9 Reasons Why Your PPC Doesn’t Convert The Way It Should
Oct 11, 2019
10 min read
Pay per click or PPC, as it is commonly called in the digital marketing world, is one of the most effective search engine marketing techniques. It can help in increasing website traffic, generating leads into customers, and boosting brand awareness, which we all know are such a time-extensive process.
One of the most successful conversion methods, PPC is a wonderful opportunity to enhance brand recognition and gain a competitive edge over other brands in this aggressively competitive market.
Did you know that your PPC visitors are 50% more likely to make a purchase than the organic ones?
Or
By investing in PPC ads, you increase the probability of brand awareness by a whopping 80%?
Yes, such is the effectiveness of devising and implementing a competent PPC strategy. While there is a significant percentage of those businesses that are reaping profit from PPC, there are many that are left scratching their heads on their futile PPC efforts. If you are one of those struggling to find why, despite your utmost efforts, the PPC campaign was a failure, allow us to help you identify the loopholes in your strategies through the pointers mentioned below.
Your keywords are too generic:
Also called as short tail keywords, the generic keywords are confusing as it is challenging to understand the intent behind their search. This will not yield the desired results and increase the cost per click, which will end-up eating your budget. Another keyword related mistake is bidding on broad match or phrase keywords. They do not produce good click-through rates to your site and hence should be avoided. It is essential to conduct thorough research before you bid on a keyword. This will help you understand what your target audience is searching for. Also, since Google reviews and approves campaign just like ads, be careful of not using disapproved keywords.
Your Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) goal is too high:
Return on ad spend is similar to return on investment. It measures how many dollars received for every dollar that is spent on advertising, except that unlike ROI, it evaluates the efficacy of a specific campaign. While the higher the ROAD, the more successful your PPC campaign is, but it is also essential to keep in mind the various factors that come into play like the profit margin of the product or service you are offering. If the customer only purchases two times a year from you while you are aiming at the standard outstanding ROAS goal of 4:1, it can fire back. Lower your ROAS goal; while it might pay more per conversion, the repeated purchases will enhance your bottom line profit.
Your pricing is not competitive:
Are your competitors selling similar products at prices lower than yours? If yes, this is hurting your conversion, and you need to set the prices at least at a local equilibrium.
Your ad copy is irrelevant:
Many businesses think that since the ultimate aim of the campaign is to drive prospects, creating a relatively more promising ad copy should not be a problem. But this disconnect between the ad copy and landing page content will reflect on decreasing click-through rate that will not be consistent with the conversion rate. Overselling the business will tarnish the business reputation and the allotted PPC budget in the long run. Be sure to mention everything in your ad and landing page content for increasing the probability of conversion.
Not testing the PPC campaign:
Businesses often think of PPC strategy as a set it and forget it, which is a huge mistake. You need to keep tabs of every campaign periodically and look for signs of improvement and work accordingly. Check whether or not the keyword still holds relevance and whether or not did it drive any leads this month. Look for ads that are converting and accordingly optimize them for the audience's needs.
Similarly, test different landing pages to check what will enhance the user's experience.
Your landing page isn't correctly set:
Despite testing a lot of ad copies or optimizing the keywords, is there still no leads or sales? Maybe your landing page is not set for adequate conversion. How can that be fixed? Make sure the landing page is functional with an attractive design. A well-structured lead generation form with a strong copy will add a competitive advantage.
Your budget is too low:
Let's face it; the more you spend, the more traffic you drive to your website. This is especially true of you are just starting the business, wherein a small budget won't yield a desirable outcome. You need enough traffic to test the various parameters for the scope of improvement, and for that, you need to invest properly so that your site has sufficient traffic.
Your site isn't mobile-friendly:
Is your bid adjusted for mobile, or are you paying the standard rate? Lowering the mobile bid by half can prove beneficial in enhancing mobile traffic. ROI of mobile ads can be increased by customizing mobile PPC ads. Optimize the mobile ads for speed, make use of local and mobile-friendly ad extensions.
Your site loads too slowly:
We all have read about the decreasing attention span of the customers, and it's only justified. Why would a consumer waste their time waiting when they can find the solution on a faster loading site? A slow site will decrease your conversion rate across every visitor that comes to your website, alongside adversely impacting your paid search conversion. Optimize the speed of your website by using the right insight tool.
Now that you can spot which mistake of yours is preventing your PPC ads from converting the way they should, instead of panicking and vowing to never invest in the PPC campaign, reach out to PPC professional service. They come with the knowledge and experience of devising the right strategy by implementing competent tools and technology for a higher return on investment.
