When deciding whether to invest in Google Adwords your decision shouldn't be based on what your competitors are doing or because you want to be top of Google. If that's your strategy, you'll end up in a bidding war. Costs will spiral out of control and you'll lose site of your overall objective. The most common objective is of course to drive sales, but how do you increase sales using Google Adwords?

Below, we identify five tips on how to increase clicks and sales conversions and if at any point you have any questions, feel free to drop us an email.

1.  Identify your objective

While this may sound obvious, when starting out you must be clear about what your overarching objective is and then break that down into sub-objectives. For example, you may have a sales target to hit, or a return on investment you need to achieve, but it's important to work out the journey in which to get there. Along the way, what milestones do you need to reach that'll help make up the bigger picture? Do you have one product or service that sells better than another? Are there sales trends or peaks and troughs in your business which can help justify the timing of your campaign? This is where it's also good to get realistic and looking at that historical sales data will highlight what is achievable and what isn't.

2.  Who is your target audience and what stage of the buying process are they?

Service lead businesses will have a very different sales cycles to product lead businesses and within each of those, there will be further differences relating to price points and how involved or committed the customer needs to be. That's why identifying your objective is so important. When you've broken down your objective, you'll be able to break down your audience into different buying groups. Are you trying to attract new or repeat customers? If they're new, have they heard of your business before? If not, how are you going to attract and keep them engaged? Are you trying to persuade those who have engaged, but not yet purchased? What differences are there in the content you serve depending on what stage of the buying cycle each customer is at? Don't worry if you don't know the answers, we can help you.

3.  Make your ad clickable.

Once you've identified your targets and audience it's time to put yourself in your customer's shoes. A broad brush approach to will not work, so you'll need to set up seperate campaigns, specific to the product, service or stage of the customer journey. The language you use here has got to be clear, concise, to the point and should contain your unique selling point. Think, what is going to attract people to your ad over your competitor? When we took over the Google Ads for a London based retailer, their click through rate jumped from 1.2% to 8.09% (industry average was 2.7%). This was because we segmented their customers into buying groups and chose keywords and ad copy based on what those people would be interested in. Sure, at times we got really niche, but finding those niches means high conversion rates, low keyword costs and low cost per clicks because your advertising in a space your competitors haven't thought of.

4.  Landing page. Landing page. Landing page.

One of our pet hates as marketers and as consumers, is when someone has captivated us enough to want to click through, but the landing page has nothing to do with what we clicked on. This still happens so many times and it's infuriating. While the landing page maybe relevant, if it doesn't jump out and hit the consumer within two-seconds of them clicking, you've lost them. If you're using imagry, make sure the ad matches the landing page. If you want to generate sales, make sure they land on the product they clicked on. If you want more sign ups, quotes or ebook downloads, don't hide your sign up form below the fold. Make the call to action clear. Force the customer thought the journey you want them to take, because if you don't lead the way, your competitor will.

5.  Tracking ROI

The only way to get more sales form Google Adwords is to continuously analyse what is working and what isn't. The market can change on a daily basis, competitors might start to up their game if they see you taking a chunk of the business, changes in the socio-economic landscape or news in the press may force you to change your strategy or adopt a new one to run alongside. It's important during implementation to set up all the relevant tracking and link to Google Analytics so you can directly attribute revenue to Google Adwords spend. We've taken over Google Adwords accounts where the company hasn't done this, so every time someone clicked, they couldn't tell where that person had come from. If you don't know where your customers are coming from, you'll spend more than you have to. If you're not sure whether your Google Adwords is linked properly to your Google Analytics, drop us an email and we'll take a look for you.

Need some more advice?

Get in touch with Emma, Holly or Sophie.

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