Google Ads: 5 Strategies to Maximize ROAS
Follow these strategies to make Google Ads work for you!
One of my favorite topics to write about and research is how to maximize ROAS in paid search. As Google and the major search engines continuously update their criteria for what drives your average spend per ad up or down, staying on top of the upcoming trends is very important. Here are 5 quick wins that I have found to maximize your ROAS and avoid wasted ad spend.
Ad Copy
When writing ad copy, one of the first steps to take is to enter your search term into Google. Review 10–15 paid ad copies and answer these questions:
- What wording seems to rank high?
- Who are your major competitors for the ad?
- Do they all have a similar message in their ad copy?
- Is there some messaging that can make you stand out?
- When you click through the ad, are you ending up on a relevant landing page?
- Is anyone using personalized marketing in the ad that would be specific to the target market?
After completing this research, start drafting ad copy. Use expanded text ads as these get significantly higher click-through rates and allow for targeted messaging.
Use A/B testing and test out straight forward ad copy versus more creative copy. These can have very different results based on a multitude of different factors so don’t be afraid to test different terms out.
Don’t be afraid to test out price points in your ad copy. Whether you are selling a high price or low price product, people are often afraid to test price. Guess what? When your customer clicks on the ad to the next page, they will find out your price. Being upfront and open can help build trust and weed out unproductive clicks on your ads, allowing you to use your ad spend effectively.
Relevancy
Relevancy, one of those terms is on fire yet many marketers are not capitalizing on. Relevancy is critical to maximizing ROAS. Google scores relevancy from 1 (worst) to 10 (best) and your score matters.
A low relevancy score can add a 400% premium to your ad costs whereas a high relevancy score can discount your rate by as much as 50%. Here are some key factors that affect relevancy:
- Average click through rate
- How closely correlated your keywords are to your ad group and ad copy.
- The correlation between your landing page and your keyword.
- The historical performance of your ad accounts.
If you have a low relevancy score, Google trusts you and your ads less regardless of how relevant your ads are. Driving your relevancy score up is a long-term investment. Getting started on it sooner rather than later is critical for long-term success of your campaign and driving your ROAS higher.
Negative Keywords
Review your account frequently. Are the terms you are being found for relevant to what customers would find on your page? As an example, if you are a company that sells plumbing supplies but you are showing up frequently for electrical boxes you would want to add everything about electrical boxes into a negative keyword list.
Properly identifying negative keywords will help you eliminate ad spend that has very low odds on converting and bad click-through rates. Make it a habit to check the list of keywords you are being found for at least once every 6 weeks. As search engines update their algorithms, there are constantly keywords your ads will show for that have nothing to do with your business.
Keyword Match Types
There are three main types of keyword matches, broad, phrase and exact. Unless you have a product that appeals to a very wide audience, don’t use a broad match. Take the time to do your research and use phrase or exact match.
The reason I dislike broad match is it has a very high possibility of bringing in terms unrelated to your search term. For instance, let’s say you sell large loves. If you were to broad match the term gloves, you would have the potential to match on large surgical gloves, large boxing gloves, gloves for large people, gloves large dragons once wore, etc.
Take the time, do your research and use the right terms for your audience. With phrase match, if you use the term large blue gardening gloves, that exact phrase must appear in the search. If someone searches for large blue gardening gloves with butterflies, your term will match because that has your phrase in the search term. However, if someone searched for blue gardening gloves with butterflies, your entire phrase didn’t appear so you would not return a result.
Exact match will make sure the term is highly relevant to your audience. The search term will only count as a match if your exact phrase and nothing else appears in the search. If your exact phrase keyword was large blue gloves and someone searched large blue gloves with butterflies, this would not trigger your ad. Exact phrase can lead to very relevant and specific ads showing because you can tie your key phrase into the ad copy and know that is what the customer searched for.
Ad Groups
When putting together your ad groups, here are three simple rules to make sure you maximize your budget:
- Keep all keywords in your ad groups related to each other.
- Keep ad groups small, 7 to 10 keywords, to keep your targeting highly relevant.
- Review keywords inside of ad groups for individual performance and rotate out low performers.
Keeping ad groups small and related is the easiest way to have your ad messaging and landing pages relevant to your keywords. When you get under 7, getting enough search volume can become an issue and getting over 10 makes relevancy challenging.
Final Point
Maximizing your ROAS becomes much simpler when following these tricks. Implement these strategies. Monitor their results. Test new variants. Repeating this strategy consistently will maximize your paid search and send your ROAS to new heights!
I am Dave Schafer, an always learning entrepreneur, CPA, experienced marketer, writer, father and husband. One of my large passions is all things digital marketing, an ever-changing field that offers so much upside done right. If you get stuck on a question or have questions with digital marketing, email me directly at Dave2742@gmail.com. Thank you for reading my article and ABT (Always Be Testing)!
