PPC Conversions: How to Improve ROI by Focusing on Customer Intent

Today, we have with us Jeff Loquist, Director of Optimization at SiteTuners. Jeff comes with a decade of experience in creating, implementing, and optimizing paid, organic, and overall marketing strategies. Not only does he specialize in this, but he also offers hand-to-hand combat instructions, transcribing, and, as he puts it, some pretty neat hard processes. So, Jeff, if you could please turn off your camera so that the audience can see you.

Jeff Loquist:

Hey, everybody. Nice to meet you all. Yeah. So, I spent some time in the Marine Corps, in the United States.

Some of my experience stems from that background. It’s been a long time, though, you know, 25 years since I’ve done some of that stuff. But I do make very good handmade soap, so I still excel in that.

Sanchit:

Okay, Jeff. It’s great to have you here today, and I’m really excited for this session. Before we begin, I’d like to thank all of you who have joined. I’m sure today’s session will be very interesting, with participants from all over. Additionally, I want to inform you that if you have any questions during this session, please post them in the comment section, and we will address them at the end. So feel free to ask your questions. Now, Jeff, the floor is yours.

Jeff:

Alright, everyone. I’m going to go ahead and get ready to share my screen here. So, my name is Jeff Locust, and I’m the Director of Optimization at SiteTuners.

I’ve been in the marketing field for several years. If you want to connect with me on LinkedIn, here’s my LinkedIn profile. Along with SiteTuners, I’ve been running paid search campaigns since 2008. I’ve been around in this field for quite a while. I started with a company called Barbecue Guys, where I got my feet wet and managed multimillion-dollar budgets over the years.

I saw that company grow from $8,000,000 a year to $140,000,000 a year and managed budgets ranging from $500,000 a year to $14,000,000 or $15,000,000 in paid search for them. I left there a few years ago and started my own agency, Rugru Studios. While doing that, I started working with SiteTuners and got to know the company really well. In fact, they asked me to come on board a couple of years ago as a Director of Optimization and actually purchased Rougarou Studios. So Rougarou Studios still exists; it’s a division of SiteTuners. Now, I manage the team here at Rougarou Studios and also work with our clients on landing and conversion rate optimization.

I’ve been able to see both sides of the field and really understand how on-site experience and paid advertising work well together, along with other channels. So today, we’re going to be talking about PPC for conversions, right?

A lot of people think about paid search as driving traffic to their websites, and it’s a great thing. You can spend money without worrying about organic rankings or fighting other companies for that ‘free’ spot. But you can pay your cost per click, build your landing pages, build your ads, find your keywords, and then show up, and it’s pretty immediate returns.

But we’re going to talk about some things with paid search today that are really important, and that’s consistency, finding the right keywords, finding the right ads, finding the right landing pages, and even a little bit about the art of disqualification, which to me is just as important as qualifying those leads, right?

The goal is actually not to have people click on your ads if they don’t have any interest. So it’s really important to make sure that message is right. So let’s talk about the importance of consistency in paid search.

You have a business or you work for a business, right? Everybody’s excited. You’ve got this thing, you’ve got a great product, a competitive price. You have to make sure that’s all in place. You build this beautiful website, and then you start driving traffic to it. In a perfect world, money starts flowing. Unfortunately, that doesn’t always happen, and the reason is that you’re probably not connecting with your customer. You can pick keywords, write ads, buy landing pages, but if you don’t connect with that customer because that’s what conversion rates are all about.

So I’m going to talk about two things today: driving paid ads and conversion rate optimization, making sure people understand they feel like they’re in the right place, they feel like they can trust who you are, and they know what to do next. And if you don’t answer those three questions when people come to your website through a paid ad or any traffic source, you’re going to have some problems.

So in order to do this, we have to find the right keywords, write the right ads, and put those people on the right landing page. If you don’t do those things, your paid search campaigns are going to suffer. And a lot of companies are wasting like 70% of their budgets because they’re not doing these three things. So let’s talk about those right keywords, right?

I love dogs. I’m a dog guy. We foster dogs, I have three of them, along with chickens and all kinds of stuff. But I love dogs, so I buy a lot of dog toys and stuff like that, and I also have very rambunctious dogs. They get into a lot of trouble.

