5 Powerful Google Ads Hacks

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Jul 17, 2020 / by
5 Powerful Google Ads Hacks

With Facebook facing a major backlash from advertisers in recent weeks, Google Ads has never been in a stronger position as the market leader for PPC advertising. But is everyone using the platform really making the most of it?

Of course, there is no one ‘fix-all’ that will work for everyone but having a box full of tricks and hacks to pull from could help make all the difference to your campaigns.

These are five quick and immediately actionable tips that will benefit almost all campaigns and don’t require much work at all. So, without further ado, let’s get hacking!

1. Track your conversions

This might come as something of a shock, but over 40% of all Google Ads accounts have zero conversion tracking set up, with just a fraction of those that do have tracking set up having it set up properly.

If you’re not tracking conversions and you’re not tracking them correctly, then you are missing out on one of the platform’s most powerful features.

By setting up your tracking in the right way, you could quite comfortably be doubling your ROI and it’s not even that difficult. Indeed, Google themselves have set up a guide right here.

Of course, how difficult it is to set up properly will depend on the complexity of your sales cycle, but no matter how difficult it might be, it’ll certainly be worth the effort.

2. Replace underperforming keywords

After you’ve tracked your conversions you’ll suddenly be able to see the wood for the trees.

More importantly, you’ll be able to see which Google Ads keywords are losing you money by not converting. Get shot of them and replace them and you’ll instantly have saved yourself money.

As far as which keywords you should be replacing them with, perhaps try experimenting with negative keywords. By simply adding a – to the front of a keyword you could completely transform a word’s impact and its profitability.

3. Use your landing pages

This should be obvious, but according to HubSpot, only around half of all marketers are building new landing pages for every new campaign. Which is, quite frankly, utterly ludicrous. Google Ads is all about making your landing page sync perfectly with your keywords, your copy, and searcher intent and without the landing page itself, all of that goes completely out the window.

It’s simple really. More landing pages lead to a better Quality Score for your ads; the higher your score, the less you’ll be charged per click and the higher your ad will appear.

Indeed, improving your Quality Score should be your ultimate goal here and whilst there are many other tricks you can use to achieve this (better keyword optimisation for one), landing pages are the easiest hack by far.

4. Optimise for mobile but be creative about it

There are more searches being made on mobile phones today than on desktop computers. That is a fact and it’s why you need to start thinking mobile-first. But what happens when everyone else is also pivoting to a mobile-first strategy?

Mobile landing page optimisation is obviously a big part of it, but with click-to-call proving something of a game-changer for many businesses, you need to know from the outset whether you’re aiming to drive calls or clicks and edit your page accordingly.

Mobile-led campaigns should also be shorter and more focused and should be separate from desktop campaigns.

5. Appeal to user emotions

It might seem like a bit of a low-blow, but we are, at the end of it all, emotional creatures that respond more to content that generates an emotional response.

Ads that appeal to people on an emotional level will always generate greater clicks and it’s your job to ensure the content on the other side of that click is convincing enough to become a conversion.

Of course, this could be seen as manipulative, but when has advertising not been manipulative in some shape or form? As long as you’re transparent with your content and your intentions then users will be able to see between the lines and you’ll be looking down the barrel of some very tasty ROI on your Google Ads.