how can ppc & cro improve campaign performance?
John Wanamaker once famously said:
“Half of the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half”
But that was in the 19th century and times have significantly changed. Google, Facebook and other key advertising platforms now have powerful targeting capabilities, which mean advertisers no longer have to be concerned about wasting their advertising budget.
So, why do you still see campaigns underperform? The simple answer: your CRO strategy is most likely not aligned to your paid campaigns. Take a read of our advice on how to use PPC and CRO together to deliver optimum campaign performance by enhancing the user experience.
consistent messaging
Analysing your current website performance is a great way to get your paid campaigns started. By identifying what is working well, the same initiatives can be applied to your PPC campaigns. What CTAs are already working well on your website? Is there a particular conversion point that is performing better? This process can also be repeated with your headlines, unique selling points and main content to provide marginal gains that will take your paid activity above and beyond.
Use this data within your PPC strategy to increase both your ad quality score and conversions. Measuring how relevant your ads, keywords and landing pages are, your ad quality score helps Google to serve relevant content to users every time they search. Made up of several factors including landing page relevancy and content, ad text and keywords, Google uses this score and your bid to determine where you rank alongside your competitors. Consistent use of imagery and language doesn’t just benefit your PPC activities. Applying to all your advertising paid activities, including social media and display network campaigns, will also help yield the same results.
apply personalisation
Personalisation allows you to deliver tailored experiences to individual users on the same page. When used correctly, it can maximise conversion opportunity for every one of your website visitors. Rule-based segmentation alongside A/B testing is key to achieving personalisation on a larger scale.
Establishing a set of rules for new and repeat customers is the best place to start. Once this has been done, adjusting the user journey for different devices and channels will help improve your conversion rates. When you feel confident with using personalisation, it can be combined with bespoke audience targeting to help get ahead of the competition.
bespoke audience targeting
You paid campaigns may drive significant, relevant traffic to your site, but only a small number of those users visiting your website will convert. You need to focus your budget on those more likely to convert and on improving onsite conversion potential. By speaking to your audience, looking at your CRM and using analytics, you can create a snapshot of who your key audience is and, most importantly, what they want from your website, making you better informed to make the most of those users.
Directing your paid campaigns to specific landing pages for specific audiences, for example, can generate far greater results. If your target audience sits within a more mature demographic, you may want to consider larger font sizes and choose certain colours for enhanced readability. Even tailoring imagery can prove beneficial to a campaign, improving resonance. An example of bespoke targeting could be a jewellery company tailoring their hero imagery to engagement rings on the run-up to Valentines’ Day, reflecting the potential shift in purchase intent and appealing directly to the audience.
optimise for specific devices
One of the biggest issues hindering conversion performance is that it’s impossible to 100 percent optimise your website for every device. But considering analysis of your PPC campaigns with your CRO testing strategy can help generate better quality results at scale.
Take a look through your PPC campaigns. Is there a noticeable difference between performance across devices types? If there is, tailoring your wireframes to high traffic devices for your website and even adjusting your PPC campaigns to target a device category could quickly generate better results for your campaigns. Even if there’s isn’t a drastic difference between desktop, tablet and mobile, small changes can create big results. For example, if your ROI is marginally higher on desktop, focus on targeted desktop campaigns to achieve maximum results.
tailored landing pages
Additional landing pages specifically created for your paid activity can also improve your conversion performance, creating a more complete and simpler user journey from search query to the relevant ad, to the landing page itself. Reducing the time users spend from the point they enter the funnel to that final conversion will leave customers happier and more inclined to return. After all, no one wants to spend unnecessary time at the checkout or entering their details into a form once they’ve made the decision to convert.
This dedicated approach to PPC landing pages also provides valuable insight that you can use within your wider site. Giving you a better understanding of what is and, more importantly, what isn’t, working for your audience, you can implement tried and tested updates to your core website pages that will drive conversions.
Data-driven targeting alongside user-designed landing pages will lead to better campaigns with lower acquisition costs. This is due to improved ad quality scores combined with specific audiences created through the user journey. As a specialist paid media agency, we’re focused on optimising campaigns to generate the best results possible for our clients. Find out how our services can help you, contact the team today.