They’re good dogs; they’re just high energy. But let’s say we sell dog toys for rambunctious dogs. Initially, the goal is to reach as many people as possible. We all say, ‘Hey, let’s just get out there and get in front of as many people as possible and start driving that traffic, and people will come and they’ll buy.’ So we bid on things like dog toys, we might bid on pet toys, even toys for dogs.

All of those keywords have a lot of search volume; they’re going to drive a lot of traffic, but they may not necessarily get you a lot of conversions. You probably get some conversions, but if I’m searching for dog toys, I may be looking for information about dog toys, I may be looking at pet toys, I may be looking for the best kind of pet toy, can I make my own pet toy, any number of things. So when we’re trying to find those right keywords, we really want to think more niche, right?

We don’t want to use broad keywords, especially when we’re starting out. We learned this a lot with the barbecue industry. I could bid on barbecue grills or gas grills, but those things are giving me a lot of traffic, and they’re good for branding. It’s almost like a branding play, and down the line, those people might come back and buy.

But if I’m looking for that immediate revenue or that immediate action, I probably need to start a more niche, especially if I’m dealing with smaller budgets, which a lot of us are. So think about your customers’ needs. I said I have brand bugs as dogs; they get into a lot of trouble, they tear toys apart.

So maybe a better keyword would be indestructible dog toys or tough dog toys or unbreakable toys for dogs. The more targeted we can get with those keywords, we drive very specific traffic from that market, and those people will already have done their research and they’ll be more apt to make that purchase or submit a lead form or anything. So we want to narrow that focus to what matters.

And how do we do that? Dig into our analytics. Your analytics for paid search is a great tool if your website already exists. People are already coming to your website; they’re already searching for things or they’re coming for organic. 

So you can look at your organic keyword reports, and Google hides a lot of that information, but there’s still valuable information there, even if we’re only seeing 15, 20 percent of the data. Look at your analytics, look at that organic, look at your internal search.

Make sure your analytics has your internal search functionality set up so you can see what people are searching for on your website. Use those keywords to build your paid search campaigns. Use keyword tools like SEMrush, SpyFu, see what your competition’s doing. There are a ton of tools out there; Uber suggests it is a great tool.

Utilize those tools to figure out what people are searching for, and then look for patterns, look for how people are searching when they’re on their website, on your website, or maybe there are people coming in. If people are coming in on certain buckets of keywords, and they’re doing really well, let’s group those buckets together. We gotta think about the long tail, though.

And when we say long tail, we’re talking about those longer terms, 4 or 5 maybe even longer, depending on the market of those keywords, you know, not dog toys, but indestructible dog toys or indigestible toys for dogs. Those are the kind of keywords people are searching for. They’ve done their research, and they’re gonna be further down that funnel. So think long tail. And then use a lot of negatives.

And this is where we come from that disqualification standpoint. Right? Once we understand what people are searching for that aren’t is n’t working for us, we can use negative keywords. So I think dog toys are a great example. It might be DIY.

Here’s the corrected version of the text:

“Do it yourself. Homemade patterns, those kinds of keywords. We can add those keywords as negatives to stop those search terms from showing up. And we’re gonna get a lot better results in the future. And this is gonna take some time.

You may not know it off the bat. There are things you’ll probably know off the bat. Like, you know, homemade is not a great keyword. Right? We know that DIY is probably not a great keyword for us if we’re selling dog toys.

So take those out right away, but you really want to make sure you’re always, like, checking those keywords, always checking your search queries and making sure that you’re taking out that stuff that’s not working for you. And remember that volume isn’t everything, and this is a great example of this. The term “dog toys” has an average search volume of 65,000 a month. You know, if we’re getting, like, an average click-through rate of 3-4 percent, that’s 2,100 traffic to our website. And if your conversion rate is 0.5 percent because it’s a very broad term, you know, that’s still a lot of traffic.

But if you look at “indestructible dog toys,” the volume’s a lot less, right? 14.8%. And if your traffic is 750, we’re still looking at a 3-4% click-through rate, but your conversion rate is much higher. Right? People know what they’re looking for. They know what they want.

If you’re getting a conversion rate of 3.5 percent, you’re still gonna see a much bigger return. So you always have to think, it’s not always about top volume, like these huge keywords. I’ve had so many clients in the past who really always wanted to chase those terms. Here in Louisiana, where I’m from, we have crawfish.