A certified Google partner, Saffron Edge's Adwords management team, will help you get the top spot on Google.
Check out our services to know more about how we can help you!
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Move Over Traditional Display Advertising, Go 'Programmatic'
If you are a seasoned player of display advertising, you must be well aware of the fact that traditional buying and selling of display advertisements is a cumbersome process that takes a lot of time to execute effectively and with precision. Also, tracking metrics of your ads placed through traditional advertising is often difficult and a task of its own. Did I forget to mention that traditional advertising is usually followed by a contract between the advertisers and publishers regarding the exact number of banner ads to be placed and the tenure of it, nothing more, nothing less and if your ads are not performing well, you are left with no other choice other than to watch all your money go down the drain. In short, there are a lot of hiccups when it comes to buying some ad space on websites. But Programmatic is here to change all that and more. If you are hearing the word ‘Programmatic’ for the first time, don’t worry, we will walk you through everything there is to know about this new (kind of) method of buying ad spaces and how it can radically change your ROI when it comes to display advertising. So, what exactly is ‘Programmatic’? Programmatic advertising is nothing new but has recently started to woo top level marketers who have now realised it’s true potential. Simply put, programmatic advertising is the automated process of buying and selling of display advertisements by making use of DSP’s, SSP’s, DMP’s and Ad exchanges. Are all these abbreviations going over your head?Let’s look at what they actually are and how they are an integral part of programmatic advertising - DSP’s Source DSP’s or demand side platforms help advertisers buy available media spaces on websites (publishers) by connecting them to various SSP’s and ad exchanges. SSP’s SSP’s or supply side platforms help publishers sell available display advertising spaces on their website by connecting them to prospective buyers through DSP’s and ad exchanges. Ad Exchanges Ad exchange is where the actual buying and selling of advertisement space happens through RTB (real time bidding) or direct buying. Real time bidding is when advertisers place bids on SSP’s for ad spaces of publishers they want to place their advertisements on. Publishers, on the other hand, accept the highest bids from advertisers for their mentioned ad space, all of this happens on Ad exchanges in real-time and inventories are sold and bought in real time through AI. On Ad exchanges, publishers fill up their inventories with impressions and advertisers select a publisher with impressions that appeal most to them and their budget. DMP’s <!-- --> Source DMP’s or data management platforms are an integral part of programmatic advertising as they provide you with the needed insights on audiences. The main role of DMP’s is to collect data from a range of offline and online sources, segment them into audiences and use those audience segments to let buyers and sellers make better informed decisions about the type of ads they should place for a particular audience type. Usually, DSP’s and SSP’s also serve as DMP’s via third party integrations and most of them have it. Knowledge of all these different platforms is vital to start your programmatic journey, but what exactly are these platforms and how many are they? There are a lot of different platforms out there that are specifically demand or supply side and there are platforms which are one-stop programmatic shops which take care of all the verticals. I would suggest you to not dive deep into all that fluff and simply trust Google DoubleClick for all your programmatic buying, selling and insights. They are the leaders at it and are the most trusted. But why go for Programmatic advertising? Ok, so now you know exactly what programmatic advertising is and where you need to go to try your hands at it. But, is it worth the effort? Absolutely! Programmatic advertising has been called the ‘future of display advertising’ and is not just limited to fancy banners on websites. Video ads, mobile ads (apps and websites) and all other forms of advertising imaginable can be purchased via programmatic and it also allows advertisers with some great retargeting options with the help of DMP’s (Google’s DoubleClick has that as well), which is great for garnering the right exposure. Apart from being instant, there are a myriad of benefits programmatic advertising provides over traditional advertising, which are - 1.Transparent Pricing As we talked about before, prices on ad inventory is totally based on impressions. Auction-based media pricing model increases impression-level price transparency and there is no way you can game the system. Publishers can’t ask for what their heart desires from advertisers in programmatic advertising. 2.Granularity In programmatic, advertisers can cherry-pick publishers based on impressions and selectively choose only those publishers who align with their target audience. 3.Insights Advertisers can track how their ads are performing in real-time and optimize accordingly, which is great as nothing of this sort was available in the traditional model of advertising. Advertisers can also make use of detailed campaign reports that most DSP’s provide to make better informed decisions in the future. 4.Scale You can spread the marketing wings of your campaign as much as you want with programmatic, ofcourse it all depends on the budget you’ve allocated for display advertising. With programmatic, it can be done easily with a click rather than contacting different publishers for ad space, which was the norm in traditional advertising. 