Stop Wasting Money on the Wrong Traffic
Ever wondered why your campaigns are driving clicks but not results? Digital performance is arguably the most measurable and accountable marketing activity and can reap great returns on investment. However, if not managed well, it can often fall short of expectations. From an eagle view, it isn’t always easy to understand why traffic from a campaign is not converting into business growth. Deep diving into traffic analysis can clearly identify which channels, campaigns, and keywords are not performing.
Non-performing Channels or Campaigns
The first step is to jump into Google Analytics and review your traffic performance by source/medium. Understanding where your traffic is coming from and how it is performing allows you to compare channels. First, look at traffic volume, new vs returning visitor, bounce rate, average session duration, pages per session. Your Google Analytics account should be set-up with some performance metrics for your site, such as ecommerce transactions, lead generation forms completed, sign ups, registrations etc. If not, get onto it! Compare your channels’ performance, look at the conversion rates and identify which ones are performing well and which ones need improvement.
Google Ads – If you are using Google Ads to acquire paid traffic – jump into the Google Ads section of Google Analytics. Here, you can compare your campaigns’ performance and highlight which ones require attention.
Reducing Click Waste:
Irrelevant Keywords – This is the number one killer of performance; when your campaigns are driving traffic, but you are not getting results. The first thing to do is to drill in and look at the keyword terms you are actually paying for. You will most likely find that you are buying clicks that will never convert for you. Account managers should be doing this weekly for new campaigns and monthly for established campaigns. If you are being served out for keywords you don’t want, you will need to add negatives or change your match types to reduce the waste. Some campaigns that we take over have up 70% wasted budget spent on non-targeted clicks.
Google Ads Match Types – Campaign managers are kept constantly on their toes with changes to the way Google Ads matches your keywords to searches. With Google Ads expanding the meaning of broad and phrase match terms, you may see an increase in non-targeted clicks. These are clicks that are not likely to convert due to location, or you not being able to service that consumer. Clicks should be focused on keywords and audiences that are “most likely” to convert. https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ads-expands-broad-phrase-match-same-meanings-27976.html
Accidental Clicks – This is the biggest killer when you are targeting mobile. Many clicks come from in-app games and the majority bounce immediately. If you want traffic that engages and takes an action on your site, you may need to exclude mobile apps in your display and remarketing campaigns.
High CPCs – Google is working hard to push all agencies into using their automated bidding features and we are fully on board with all new upgrades to Google Ads when they are proven to work. Sadly, blindly adopting these bidding techniques can see CPCs more than triple. Google argues that they are buying a more targeted click based on the users’ search history – however the numbers are not stacking up. Our recommendations are to set up and manage a campaign manually for a 3 to 6 months, establish clear performance benchmarks and then slowly test different bidding strategies to see if they can improve it. Also, don’t just follow minimum first page bid suggestions or the Google CPC recommendations – look a what position you are in and manage your CPCs based on what position you want to reach.
Social Media Bounce Rates – With social media, it is great to have a very clear goal of what you want that activity to achieve or what impact you want it to have. Is it working? Social media metrics themselves can be a little “soft” such as “reach” – which is like an impression. Impressions don’t always mean that the content, promoted posts, or ads are performing how you desire. Do you want people to just see your post and like it? Do you want them to click through to your website and browse? Do you want them to buy something, or sign up? How well is the activity performing compared to other channels? Is the balance of budget right?
Programmatic Display – Despite radical improvements to audience targeting, at PayPerClick we don’t expect programmatic to ever really perform for anything other than soft metrics. The results just never stack up in comparison to other channels. Generally, all programmatic campaigns experience a really high bounce rate with expensive CPCs, as this is where the trading desks make their mark-ups. If you are not seeing performance here, reassign that budget to a better performing channel.
Digital Campaigns can drive excellent results if managed well, so take a deep dive into your analytics and making your digital marketing budget accountable will allow you to weight your budget to better performing channels and grow your digital performance. Touchbase if you would like some independent insights into your digital traffic.