Right? We eat a lot of crawfish. And one of my clients was a crawfish farm, and they sold crawfish online. They ship it all over the country. Well, the owner of that company had to rank for the term “crawfish.”

He didn’t care. Always had to go out there and do that. So we bid on that term even though we told him that, and he spent tons and tons and tons of money, but it didn’t return a lot of orders. Whereas, “buy crawfish online,” “buy live crawfish online,” those terms have much less volume, but that’s where all the orders came from because of those people, and so we always knew that that big crawfish term was a branding play. It got the name out there, and that’s okay if you have the budget to do those things.

But if you’re dealing with smaller budgets, think about these longer-tail, lower volume, but higher converting keywords because I’d much rather spend, even if this keyword costs me $2 compared to this keyword costs me $1, my return on investment is gonna be huge compared to That way what they call the short-tail term, the head term. And then always think of quality over quantity. That’s if you keep that in mind when you’re building keywords, when you’re writing ads, when you’re doing anything landing pages, this always thinks quality over quantity, and works throughout this process. The less you can say on a landing page, but get your point across, the less you can say in adding, get your point across, and then the less volume on the keyword, but the better quality of that keyword, you’re gonna do better.

Alright. So now we’re gonna talk about ads themselves. Right? So we picked those long-tail keywords. We’ve gotten to a place where we feel really good about the selection.

We know that these are the keywords that look at our organic search, look at our website history, I’m doing competitive research. These are the terms that we feel are gonna do really well for us. Keywords are only a third of the battle. It’s not even half the battle. Just a third.

It’s a very important part, but those ads are huge. Right? And your ad needs to do a number of things. It needs to mirror the user’s objective. It needs to appeal to their desires and needs, right, because we want them to click through. The whole point of that ad is to get people to click through.

So we need to acknowledge their pain points, utilize those emotional triggers, and focus on those solutions, not just the benefits. People love solutions, and they’re looking for a solution. And a benefit is something that we have. A solution is something they have. So we always want to think about their needs when we’re writing ads, building landing pages.

And then we want to entice them with the solution. We want to make sure that they know when they click through that ad, this is what they’re going to get. So add a copy for conversion. What does that look like? So we need to include keywords in the ad copy in the headline.

Dynamic keyword insertion. I know this is something that’s an old tool. Everybody’s familiar with it. Most people are familiar with it. It is still a big winner.

To this day. If you can put a keyword dynamically into your ad copy, it resonates with people. Utilize all your available space, maximize your ad extensions. You have Google specifically. We have 3 lines of ad text.

I mean, headlines. We have 2 lines of description text, and we have a number of extensions we can use. Right? Make sure we’re using all that. Make sure your copy matches user intent and the landing page experience.

So what does that person search for? Make sure that whatever that keyword is, that your ad copy is related to that keyword. And that it’s related to the landing page they’re going to be coming to. And we’ll show you some examples of this here in a little while. Include information about the offer.

And then use natural language that sells, like I said, not just the benefits. So let’s talk about including keywords in ad copy. So I did a search for “indestructible dog toys.” Right? The 2 keywords that stand out to me that ads stand out to me right away, this told me exactly they have exactly what I need.

Right here and here. So, Chewy and West Paw have done a great job already in their ads. I’m just making sure that that ad resonates with me right away. So dynamic keyword insertion that I was talking about, it automatically inserts the shared query in the ad text.

And so it must be less than the max characters of that line of ad, and there’s 3 ways to do it. You can see here, You can do words. If you do it this way with a keyword like this, “indestructible dog toy,” all lowercase will show up. If you capitalize the k, the first letter will show up, but if you capitalize the k and the w, it’ll capitalize the first letter of each word. And that’s actually a little thing that helps a lot in ads.

And I see a lot of ads where people write just all lower text. If you capitalize the first word, first letter of each word, it actually helps your ad stand out a little bit more. So just a

a pro tip, I guess, on this. If you’re using keyword insertion, use that k w, capital k capital w version. If you’re just writing an ad, capitalize the first letter of each noun in that.

