited your website before.
If you have a small business and only limited remarketing information; look at In-Market Segments to get in front of a relevant audience, and gmail and youtube ads

Combine Dynamic Search Adverts with RLSAs to increase ROI even further.
Set up is really confusing, so make sure you look at the PPC Hero Tutorial. In a nut shell, to set up:

Make a DSA campaign
Add an audience (Target a broad audience like all visitors)
Select Bid & Target (This makes sure we’re only targeting previous site visitors)

The interface still remains somewhat confusing, the tutorial explains all.

8. First Mover Advantage
Bids are lower and competition is weaker, if you can take advantage of a new feature first.
Online ads are always changing, so keep up to date on Twitter and by subscribing to the best PPC blog like PPC Hero and Wordstream.

9. Dynamic Keyword Insertion or Dynamic Search Ads for Extra Space
The official max length of a headline is 25 characters; if this causes problems, make sure to test DKI and DS ads.

10. Use a period/full stop at the end of description line one
This extends the headline and description into one long headline. Experiment with this to see how it effects CTR.

11. Google Display Network and Linkedin Ads
Works great for B2B campaigns.
Linkedin is part of the Display Network and it costs less than working with Linkedin directly.

12. Use The URL Builder to Track Promotional Ads
Pretty straight forward concept really, see if promotions work, or just attract cheapskates.

13. Import Google Ads into Bing
BIG timesaver, this article shows you how

14. Use Ad Extensions and Product Listing Ads
Use this cheat sheet for Extensions, and see this article on Product Listing Ads

15. Try 1 Exclamation Mark in Every Ad
Compare to non-exclaimed text copy. Apparently 99% of the time, the CTR is higher for text copy with an exclamation.

16. Use Accelerated Manual Bidding
Take the control from Google, try not to use standard delivery

17. Include Exact Match Negative Keywords
If your keyword is [Thai Boxing]
Include [Thai] and [boxing] as negative keywords.
Google will now not be able to show your ad when someone searches “Thai” for example. They will do this if you don’t add the exact match negatives.