5.Control Programmatic advertising puts you, as an advertiser or publisher, in the driver’s seat as you have the option to select the publishers or advertisers you want, the number of ad spaces you want to buy or sell, the price you’re willing to pay or get for each ad space and if the performance of your bought ads isn’t performing upto your expectations, you can always pull those ads in an instant. With so much of power and publishers at your disposal, it’s quite easy to come across a fraud inventory and misplaced ads. According to WARC, the international authority on media and advertising effectiveness, the fraud rate (assumed) on programmatic spend was as much as 30%. There are basically two major types of frauds which have currently plagued the programmatic advertising industry with an estimated loss of around $6.5bn, according to the ANA (Association of National Advertisers), which are - 1.Ad misplacement Misplaced ads are a great threat to a brand’s image as your ads can be displayed right next to some objectionable content which you’d really not like your brand to be associated with. In the past year, as much as 43% of marketers claimed that they were already facing some reputational problems with programmatic advertising as most of their ads were placed right next to undesired or objectionable content and 37% of them pulled their ads as soon as they found out about it. And it can have some serious repercussions with your target audience as well, as one in five consumers (19.5%) state that they would likely take some direct action against a brand if it’s advertising appeared alongside objectionable content either by completely boycotting the brand (10.5%) or being local about it (9%), according to ANA. 2.Ad fraud (clicks impressions) ANA’s data show that almost 3 out of every 4 clicks on programmatically purchased 300*600 ‘half page’ ads are fraudulent. On an average, 1 in every 3 clicks on programmatic ads across all platforms and sizes are fraudulent. And this data doesn’t even count fake impressions! ANA also states that the estimated loss of $6.5bn could have been reduced to just $700 million if the entire industry had adhered to their safety guidelines. By following these guidelines, marketers can make use of the full potential of programmatic advertising and save themselves from getting stuck with hollow metrics that portray a fake image of your digital campaigns. As this industry matures further and big players like Google entering into the market, we think that it will be a lot safer for marketers to initiate their programmatic endeavours without any risk of deceit and fraud. If you’d like some more information on programmatic advertising, feel free to contact us . <!-- --> ...
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How can D2C businesses use Amazon A+ Content to boost their sales?
There should be no doubt referring to Amazon as the largest and most competitive eCommerce marketplace, having over 9.7 million sellers worldwide. Among these, almost 1.9 million sellers are actively promoting and selling their products on this marketplace. Now, the question is, how can you make your product and services stand out when millions of products are already striving for the same trophy? Well, Amazon’s A+ Content can be an efficient solution to beat your competitors to the draw and boost your sales. This blog will guide you through the world of Amazon A+ Content and its benefits to maximize your sales by improving conversions. So, let’s get started! What’s Amazon A+ Content? As described by Amazon Seller Central, Amazon A+ Content is an advanced feature that allows brands to modify the product description of branded Amazon Standard Identification Numbers (ASINs). It was formerly renowned as Enhanced Brand Content (EBC). Amazon A+ Content is a kind of additional information that Amazon sellers can include in their product’s description listings. Using this feature, you can showcase your product’s features to the users uniquely, consisting of enhanced images, brand stories, and text positioning. When you get access to the A+ Content, you can add the following features to your product description: Precise and informative introduction of the product Detailed and more comprehensive product description Highly optimized images HD videos that describe your product's features Comparative charts and tables of your competitors Attractive bulleted features list Inclusion of a section known as “What’s in the box?” Using A+ Content will efficiently help you convey your brand’s story and products’ benefits that add value to the customers. It will also enhance their experience, making them choose your products over your competitors. Since your brand will generate more value for your customers over others, you can observe a significant increase in sales. How to Create an A+ Content for Your Brand? Until mid-2019, Amazon A+ was only accessible for the sellers or vendors having a former EBC. However, now this feature is open-source and available to almost everyone. But you have to make sure you are eligible for a specific set of requirements. The first thing to remember is to have a professional seller account. Secondly, make sure you register yourself in the Amazon Brand Registry to be approved as a brand owner. Once Amazon verifies you, you can start including the ASINs of your products to A+ Content. When you update the content for the particular ASIN, it will be reflected for the parent ASIN and all the child ASIN levels. However, how strategically you create and optimize your content will help you get the proper conversions and sales maximization. Let’s talk about it in the latter part of the article. But what if your brand is new on Amazon? Well, that’s not an issue. You still have an option to be eligible for the A+ Content feature. Amazon also accepts and promotes emerging brand owners engaged in other managed