So utilize all available ad techs. So Barkbox did a great job here. Right? They’re utilizing the site links, and everything like that. You know, there’s even more that can probably be used here, but They’ve obviously got that number one spot, and they’re being able to, they’re gonna be able to utilize that with those ad extensions.

What kind of attic sensor are we talking about here? So there’s a number. Right? The site links that we’re seeing here. So site links are clickable.

You have a headline and you have a description text to kinda tell more about it, which is great. They have callout extensions, but you see here with the bark box. This free toy bin has a $30 value. These are not clickable, but they add more information, and you can utilize more business incentives and things like that. The ship is the 1st toy ship right now, things like that, $40 value per box.

These are the kind of things that just add meat to your, to your ad. And the whole point of this is to build a very robust ad that stands out in front of other people. Location extensions. So Target is right as, you know, near me. I’m in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

This location’s extension right here lets me know that I can go to Target and get some indestructible dog toys right away. I don’t have to wait. I don’t have to wait to get passed upshift to me. I can go right there. So that’s always a positive.

And then call extensions. Right? So a call extension in conversion rate optimization, we’ll talk about this in the landing pages, the number one Trust symbol on the Internet is a phone number. If you have a phone number, put that phone number right where people can see it. Because if they know they can call you, they may not even call you, but the fact that they know they can is a huge trust symbol, a huge benefit for you.

So the next thing is structured snippets. So in this, like, you know, they’re listing out the types of dogs. And all these dogs here, bulldogs, terriers, Dobermans, border collies, husky, labs. These dogs are all known to be what they call the power chews. Right?

The ones that just tear toys apart. So listen to that. That makes that ad relevant to me because I know, oh, man, if an American Bulldog or Terry or a Doerman can handle this toy, my dog can handle this toy. Structure snippets are a great way to add that to there. And then promotions.

If you’re an e-commerce business, promotion snippets are fantastic because they add not only that promotion there, but I love this valid May 1st May 14th. That is telling me that it’s a limited time. It’s adding a sense of urgency. Great thing there. And something new, if you’re a lead business, these lead forms.

They’ve been around for a few months now, but, you know, people can actually vet all lead forms right from the ad and send you their information without even having to come to your website. So if you’re a lead submission company, test those out. Alright. So make sure the cat ad copy matches user intent. So like I said, indestructible dog toys, I love bullymake.

2020’s top 3 durable toys with your power chewer needs. So this is where I’m talking about matching my intent and matching my needs. Right? Not just in I love the, you know, undestroyable dog toys here, guaranteed to last a lifetime. Wonderful.

Right here, bonus gift: dog toy bin. BarkBox, super chew or official site. It doesn’t really do anything for me, but I know I have a power tour. They have specific needs, and this guarantees the last lifetime. Fantastic way to say that.

And as you can see, no one’s doing all this stuff right. Your goal as a PPC marketer is to get all of this right. Because if you can get all of this right and get it all into an ad, you’re going to stand out above everybody else. Include information about the offer. So we sit here, get a box of dog treats built for your power dog delivered monthly.

I love that. It’s telling me exactly if I go to Bully Make, it’s going to tell me exactly. I’m getting exactly what’s going to happen. I get them to learn monthly. I get dog toys and treats.

I love reading this. No raw high Raleigh, bad for your dogs. Right? Whereas, “Free toy bin” would sign up, get tough toys to chew each month. That’s there too, but this is very to the point and perfect.

To me. And then free shipping, low prices. That’s another thing. Right? All as consumers, we love free shipping.

And we want to, you know, anytime we put that out there is perfect. And this 24/7 expert help is also a good one. And finally, use natural language for sales, not just for benefits. Westport interactive doctors are durable and save dogs, dig them, and so will you. That’s great.

Like, that they’re talking like their consumer talks, you know, they’re being a little more personable than some of these other ones. So they do a really good job there. Now, we’ve worked on those ads. We’re starting to get those ads looking really good. Now we have to drive to a landing page.

Right? This is where I get frustrated. This is my frustrated guy. This is where PPC marketers lose so often. You know, we pick great keywords.

We write great ads. Especially on a big e-commerce site, like, the barbecue grill site I was on, we had so many products, so many ads. I mean, so many categories, all this stuff. We spent a lot of time sending out keywords to just a single page, like gas. Any kind of gas grill term would go to the gas grill page.

