The battle for ad clicks on Google’s SERP gets more competitive by the day. Seasoned marketers understand that even the smallest of tweaks to a campaign can pay big dividends in the form of more clicks, lower cost per lead, and higher conversion rates. In this week’s blog, the Adwords team at BlueHat shares three hacks that work perfectly for small businesses looking to grow their businesses Online.

With such a small character limit, you’d think writing a successful ad would be easy. Wrong. If there’s anything that research shows, it’s that most ads are a money pit when done wrong (97% fail without analytics!).

When done right, it can be a powerful tool that provides instant exposure to customers looking to buy exactly what you are selling. Here are our three best hacks for optimizing your adwords campaign:

Analyze Your Funnel Stage

When we audit a client’s account, we often find a massive issue right at the start: they are selling the wrong thing to the wrong audience.

Imagine you are a car dealership—not all of your potential clients are in the same stage of buying. Some might be looking for a solution for a problem with their current car while others might be thinking about fixing or trading theirs in. Some are literally typing in a car model looking to buy the next day.

Showing an ad for someone in “action” stage (buy now) while they are still exploring or considering other options won’t convert well. You can have a flawless ad, but if it’s not shown to the right person, it’s useless.

TIP: Adapt your Adwords message to the buyer’s temperature. If they’re “hot” and ready to buy, then SELL. A digital marketing agency can help analyze where your traffic is coming from and which stage they are in, helping you tailor ads effectively.

Plug Your Keyword Drain

According to Hubspot, 91% of keywords produced NOTHING and cost 61% of budget.

Again:

61% of budgets get thrown in the proverbial trash.

That’s because most companies just take a shot in the dark and don’t actually analyze keyword quality and performance. This drain has to be plugged or your budget is going to burst.

Filter through your keywords and see which ones aren’t producing any conversions and get rid of them. An Adwords expert can analyze months of data traffic and see which keywords aren’t working for you. Better yet, they might even be able to save them by tweaking them or showing them to the right buyer.

Segment Audiences and Test Ads

Much like tip #1, placing audiences into different buckets and testing ad copy on them can give you superpowers. Just ask Extra Storage Space, who did just that and increased their click-through-rate by over 100%. By inserting segmenting and testing, they discovered that dynamic information (in this case, the number of units left) compelled audiences to act. The copy was tested to create targeted messaging that spoke to the customer’s needs. It worked!

Are your Adwords campaigns costing a fortune and not returning results? It could be because you don’t have a professional team analyzing, tweaking, and testing your Google ads. Contact BlueHat Marketing today to get the most out of your budget.