Optimizing Google ads headlines and display ads is a continual process that improves campaign performance to ensure greater returns on ad spend (ROAS). Advertising campaigns serve two underlying purposes: acquiring new customers to drive sales and raising brand awareness.
The digital advertising world is constantly evolving with the advent of advanced tools and technologies, shifting consumer preferences, new trends and heightening competition.
In order to stay competitive and keep their audience engaged, advertisers must prioritize ad optimization and stay abreast with shifting trends and preferences.
Adopting a formulaic approach to crafting a winning SEM headline or setting up the target audience is always a mistake. A keyword or custom audience that worked last month may not garner the same results next month.
Read on to explore masterful tips to optimize Google display ads for higher conversions and ROIs.
Why Optimize Google Display Ads?
Optimizing Google display ads and other ad campaigns is a crucial process that allows marketers to revive audience engagement and increase ROIs continually. Reusing existing Google ads headlines and retargeting the same keywords leads to higher costs and disappointing results.
Optimization allows advertisers to identify aspects that have grown stale to replace them with newer features for greater audience engagement.
Most advertisers struggle to maintain their success rate and enjoy scalable performance growth with Google display ads.
This typically happens to lack of optimization and neglecting crucial metrics like conversion rates and click-through-rates to measure ad performance. Making continual adjustments allows businesses to adjust their advertising budget and utilize data to generate and convert more leads.
Given the volatile competition across the Google Display Network, brands are competing for visibility and audience engagement. Optimizing ad copy headlines, keywords and audience segments allows brands to capture attention by capitalizing on ongoing trends and enhancing the visual appeal.
How to Optimize Google Display Ads?
You can optimize various aspects of your Google display ads, from exploring winning Google ads headlines ideas to evaluating performance metrics and targeting new keywords. The goal is to identify elements that have the greatest impact and make impactful changes to personalize the ad experience to audience preferences.
Let’s explore some actionable strategies to optimize Google display ads for maximum conversions.
Choose your Keywords Tactfully
Keywords serve as a bridge connecting your Google ads headlines and campaigns with their target audience. Given their significance, it’s important to create a comprehensive strategy to decide which keywords you want to include and exclude.
Most marketers focus on short keywords, which is a mistake because long-tail keywords are tied to high-intent users.
We strongly suggest using long-tail keywords that include words like “buy online,” “quote,” and “purchase.” Users commonly utilize long-tail keywords and phrases while making search queries to find the most relevant web pages and search results.
Long-tail keywords lead to higher ROAS because they are considerably less competitive, intent-driven and much more relevant to the user’s needs.
Incorporating longer keywords and search queries into your Google ads headlines will connect your Google display ads with a well-defined and high-intent audience eager to shop or engage your services.
Keywords with higher specificity are typically less competitive because they are tied to a relatively smaller audience segment. Targeting these keywords gives businesses a higher chance to enjoy favorable rankings.
As you plan your keywords, be sure to take advantage of negative keywords and make a list of keywords you want to exclude for your ad campaigns. Adding a few negative keywords to your campaign will improve ad placement and audience engagement.
Prioritize KPIs that Matter
Advertisers who focus on vanity metrics like views, comments, likes and shares fail to optimize ad campaigns for higher ROIs. Vanity metrics may seem appealing when presenting ad performance data to clients or board members. But in reality, they don’t amount to much as they don’t directly impact conversions, sales and revenue growth.
Prioritizing key performance indicators (KPIs) that truly matters is an integral part of the ad optimization process. Monitoring KPIs like conversions, click-through-rates, cost-per-conversion (CPA) and return on ad spend (ROAS) allows advertisers to make changes that drive tangible results.
Maximizing conversions and sales is the ultimate goal of a Google display ad campaign. Each business has a unique conversion activity, such as signing up for a newsletter, downloading an app, making online purchases or consultation calls to request quotes. Ecommerce brands running Google display ads must monitor conversions to keep track of sales and new customer acquisitions.
Likewise, service providers can monitor consultation calls, new bookings and forms filled out on their website to track conversions.
As you monitor conversions, be sure to measure the cost-per-conversion (CPA) to regulate ad spend and avoid exceeding your budget. It’s important to ensure that the cost of converting a user isn’t higher than the revenue you’ve earned through the conversion activity.
For instance, if you’re selling a $40 product with a $60 CPA then you’re losing $20 for every user you’re converting.
Minimizing conversion cost is crucial to ensure your ad spend secures the highest ROAS. Regularly monitoring these metrics will help you identify elements, like Google ads headlines and keywords, which are working and those that simply drain your budget.
Devise a Performance Tracking Strategy
It’s important to devise a comprehensive performance tracking strategy to continually monitor KPIs and improve ROAS. Tracking micro-conversions or smaller actions like ad views, newsletter subscriptions or the total time spent browsing your website will help you understand audience preferences and engagement.
Monitoring micro-conversions enables advertisers to improve the sales funnel and personalize the ad experience to make it more relevant for the intended audience. You can refine your performance tracking strategy by devising custom metrics that are more relevant to your advertising goals.
For example, if you want to focus on customer loyalty and encourage repeat purchases, you can closely monitor repeat purchases and devise ad campaigns to target existing customers. Vanity metrics aren’t tied to tangible results but ignoring them entirely isn’t recommended either.
Metrics like views, impressions and clicks offer valuable insights into audience preferences for content, visual assets, and most importantly, ad scheduling and ideal timing. For instance, if you notice higher engagement over the weekend you should increase your ad spend for the weekend.
Final Thoughts
Retargeting the same audiences and bidding on the same keywords results in a stale and stagnant advertising strategy that drains your budget without securing tangible results. Advertisers must continually innovate and recharge creativity with crafty Google ads headlines, long-tail keywords and performance-tracking metrics.
As you examine campaign performance, be sure to leverage the power of Google Analytics to examine a wealth of metrics tied to your campaign. You can easily set up Google Analytics and connect it to your ad account to utilize data-driven insights for continual ad optimization.