Or this, any kind of dog toy term would go to a dog toy page. Right? We need to match that user intent. If I’m looking for indestructible dog toys, my ad should be talking about it, and that landing page should be talking about it. Gotta keep the promises of your ad message.

Include a single clear call to action. This is hugely, hugely important. Don’t make me think; give me one single clear call to action to do. Do that. I’m I’m I’m pointing that out, very, very important.

And then always keep the key messages above the fold and build trust. Again, if you can do those things, remember those three things I said, am I in the right place? How do I feel about this? And what do I do next? All those things I just said. That is exactly what I’m talking about.

If you can do those things, you’re solid. So let’s look at 2, a tale of two pages here. Right? First one’s West Paul. So remember West Paul’s ad, West Paw interactive dog toys, durable and safe dogs, dig them.

So you are guaranteed. Love that. Then we see their landing page. I am exceptionally, exceptionally confused here. Keep the promise of the ad message.

Indestructible dog toys, interactive dog toys are durable and safe. Dogs digging for you. I love the image. It’s fun. It’s cute.

This is above the fold that we’re looking at right here. Alright? Nothing here tells me anything that I was looking for in that ad or that ad told me I was going to do. There’s not a single call to action. There are a couple of links here.

And this right here to play. I mean, this doesn’t even look like a call to action if it is. This page is really, really missing out. And then keeping your messages above the fold. Again, nothing.

It’s basically a category page we can see on the right. Which is fine for something, but we really need to have all that above the fold. It’s how we get people’s interest. We keep it, and we get them moving. And then build trust.

There is no trust on this page. I don’t know if this is some guy sitting in his basement. I don’t know if it’s a local mom and pop shop, which I love, but I don’t know that. There’s nothing that’s even a trust symbol. Right?

Small mom-and-pop shop. That could be a trust symbol. There’s nothing here that tells me any of those things. This thing fails on every level.

If you work for West Paul, I apologize, sort of, do better on your landing pages. Now let’s look at BarkBox. Remember, BarkBox, Super Chew, or the official site, bonus gift dog toy bin. Did we match user intent? Durable dog stuff every month.

Boom. Claim offer. Give a gift. This right away, right off the top of, you know, top of the page, they matched user intent perfectly. They kept the promise they had a message.

Remember the super chewer right there? Super chewer durable dog toys every month? What they told me was going to happen is happening. Right? Even this, the free dog toy bin, you know, right there.

Include a clear call to action? Absolutely did that. Claim my offer, give us a gift right there, above the fold, clear as day. I know exactly what to do. And then they kept the important message above the fold, which is here.

So all this is right above the fold. And then but the beauty thing is I know there’s more. Right? Whereas, like, West Paul, except for that little arrow that we saw on the left-hand, you may have not even noticed it. You didn’t even know there was more to that page.

Here, I can see that there’s more to scroll to, which is great, and that’s what we want to do. And then do we build trust? It’s further down the page than I would like it, but they have the happiness guarantee. The dogs love their super chewer boxes. I would love to see this up here, but it’s still there.

Having that trust up towards the top of the page up near my offer is more important to me, but it is there. So I’m going to give him, you know, half a point for that. So all in all, BarkBox has done a very, very good job. West Paul did a really good job with your ads. BarkBox did an okay job, but BarkBox killed it on that landing page.

It’s a good job for them. Now let’s talk about the art of disqualification. We’ve talked about keywords, and getting the right keywords. We talked about building the right ad. The right ads, and we talked about the right landing page. Right?

So all those things are in place. What about this art of disqualification I talked about? To me, disqualifying people is as important, if not more important, than actually qualifying them. And I know some people are going, “What? That doesn’t make sense.”

It does when you think about it because if you don’t disqualify people from the start, you’re going to waste money. So at the keyword level, search queries, are we only using heavily targeted terms that our ideal customer would utilize? Remember when I said about that, the long tail versus short tail? If we’re only using those really long tail terms that we know our customers are searching for when they’re looking for our products or services, that’s what we want.

Placements: where our ads showed up. If we’re utilizing display advertising or something like that, what kind of websites are we showing up on? What kind of people are they showing up to? And then on our demographics, do they make sense for the ideal customer? If I’m searching for dog toy stuff, I should be looking for people that fall into the bucket of animal lovers. Things like that.

