Improving the success of your PPC campaigns may be as simple as using two PPC campaign metrics and grouping each landing page into one of four groups based on its current performance and performance potential.
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PPC Campaign Metrics to Focus On
The two pillars of PPC campaign data that show you how persuasive people find your ad and its landing page are terms that you’re already well-versed in, click-through rate (CTR), and conversion rate.
You should also set high and low thresholds for all metrics. It’s a quick process that can help you choose the best course of action to maintain or enhance the performance of your landing pages.
It will help you figure out:
- How well a certain ad and its landing page are doing.
- How much it needs to be optimized.
- Identify which needs to be fixed, the ad or the landing page.
High CTR + High Conversion Rate
Your top-performing ads go under this category. Most of the hard work is already done since these ads are often developed using extensive testing and optimization. But why stop there? Why not push the limits even further, and see how long you can maintain that performance, or how much better you can do?
Here are a few tips for optimizing top-performing landing pages:
- Adjusting your bid can help you win or keep the top spot. To steer away expensive traffic, keep adding unrelated queries as negative keywords.
- Make sure you’re using simple language to communicate essential information that may affect purchasing decisions, like availability, shipping, and turnaround times.
- Don’t make people wait, improve your page’s loading time. Aim for a loading time of four seconds or less.
Low CTR + High Conversion Rate
Finding these can be tricky, but when you do, the rewards for your PPC campaign are enormous.
If you see an ad with a low click-through rate but a high conversion rate on the landing page, your ad probably isn’t very persuasive.
If you increase traffic, your rate of conversion should result in a significant increase in sales. And this can be achieved by optimizing your ad.
Tips to optimize landing pages with a low CTR and a high conversion rate:
- What do your keywords for the ad group with the low-CTR ad look like? Make sure you’re not using too many keywords in your ad, or you’ll struggle to generate impressions. Avoid irrelevant ones that may show your ad to the wrong audience.
- Experiment with new ad variations. Use similar language as in your high-converting landing page.
- According to research by Google, enabling ad extensions will often increase CTR by 10-15%. Choose the ones most relevant to your service, be it site links or callouts.
High CTR + Low Conversion Rate
The previous category represented the pinnacle of excellent landing sites, while this one is made up of subpar ones. An ad with a high CTR but a low conversion rate is an empty promise of sorts.
There are lots of ways to test your landing pages and increase conversions.
Here’s what you should do:
- Address pain points. Solving customer concerns on the landing page can increase conversion rates by 80%.
- Make sure your landing page content uses the keywords your ad targets since intent-matching is essential.
- Use social proof or testimonials, it gives you credibility and builds trust between you and your customers.
Low CTR + Low Conversion Rate
Sometimes you just have to accept defeat. Like when your ad isn’t generating much traffic, and your landing page can’t convert the little traffic you do get. Sadly, there isn’t much you can do when this happens.
This ad-page combo already has a negative reputation with search engines and social media platforms, since so much of SEM is based on user signals and behavior. Starting from scratch is almost always the best course of action.
Conclusion
Ads and landing pages succeed when they closely align with user intent. The days of keyword stuffing are long gone.
Sorting your PPC campaigns into the four categories we just discussed is a quick way to determine what’s working and what’s not when it comes to your ads and landing pages, so you know where you need to focus your optimization efforts.
In most cases, there’s a way to optimize your landing pages and ads to increase traffic and conversions. Sometimes small tweaks are all it takes, like narrowing down your keyword list or adding testimonials to your landing page. And once in a while, you may need to accept defeat and start fresh. The combination of a low CTR and a low conversion rate falls into this category.
And that’s how you optimize your landing pages and ads for successful PPC campaigns. From there you can start playing with more advanced CRO strategies.
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