PPC advertising is an effective form of digital marketing, with an average return on investment of $2 for every $1 spent. By using Google AdWords, you can put ads on top of search engine results pages, on social media platforms, and other websites. One of the most important factors in a PPC campaign is the number of customers that perform the desired action, such as making a purchase, after clicking on an ad.

The more conversions you have, the more money you’ll make from your ads. In this guide, we’ll answer all your PPC questions like:

• How do you calculate your PPC conversion rate?
• What is a good conversion rate for PPC?
• How can you improve your conversion rate?

The team at Realtorfuel is experienced in PPC management and has successfully handled hundreds of client campaigns. To learn more about PPC (Pay Per Click) and everything else we offer, get in touch with us here.

PPC conversion rate meaning

What is PPC conversion rate? This is the percentage of people who convert, or take the desired action, after clicking on your ads. The goal of a conversion is to get the customer to take the desired action, whether that is making a purchase, completing a contact form, requesting a free trial, or something else.

Increasing your conversion rate indicates that your campaign is having a positive impact for your business.

How to calculate your PPC conversion rate

There are many PPC conversion rate calculators available online that can help you determine your conversion rate. PPC conversion rate calculators can save you time and energy by doing the math for you, and they provide accurate results.

You can use the PPC conversion rate formula to calculate the PPC conversion rate. The PPC conversion rate formula is:

• (Conversions/number of ad interactions) x 100 = conversion rate

So, if users clicked on your ad 100 times and 10 of them converted, your calculations would look like this:

• (10 / 100) x 100 = 10%

What is a good conversion rate for PPC?

The average conversion rate for PPC is lower than the average conversion rate for Google Ads. You should try to have a conversion rate that is higher than the average in order to be successful.

You should aim for a 10% return on your investment. The top 25% of advertisers on Google Ads have an average conversion rate that is over 11%. Despite being helpful, it is essential to keep in mind that the standard for a great PPC conversion rate differs based on your area of expertise, where you are, and numerous other elements.

The following section will provide tips on how to improve your PPC conversion rate.

20 Ways To Increase Conversion Rate Optimization For PPC Advertising

The main focus when beginning a paid search campaign is to pick keywords and phrases that will generate targeted traffic to your website. A better way to increase conversions is to focus on targeted traffic.  While one approach starts with creating a campaign, the other focuses on the end goal of conversions. PPC Managers often think they are considering all the relevant factors, but four months into a campaign with high cost/conversions and less than appealing conversions, it becomes apparent that they didn’t build out the PPC strategies correctly. You didn’t focus initially on metrics related to converting visitors to customers, which are important to our companies or our clients.

There are a lot of write-ups on how websites can improve their conversion rates by optimizing their landing pages and websites, but let’s not discuss that topic in depth (maybe just a little bit). This is about how companies and pay-per-click advertising teams can increase conversions directly from their PPC accounts, without making major changes to website copy. After you have made the necessary changes to your website’s copy, your PPC campaigns will have a better chance of being successful. However, it would be more helpful to discuss ways to make your campaigns more effective.

Determine What Conversions To Track

This is the first step and it is an effective way to do things. E-commerce companies should not only track sales, but also email sign-ups, engagement on certain pages, downloads, and shares. Google Tag Manager can help track detailed actions on websites, such as hovering over pictures and video plays. What are the metrics and conversions that typically lead to a purchase or engagement with the brand? Don’t be afraid to use heat mapping to help you decide which actions are most likely to lead to conversions.

Remember that your brand advocates aren’t just your purchasers. It is possible that your ability to attract retailers, bloggers, and other influencers are part of your larger strategy.

Reverse Engineer The Path Of Purchase

Most shoppers are not aware of the different brands when they start shopping, but they eventually choose who to buy from. They may have many different ways to reach that decision. The Google Analytics tool is very helpful in tracking behavior, acquisition, and conversion flow. Use the data you have gathered to find out where most of your shoppers come from and what the usual path to purchase is. Some pages on your site may be responsible for helping to convert visitors into customers, even if they are not the first or last page that visitors interact with. These pages may be, for example, the second or third page that visitors visit before making a purchase.

Don’t forget mobile versus computer and tablet. You can see what channels are impacting purchasing decisions by looking at cross device reports in Google AdWords.

Google Conversions & Analytics

Google AdWords now syncs Google Analytics conversion data into Google Conversions, making life easier on marketers. It is important to have consistent analytics conversions across multiple advertising channels. By using the Google AdWords interface, you can see conversions happening across campaigns, ads, keywords, and many other segments.

Segment (My Top 6 Favorite Features)

PPC managers will tell you that the segment view in Google AdWords is very helpful. If you are calculating and monitoring conversions, you can compare the data across the various segments that are available.