We can blanket use the shotgun method and just shoot our ads out there, or we can get really, really targeted with surges, placements, and demographics and audiences, and we can really hone in on who our customer is, and that’s where we’re going to get the best benefit out of this.

At the ad level, we want to look at the messaging, the imagery, and the calls to action, whether we’re writing search ads, whether we’re utilizing display ads, remarketing. Make sure that our messaging, our imagery, and our call to action in those ads are related to that search and what they’re going to find online on the page. Be upfront with price and offering. A lot of people try to hide this. I’ve never understood it.

Even if you have a very, very expensive product, even if you have, like, the barbecue grill example, if we still have barbecue grills over $10,000, and I would put that right in the ad. They would say, “Don’t do that. People won’t click through.” I’m like, “Great. Don’t click through. I don’t want you to click through if you can’t afford my product.” I’m not being mean to somebody. I’m just not giving the idea, you know, we, I don’t want to give them the idea and be disappointed when they come to my website because maybe I have something they will like at a lower price point. So let’s not disappoint people.

Let’s not be disappointed. Be upfront with price and offering. If you’re high end, make sure people know it. I was just talking about that. Make sure if you’re selling Lexus cars, make sure that they know that Alexis is an expensive high-end vehicle.

Or if you have an Airbnb service, but you only cater to people that can afford $500 or $600 a night, make sure they know that. Be upfront and that’s sort of to be honest with your messaging. Don’t try to get people into your website and sell them after the fact. Let them know exactly what they’re going to get. Let them be honest about it. And at the landing page, craft your content towards your target.

Don’t be all over the place. Make sure that if you are targeting dog owners, craft your content towards dog owners. If you are traveling towards big dog owners or people that have dogs that are big chewers, craft your target towards that. Tell them exactly how your product or service works, what it’s for, and who it’s for, and what it does, and make the form, if you’re using a form, make it short and sweet so people fill it in, but always ask those important questions.

As a CRO guy, you know, we always make those shorts as in a perfect world, it would be an email address and enter. Submit your email. Like, that’d be done the perfect way because that’s the least amount of things people have to do. However, that’s not a perfect world.

And sometimes you have to ask a lot of questions. Just make sure it’s as short as possible and it’s to the point but also it’s enough to disqualify people. So if I’m getting a bun if I’m only asking for an email address, and I’m selling land, but I need to know that people can afford that land, then I need to ask some qualifying questions, you know, What’s your income level? Where do you live? Things like that.

So don’t be afraid to ask the important question you need to ask. Just make sure it’s only the questions you need. At that landing page level. And then if it’s product-based, make sure your products are clearly visible. At least most of your top sellers.

And then that way people can see exactly what you have, and they can make that decision and leave right away if they need to. Don’t be afraid of the bounce. If they’re not going to buy anyway. So if that’s pretty much what I had today, I hope this has been helpful.

I’m open to any questions right now if we want. Here’s a link to schedule a call for a free website evaluation from site trainers. But, yeah, thanks for having me.

Here’s a refined version of the conversation:

Sanchit:

This presentation was quite interesting and very insightful. I really enjoyed it a lot, and I hope our attendees enjoyed it too. There are a lot of actionable items that we can take for our next 2 or 3 weeks’ task because of paid marketing optimization, something that we have to do on an ongoing basis. I really like the way that, rather than targeting broad keywords, you have to go with long-tail keywords first, especially when you have a limited budget. You know, optimize the conversion rate because you have a higher conversion rate for high-tilt long-tail keywords. 

Jeff:

Yep. It’s funny because a lot of times, those short-tail keywords actually have a lower cost per click. Right? So you see that maybe, like I said, like dog toys might have a dollar cost per click. You’re like, “Oh, it’s a lot cheaper. I should bid on that.” Because it is stretchable to “dog toys” it is $2.50. But in the long run, you’re wasting money because the return’s not gonna be there. So don’t get seduced by the low cost per click. Think more about user intent.

Sanchit:

Yep. Thanks a lot, Jeff. It was really helpful for us. We really enjoyed it, and I hope our audience also enjoyed it. So we have a couple of questions. Let me read it one by one. So the first question is, give me a sec. Just give me a sec.

Jeff:

Of course.