selling programs, such as Amazon Exclusives and Launchpad's. Benefits of A+ Content for Your D2C Business You have already been told that Amazon is a highly competitive marketplace, and with the correct utilization of Amazon A+ Content, you can appear as the game-changer. It can provide you with a competitive edge to skyrocket your conversion rate and accelerate product sales. In fact, proper integration of A+ Content into your product marketing techniques can help you increase your product sales by 3% to 10%. Here are some advantages of A+ Content for your D2C businesses: Seize your shoppers’ attention The hardest part about selling a product on Amazon is grabbing your customers’ attention when millions of similar versions are out there. Amazon’s A+ Content helps you capture the eye of potential buyers as they are fed up looking at cluttered and messy product listings and no longer want to see them. However, with A+ Content, the product description is well-descriptive with large HD images and a video describing the product’s features and usage. Moreover, the formatted text and enticing bulletin points make it easier to grab your products' attention. A better option in terms of SEO One of the best things about A+ Content is that search engines like Google easily recognize it. Due to this, your brand and products get more visibility, and they appear on your users’ screens more often. One thing to note is that A+ Content is not indexed on Amazon, but Google does it, which means if you work correctly according to the algorithms, your products will be visible to your potential customers on Google. Enhanced product listings increase discoverability, optimize your brand rankings, and ultimately increase sales. Increase in conversions Well, this is normal. When you use high-quality images, HD videos, attention-grabbing, and SEO-friendly product listing pages, getting a higher conversion rate is no surprise. Your products eventually come into the limelight, making your shoppers click on the “Add to Cart” or “Buy Now” button confidently. More reviews and fewer returns! What do you usually do while shopping online? If you get sufficient time, you will try to gather as much information as possible about the product you want to buy from different sources and several reviews. However, when you use the A+ Content strategy in describing your product information, they get a clear picture of the product all at one stop. It helps the customers make the right and quick decisions. Furthermore, when they purchase a product with its complete understanding, there are negligible chances that they will return it. Also, the satisfied customers will leave positive feedback on your products page that will help other customers choose your product. Hence, increase in sales! Minimize ACoS and Raise ROI When you run a PPC campaign for your product, it might bring you clicks in a large number but not necessarily guarantee sales. In addition, running a PPC ad can cost you a good amount based on your needs and target options. However, the right on-target and comprehensive A+ Content can easily convince your potential buyers to purchase by grabbing their attention on the products’ features. Also, you won’t be charged for using the A+ Content strategy (until you upgrade to the premium version). Therefore, with A+ Content, you get more sales, less advertising cost of sale (ACoS), and a higher return on investment (ROI). Best Practices Regarding Amazon A+ Content To get better results, you need to ensure that your A+ Content is optimized with the best practices. Here are a few tips for delivering quality A+ Content and a better customer experience: Emphasize the USP of your brand Remember that a product is not produced just to sell it, but for your customers to buy it. Therefore, see it from the customers’ point of view. Discover why they will need it or how it can benefit them. That would be the Unique Selling Point (USP) of your product that you must emphasize in your A+ Content. The advantages of your product will help drive emotions, the emotions that describe your customers' needs. And where the emotions are aroused, the purchases automatically take place. Keep your content short and clear It doesn’t matter how informative your product description is, your customers usually have the same time you would invest while purchasing for yourself. Nobody wants to wait, and no one has much time to read long and detailed paragraphs about your product. Therefore, make sure you stick to short and on-point A+ Content to accelerate the buying decision. Use the combined power of text and images You might have read or heard that the visuals speak more than text. Hence, in your A+ Content, combine high definition visuals along with the precise text. You can use banners to segregate your product’s listing and details page to make it more straightforward and offer a streamlined experience to your customers. Avoid errors and proofread your content before submitting Make sure you avoid using special characters in your A+ Content. Amazon forbids the use of some special characters, including copyright and registered trademark symbols. Moreover, you are also not allowed to use hyperlinks to other websites in your A+ Content. However, adding a link to any other ASIN is acceptable within the module type. Also, Amazon takes almost a week to approve your content describing the product listing and description. Therefore, make sure you proofread it for any grammatical errors before the submission. It is crucial because, for some reason, if you ignore the mistakes and Amazon approves your content, it will be live on the website. Later, when you realize that your content has some errors and you wish to fix them, you will have to submit the page again. However, until the mistake is resolved, it would have run live almost for a week. Keep your page designs uniform Always