• Time: By viewing the many dimensions of time (i.e day of week, hour of day), you can get a decent idea of what time you are getting more conversions as well as the cost/conversion across each segment. Go to your Setting Tab to set the right schedule that makes the most sense for your campaign and the conversions you want to garner.
• Network (with search partners): Remember that Google has many of search partners they leverage to serve up Paid Search ads.  But sometimes these other networks do not produce enough conversions to warrant advertising. By viewing this data and then going back into your settings tab to focus solely on the Google Network, you can increase conversions.  The vice versa logic can also hold true from a cost/conversion standpoint.
• Click Type: Under this segment, you can view where you are getting conversions, be it via clicks from the headlines or clicks from the sitelinks.  If your sitelinks happen to be driving decent conversions but it’s click-through rate is low, you may determine that improving the copy of those sitelinks can improve overall conversions.  For smaller campaigns under $2,000 per month, this may not be huge, but if you’re spending over $10,000 per month or $200 per day or more, this could result in significant savings.
• Device: I could have mentioned this under Click Type, but here it’s more dynamic. Can mobile improve the overall conversions of our campaigns?  This segment can share great insights into this question.  Remember that mobile is not best suited for everyone. For the typical B2B marketer compared to B2C marketer, you may determine that mobile is seldom driving conversions. If this is the case, you can reduce the max bid by 95 – 100% so you’re not showing mobile ads and thus saving your budget for the computer and tablet campaigns. Unfortunately, we cannot segment out tablet versus computer, but hopefully Google will grant advertisers more flexibility in this regard in the future.
• Top Versus Other: Probability my favorite segment, this shows you how your ads performed at the top of Google in positions 1 – 3 versus positions 4 though 10.  Why is this critical?  If you notice you have to spend 30% more per click to be the top 3 positions, but your click-through rate as well as conversions are up by 100% or more (based on which conversions those are), you can determine being at the top is a better approach.  I highly recommend advertisers regularly view this report.  Just remember to compare the cost/conversion across these metrics as well.
• Conversion Rate Optimizer: For those who love to automate, Google AdWords’ Conversion Rate Optimizer will do the trick. You have to gather enough data (minimum 30 conversions) and in particular conversions for this to work, but overtime Google will dynamically bid on your behalf based on where you are likely to get the best cost per conversion.

Remarketing & Segmented Lists

Sometimes we need to ads to shoppers who engaged with our brand but didn’t purchase. The goal of a marketer is to increase conversions in a way that is cost effective. If you have the technology to remarket to buyers, you should use that technology.

Remarketing is a useful tool for targeting ads to people who have already visited your website. Google AdWords allows you to segment your remarketing lists, so you can show ads to people based on which landing pages they visited. There are other types of more advanced segmented lists that can be created, but Google does a better job of explaining how to create segmented lists.

Ecommerce Lovers – Product List Ads (Or The New)

If you’re not using Product Listing Ads, you’re really missing out. They’re much more effective than traditional ads, both in terms of visuals and click-through rate. The changes that Google made to PLAs in August may have changed their format and feel, but they are still a powerful strategy for Advertisers with products. You can increase your click-through rates on PLAs, which will lead to more conversions, by using other conversion rate optimization strategies. A big thank you to Bruce Clay for his insightful interview with SEJ.

Align Ad Copy With Landing Pages

Your PPC ad copy needs to match the URL of the landing page it is promoting. If someone is looking for a sectional sofa on your website and you only have a general sofa category, you could be losing out on sales. This is because the customer may be too lazy to search for the sectional sofa specifically or they may not be able to find it on your site.

Do not leave it to chance. Do not assume that your shoppers are ready to buy. If you want to increase conversions, make sure the right shoppers are seeing your landing pages. This will depend on how well your landing pages convert and the competition of the market. This strategy will also improve your quality score, which will lower cost per click, allow you to use your budget more efficiently, and result in more opportunities for conversions. Its all a well oiled machine.

Proper Landing Pages (Sorry, I Had To!)

We initially said that we wouldn’t go there, but we kind of had to. Setting up your landing pages correctly is one of the best investments you can make in digital marketing. Say you are a business that sells a product or service to other businesses. Do you have any case studies that show you successfully solving specific consumer problems? Do you want an engaging FAQ page that is not simply a list of FAQ’s but instead a short video of the CEO answering half or most of the FAQ’s? To increase conversions on your website, focus on improving the layout, feel, CTA’s, and content of your website and its landing pages. A conversion is any goal that you have set for your website or ad that a visitor completes. For example, if you want people to sign up for your newsletter, that would be a conversion. There are many other conversions you could track, and if we knew which conversions had the potential to lead to a sale, we would be in a much better position.

Implement Click Through Rate Best Practices

• The process of identifying click-through rate opportunities for any paid search campaign
• The practical benefits of increased click-through rates
• Strategies that PPC managers or companies can implement to increase the click-through rate of Paid Search campaigns.

Making your ads more likely to be clicked on can lead to more sales. If you target the right users with the right ads, you’re more likely to get conversions on your website.

Leverage Special Offers

We’re in the business of promotional advertising, so we’re always nervous about getting our customers used to only buying when there’s a sale. The likes of Express, Jos. A. Many banks and retailers have started offering sales and discounts to customers in order to encourage them to shop more often. However, many of us only ever shop at these places when there are sales, which suggests that this strategy may not always be effective.