Sanchit:

The first question is from Alex. Alex, thanks for asking the questions. So Jeff, the question for you is what about remarketing in terms of display ads?

Jeff:

Yeah. So I talked a little bit about that. The biggest thing with remarketing is making sure those audience segments are set up correctly. Right? So when I’m talking about the audience, I’m talking about your remarketing audiences, not specifically, like, you know, women, 35 to 54. I’m talking about, you know, what are those people doing on your website? So a lot of people say, if you visited my website, I’m gonna remarket to you with this blanket ad. That’s a really bad idea. If you have low numbers, it might be the only thing you can do, but I would much rather remarket to people that have visited my indestructible dog toy page. And if I have a video, you know, you don’t have Google Analytics to set up some, what we call, micro conversions. Right? They watched so much of a video. They scrolled so much to the page. They spent so much time on-site. Right? We can start building those remarketing lists that kind of meet those criteria, and then we can start having our very, very interested. And if we’re utilizing Facebook, we need to utilize some Facebook metrics, right, like our page plus, plus visit our website page, of the indestructible dog toys plus maybe watch a video, we can really start building out these remarketing lists that are really targeted and really niche. And if we have the traffic to do that, then we make sure that our ad matches that user intent. Like, we never want to say, “Hey, Jim, saw you on our website. Check this out.” But if we know from what they’ve interacted with our website that they have a poodle, right, it’s okay to show an image of a poodle. Or because maybe they visited a bunch of pages about poodle toys for poodles or, you know, something like that. Like, if we have those pages, just be as specific as possible with our remarketing lists, to get the best effect out of it because Google’s kind of gone stupid with their remarketing. And I’ve seen remarketing go from if we’re back in the old days, we could just have people visit our website, remarket to them, and we knew it was gonna do well. Now if you just throw a remarketing, a blanket remarket list out there, It’s gonna struggle. So you have to get really, really targeted with your audience segmentation.

Sanchit:

Thanks for the answer, Jeff. So the second question we have is from Meg, Megan Law. Thanks for asking a question, Meg. The question is, is dynamic keyword insertion (DKI) ads relevant for what you sell? Because sometimes it does not resonate with the video LP messaging, landing page messaging.

Jeff:

Could you repeat that? I’m sorry.

Sanchit:

So the question is, are DKI ads relevant for what you sell? Because sometimes it does not resonate with the video LP messaging, landing page messaging. Here’s the refined version of the conversation:

Jeff:

Yeah, and that’s the thing. DKI can be a huge benefit. I’ve seen it work really well, but it’s not for everything. So there are a couple of other strategies I didn’t mention, which are probably worth considering. DKI works really well, but it’s not 100% foolproof. Another approach is asking questions in your ad copy. For example, if you know what people are searching for, you can directly ask them if they’re looking for indestructible dog toys. It’s worth testing DKI, but always remember to keep testing and be willing to try different approaches if it’s not working for you.

Sanchit:

Sure. Thank you. Next question is from Maggie Walsh. She’s asking, what if your SQL search query report is relevant, your ad copy and landing page content are also relevant, but you are struggling with conversions?

Jeff:

Relevance is one thing, but you also need to ensure that you’re addressing the three key questions I mentioned earlier. First, make sure visitors know they’re in the right place. Second, build trust through symbols like secure checkout, customer reviews, etc. And finally, ensure your call to action is clear and prominent. Distractions like multiple CTAs or pop-ups can reduce conversions. So even if everything seems relevant, focus on these aspects to improve conversions.

Sanchit:

Thanks, Jeff. The next question is from Andrew. He’s asking, What do you think about enhanced CPC versus smart bidding? Which one is better?

Jeff:

I’m changing my stance on this. I used to dislike any form of automation, but I’m starting to see the benefits, especially with Google’s bidding technology. I often use target CPA bidding and sometimes start campaigns with maximize clicks. However, I avoid fully automated smart campaigns as they lack the human touch needed for business decisions. So while I like smart bidding, it’s important to maintain some level of human control and oversight.

Sanchit:

Okay. Thanks, Jeff. I hope, Andrew, you have got your answer. So, one last question for you, Jeff. I mean, there might be more questions, but we have only 15 minutes left. So, in that case, what should we focus on, impression share versus cost per click, if nothing is performing in the account, even after bidding on relevant keywords, and even having right ad copies and LPs?

