We at Business Bloomer know how important strategies are. Even AdWords, the cost-effective traffic generator tool offered by Google, needs a proper strategy. With AdWords you can decide the advertising budget yourself – and therefore you can be smarter and save money.
If you setup an AdWords campaign without considering your sales profit, your current sales conversion and your landing page requirements, you are simply going to waste your time and money. So, take a look at the following tips.
Break-even
Whether your website sells services or products (no matter if you have a shopping cart or not), always keep your average net profit in mind. By knowing your Net Profit you can decide what is the most suitable AdWords advertising budget for your business.
For example, if your product’s Net Profit is €5, you can’t afford to spend more than €5 in AdWords budget to convert one sale! If your industry is very competitive and your website has no potential to convert sales, you might be wasting your time.
AdWords allows you to track all your clicks and sales, so you can keep your break-even amount under control.
Sales Volume
If you sell a product/service with a Net Profit of €200, you have more freedom in deciding your advertising budget. Even though generating traffic is going to be very cost-effective, always bear in mind what volume of sales you can actually handle.
Let’s imagine you work on your own and you’re able to provide a full PC repair service in no less than 4 working days. This means you can only sell 5 services per month. Consequently, your AdWords spend should be tailored on that basis.
AdWords allows you to know in advance how many clicks you will be getting, so you can either decide to limit your budget or pause your campaign once you’ve sold out.
Sales Conversion
The ultimate goal of AdWords is not to increase traffic, it’s to boost your sales. So, take a little time to do some calculations or – if your website has never converted a sale – some good prediction.
To calculate your website current sales conversion rate, simply divide the number of sales/month by the number of visits/month. Let’s say your average sales conversion is 1% (1 sale every 100 visits). AdWords is going to deliver much more “qualified” traffic to your website (you decide who to target, when, and where) so expect at least 4 of 5 times your current rate.
Otherwise, if your website has never sold anything, it’s time for a forecast. Google says the average conversion rate is 2-3%, but I wouldn’t trust this statement. The main factors that influence your sales rate are: your competition, your product benefits and your website design. I suggest to underestimate your conversion rate and forecast it at 1%.
AdWords allows you to calculate your conversion rate easily, so don’t be afraid to try it for a month and test the online market.
Landing Page
The least but not the last, there is no AdWords without a good landing page (the page users visit after clicking on your Ad). If your website lacks of vital functionalities, you will lose the potential sale, waste your budget and… fail.
Firstly, the landing page has to be relevant to your Ad copy. If you’re advertising a specific product, don’t direct traffic to your homepage, choose the product’s page instead.
Also, make sure you’ve listed all the benefits of your product and instructions on how to purchase it, so the user can now become a potential buyer.
Finally, and unfortunately, online users don’t usually buy a product the first time they land on an unknown website 🙁 So, here’s the main, most needed functionality: collect your user’s email address! Provide a newsletter sign up form, a free product trial or anything that might help the visitor remember about your business.
AdWords allows you to choose your landing page and is well integrated with Google Analytics, so you can track your user’s behaviour.