ROI and Conversions

Having all the web traffic in the world doesn't mean a thing if it doesn't produce the results you're after.

Return On Investment

Return on investment is basically a way of saying, "Is paying money for this actually making me more money?" When it comes to adwords campaigns, your advertisements will cost you every time someone clicks on your ad and is taken to your landing page. Once at your landing page, they will either decide to stay or leave, and that will be determined by several factors. Here's the formula for determining your return on investment:
(Revenue - Cost of goods sold) / Cost of goods sold

Relevancy of advertisement to landing page.
If your advertisement says "click here for free puppies" and then it leads people to a page that sells puppies for $800, they will probably be disappointed or irritated and leave. On the other hand, if your ad says, "Puppies for Sale, starting at $800" then they will be rewarded with relevant information. You don't want to mislead people with your ads because you will end up paying for clicks that don't produce sales.

Quality of Content
If your landing page has nothing but a product name and a price, it's possible you could make a sale if it's something the customer already knows about. On the other hand, it's always a great idea to provide as much relevant and high quality information about the product you're selling in order to encourage a sale and increase consumer confidence. If the page also includes your targeted keywords, that is also helpful for your SEO and Ad Quality Scores.

Call to Action
When selling, it's imoportant to ask for the sale. This can be done by including call to action buttons to purchase, to learn more about the product, etc. If you don't ever ask for a yes, it's harder to receive one. Calls to action don't necessarily have to be purchase calls to action. Asking people to sign up for a newsletter, or to click for more information can also bring them closer to completing an order.

Conversions

A conversion is when you are able to get your customer to perform an action through marketing efforts. Conversions could be completed sales, newsletter signups, readings of a website etc. In order to tell if your efforts are paying off, you need to determine where your results are coming from. You can track efforts by linking your Adwords account to your google Analytics. 

Your analytics account can tell you what sources are producing the best results for your website, and in turn, where you you should invest your time and money for the best return. For example, if you are spending $50 a month on Adwords advertising but none of those clicks have lead to a sale, then you either need to change the ad, change the landing page content, or change your keywords. It's also possible you could be making sales as a result of unpaid marketing efforts like Facebook posts. If that's the case, then you can confidently put in more time with your Facebook marketing and save money on advertising. It's important to note, however, that marketing isn't just using one magic tool, it's a whole bunch of marketing efforts combined into one marketing plan that will produce the results you're looking for. Newsletters lead to interested customers, Facebook posts can lead people to place orders as well, and social media can help build brand appreciation which also leads to sales.

Quality Scores

Google Adwords Quality Scores are Google's way of rewarding content producers for producing good, relevant content that their customers want to consume. The quality scores show advertisers how effective their ads will potentially be based on relevance of ads in relation to content on the page the ads link to.

You can improve your quality score in several ways:

First of all, it is important to remember that the higher scores are based on the customer’s click through rate, which means they are more likely to click on your ad. This is mostly based on relevance. If your score isn’t very good you could:

1. Make sure the ad is relevant to the page it is being directed to. If the customer clicks on an ad and it’s exactly what they were looking for, they are more likely to stay. 
2. Include Keywords in the body of your ad that you are targeting in your ad campaign.
3. Include keywords in the headline of your ad if possible.
4. Include negative keywords to filter out irrelevant results.

Above all, keep in mind you need to focus on click-through-rate of a customer. If they are more likely to click on the ad and it takes them to what they are expecting, then you are doing well. 

Here's a video which explains Google AdWords Quality Score a bit more in depth:

Google Text Ads

Components of a Google text ad:

Headline Text (30 characters each)

Include words customers might have typed in for their search. There are two headlines in this section of 30 characters each. The sections are separated by a dash "-" and might display stacked depending on the viewing device.

Display URL (15 characters each)

This section is usually in green and shows where the customer will be directed. The purpose of this is to give people a better idea of where they'll be taken if they click on the link.

Description (80 Characters)

Highlights details about your product of service. It's a good practice to include call to action, discount information if any.

If you want to see what your ads look like on Google search results, you can use the Ad Preview and Diagnostics Tool.

Keywords: Good vs Bad

What are keywords?

Keywords are words AND phrases which are relevant to the content of your website. You can use keywords in your Adwords advertising in order to target specific searches your potential clients are making. "Orange tabby kitten" is a keyword. "orange tabby" counts as a different keyword, and "kitten" is considered yet another different keyword. When choosing keywords for your ads, the most relevant keywords to their content tend to win.

Note: common misspellings and plurals of keywords are automatically accounted for in your adwords campaigns. Therefore, you don't need to create separate keywords for those instances.

Good keywords:

• Contain words or phrases your customers would most likely search for when trying to find your product of service. When trying to find good keywords, ask yourself, "If I were my customer, what would I be typing in to find my product?"
• Are not overly specific. If your keywords are very specific you may have a better conversion rate with those keywords because you are giving them exactly what they are searching for. On the other hand, you will miss out on a lot of people who weren't as specific in their search. For example, a keyword "blue yeti microphone" would produce more potential clicks than "silver blue yeti microphone" while still being specific enough for your target audience.
• Are not too general. If your keywords are too general, you could end up paying for ads targeted to unqualified leads. As in our prior example, if you simply targeted "yeti" you could be paying for ads aimed at people searching for pictures of the abominable snowman, which is very different from a podcast microphone. 

Bad Keywords:

• Are too specific. In the example above, a bad keyword would be, "silver and white blue yeti microphone on sale for $90 with included cords"
• Are too vague. As stated before, "Yeti" would be too general.
• Aren't targeted toward your customer's searches.