Jeff:

So, again, if you’re not converting, make sure that everything is in line and focus on that landing page. Look, focus on the trust. Focus on all those things that we talked about. That’s the big thing. Yeah.

Sanchit:

And if you’re not converting, make sure your price is right, right? Is somebody undercutting you? Is the competition doing things that are making you look less relevant? There are always those outside factors. If you’re doing everything right, and you know you’re doing everything right, look at your competition, make sure your price is in check, and then look at those industry outside factors. Like with the buy, we were selling grills. If the stock market crashed, we were going to have a bad few days because the level of product we had, the price point of the product we had, those people tended to have stock. They tended to be higher-income people. And every time the stock market would go down, we’d struggle. So, make sure you’re always looking at outside factors as well, and then adjust. Don’t bid on stuff if you see something that’s causing you guys to have issues; pull back a little bit.

Sanchit:

Sure. Thanks. Yep. I think he has one more question, which is around if everything is relevant, in that case, what should we focus on, impression share versus cost per click?

Jeff:

Yeah. So, I’m assuming you’re asking if things are converting, right? Like, so are you trying to get… Or is this if things aren’t converting? It depends on your budget, right? Do you have the budget to test impression share? Are you struggling? Are you hitting the budget and not converting cost per click? I’d rather bid for a 2 or 3 position. I used to say even 4 or 5, but that doesn’t exist anymore at the bottom of the page. But I would rather be at the 2 or 3 and pay a lower cost per click and get more clicks than really struggle through with that budget. If I have the budget to spend, and I know I have the budget to test impression share, I would look at 2 things. I would look at impressions not only just your impression, I would also look at your top of the page. Right? So, you have your regular impression share, and then you have that top of the page and even that number 1, how often are you getting on there? You can get really granular about that stuff, but, you know, like I said, it depends on your budget and how much money you have to spend.

Sanchit:

Thanks, Jeff. Hope you have got your answer. And one last question, Jeff. So, how important is it to have social proof on the landing page and links to different landing pages like privacy policy, contact us, and so on?

Jeff:

Depends. Social proof always, you know, customer reviews, you know, things like that always, always, always. Those are huge trust factors. So, it’s very important to have those there. Your privacy policy should always be in your footer, especially if you have any kind of lead gen where they’re giving you their personal information. Definitely need your privacy policy in the footer. I don’t think it needs to be any place else. Contact us is always important. Like I said, that phone number in the top upper right corner of your landing page, that’s a huge trust symbol. And the ability to contact you is also huge. But at the same point, there are things on that page that, like, if we’re doing a true landing page that I would get rid of, right? Menu items that take you back to different pages, deeper links into the website, if you’re in an informational website, those are great. But if you’re trying to get people to do one particular action on a landing page, I would… The phone number’s great. Need the privacy policy, but those deeper links in the website, if I’m trying to get them to perform one action, we can probably cut a lot of those out.

Sanchit:

Okay. Thanks, Jeff. My bad, actually, I missed one line in this portion. So the last line was like, having privacy policy contact has links on the landing page. I mean, does this impact the quality score of your keywords?

Jeff:

Quality score. Like I said, contact us. And if it’s in your footer, it is at the bottom of the page. It’s always gonna be there. I don’t know for a fact whether that impacts quality score or not. I mean, you might suspect, but I’ve never read anything that said that impacts the quality score one way or another. But, you know, it doesn’t hurt to have those things there for sure. And like I said, it could also be a legal issue depending on what you’re doing. So…

Sanchit:

Great, Jeff. However, you have got your answer. That’s it. I think we have done, like, questions also. It was a really insightful session, Jeff. And I really want to thank all the audience who have joined our webinar. We will be sharing the presentation and the video recording within 24 to 48 hours. That’s it. I think so. Yeah. Jeff, anything you want to share or… this was a very, very insightful session.

Jeff:

Oh, no. Just want to say thanks to everybody who attended. It’s been fun. Thanks to you guys for having me on. And, yeah, be sure to reach out to me. You can find me on LinkedIn, at SiteTuners, Jeff@SiteTuners.com. If y’all have any questions, just reach out. But LinkedIn’s probably a great place. I’m also on Twitter.