remember that you do not create the design or structure of your A+ Content for one page. Instead, you will be using it for the whole product catalog. Therefore, make sure to maintain consistency throughout the layout of your products page. Use minimalistic designs with optimized images and formatted text. Your products’ page design should be unique and signify your brand’s extension. Also, to avoid rejection from Amazon regarding your visual content, ensure that your images and videos are of appropriate resolution and size as per the policies suggested by Amazon. Guidelines for Amazon A+ Content You should not refer to your business as a seller or distributor. Don’t provide any contact information of your business or company. Avoid using purchase references, like “cheap,” “free,” “bonus offer”, “affordable”, “shop with us,” etc., in the product description. Don’t use any special characters including ?, ? or ™. Avoid using low-quality images with the unreadable textual matter. Do not add hyperlinks to any website inside or outside of Amazon. Don’t use images or graphics that might imitate Amazon logos or programs. Never mention anything in your A+ Content that shows association to any kind of criminal activities. Avoid mentioning debatable claims, such as “the best product,” “#1 selling item”, “the top product in the list,” and like. Ensure that the lifestyle images you use show the products. Your A+ Content (images, videos, or text) should be unique. Any changes or modification in the content is allowed only in the first two business days after publication. Don’t insert or mention anything that violates the Amazon selling policies. Amazon has the right to take down your page in that scenario. Wrapping Up As per an Amazon report, on average, around 4000 items are sold every minute by the small and medium-sized businesses located in the United States. This statistic might clearly tell you why all kinds of companies want to incorporate themselves with Amazon services. However, a wide presence of competitors can make it extremely challenging for you to distinguish your brand from them. Undoubtedly, A+ Content is an efficient method to make your own way in this cut-throat competition and grab the attention of your potential customers. All you need is to follow the proper guidelines to make your products stand out from the product. And the appropriate knowledge comes from experience. Therefore, it is worth investing in an efficient and proficient digital marketing agency to help you deliver high-quality A+ content to increase conversions and boost sales. ...
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5-Steps To Nurture Your Leads with An Advanced Inbound Marketing Strategy
Inbound marketing is a marketing strategy is where creation of appealing goods and services is done then shared to clients in order to ensure that they come back for more. The goods and services are made attractive by answering to client needs and answering basic questions relayed by customers. In addition, the firm uses specific marketing tools to attract new customers while creating a channel to maintain a good rapport between the firm and new and existing clients. When all this is done, the firm’s employees focus on creating the right goods while disseminating the correct information about the goods in the long run. Step 1. Determine Your Offer Mix Inbound marketing campaigns need to have goals set for them in order to achieve their goals in the long run. This includes creation of a number of ideas and well researched information that will drive conversions. Remember that each offer made to clients ought to have its own uniqueness. In addition, each offer has to have a landing page to help you keep track of the conversions you have offered to customers over a given time. Step 2. Work With Timelines and Goals Think of having a mix of offer that will have an immediate impact on your target market. In addition, have a timeline so as not to have your offers running for too long hence diluting themselves in your target market. Have a straightforward marketing campaign that will last for less than 3 months. You can also compare with your previous campaigns to see if you have attained your goals and if not so, redirect your efforts to ensure you do not fall too behind your competitors in the industries. Step 3. Drive Traffic Use the following: Social Media- Post your offers on social media and join in the conversation on other forums. Mix up your content to avoid boredom. Blogs- Create a number of blog posts touching on topics related to your campaign covers. Pay-Per-Click Ads- This is a perfect way to gain traffic for your offers. Ensure your messages match with the product value in these ads Step 4. Nurture Your Leads This is done by providing valuable information to your clients, ensuring that they are nurtured by getting more leads and information related to your goods or services. Emails come in handy when keeping track of clients that click through it hence measure up your conversion rates. Step 5. Reporting An Inbound Campaign bears fruit in the long run. One needs to be patient to reap the rewards of the campaign. When you assign an Inbound Marketing agency to carry out your marketing campaign. They will send you monthly reports that will help you gauge the progress and success. Number of New Clients- Measure which campaigns were successful in bringing new customers. Compare the current and previous campaigns in order to get the actual metric. New Leads- An increased number of leads means that you are gaining entry to a market that you are new to and your campaign strategies were excellent hence attracting new customers to your goods and services. Views- Views are important in measuring the conversion rate in order to find out how effective the campaign was to your new market. ...
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