Top 5 Strategies to Increase Your Online Advertising Conversion Rate
Hyper-boost Your Online Ads with Conversion-Ready Strategies
An alarmingly high proportion of advertising campaign managers and marketers don’t know how well their ads are performing. Or maybe you do know but aren’t sure how to successfully reach your conversion goals?
There is an overload of information on how to do this and it can get confusing, so we’re sharing five impactful strategies where you can easily focus your efforts to improve your digital ad conversion.
In this article:
- Nailing High-Converting Keywords by User Intent
- Headline Hacks
- A/B Testing Done Right
- Precise Audience Targeting & Re-targeting
- Custom Landing Pages & Conversion Funnel
Nailing High-Converting Keywords by User Intent
Choosing the right keywords can get your ad in front of the right customers. Of course, you want your keywords to drive high search volume because that means more eyeballs on your ads and, thus, plenty of opportunities to capture leads.
However, with high search volume comes a lot of people with no interest in your product or service. When you’re paying for each click, the idea of attracting clicks from users who will never convert is a marketer’s nightmare!
This is precisely where analyzing keywords by intent can be your first step when diagnosing conversion issues for your ad campaigns.
It helps you meet the users’ needs better and match your content and landing pages to their intentions. You want your ads to reach high-intent prospects with keyword phrases such as buy, download, coupon, deals or free shipping, etc.
On the other hand, you might choose to filter out users showing only informational intent if the conversion goal of your ads is purely sales since these users are more effective for lead nurturing via gated content and email collection.
Keywords with informational intent are also direct content ideas to send to your content creation team. Your open web ads could contain the following keywords: how to, why, best way to, find out how, reviews or top 10.
Being an essential part of keyword research, intent helps you create a more organized content strategy aimed at high-intent prospects and better conversions. Start by going through your keyword lists and organize them by intent, required action and the type of the landing page you plan to create.
One tried and true way to turn more clicks into customers is to differentiate yourself from the pack…
And this is precisely where you can take advantage of the long-tail keyword: a more specific, less competitive keyword that attracts a hyper-targeted audience of users further along the intent scale. Bidding on these keywords is an essential tactic for any advertiser looking to minimize waste.
Check out our practical guide on building long-tail keywords to learn more.
Headline Optimization Hacks
As the saying goes, you never get a second chance to make a first impression. Essentially, your headline serves as your ad’s first impression. So, how do you ensure your ad not only makes a great first impression, but actually encourages clicks?
Speak your customer’s language; the words you choose for your headline will invariably have an impact on the action users take. And while click-bait will get you loads of clicks, they offer no value with pointless hype while catchy hooks lead to value in the form of entertainment, education or inspiration.
Clickbait or catchy? Check out these sample headlines.
| “Stop Banging Your Head Against the Wall – Learn Coding in 3 Days for FREE” | “Tired of Fighting Algorithms and Unwilling to Pay for Clicks? Find out how we solved this with XXX” |
|---|---|
| Yes, you need to capture visitors’ attention with a catchy hook but if they feel duped in any way after clicking, you’ve likely lost that customer forever, and potentially lead to a bad review. | Claims are always more believable when they are very specific. We’ve addressed their pain and also promised a benefit and played up the fear of loss angle. |
A/B Testing Done Right
A well-tested CTA is one of the most important elements to test on your ads. Your call-to-action button will affect the conversion rate and that’s why you need to test the ideal color, size, placement for it.
As a best practice, you could try out different headlines, calls to action, descriptions and landing pages for your ads and perform A/B split testing on all of them. By doing so, you will have a better chance to develop and fine-tune your ads in order to improve your conversions.
A/B testing display ads can also be an arduous task in addition to costing time and money. If you wanted to change the copy in one of your ads, you would then have to revert to your design team and redo your whole banner.
If you wanted to see if one image worked better than another, you redo the whole banner and republish it. Each time this would involve coding, resizing text and reanimating assets to ensure the ad maintains the same standard as the previous one.
ReverseAds, on the other hand, offers its clients free A/B testing on banner ads with dynamic optimization without the need to redo the entire banner. Its technology automatically chooses the best performing text and elements, and with just a few clicks, your updated and optimized banner ads will be republished for a fixed amount of time or maximum number of impressions.
Although you should be doing these A/B testing best practices on an ongoing basis, you will probably only see small, single-digit increases in your conversion rate. Here is where you need to move past this basic mentality to the big tactics and optimizations that will dramatically change your ad performance and ROI.
Tip: When A/B testing banner ads, stick to best practices and leave the rest of the banner the same. If you’re changing the CTA text, leave everything, even the surrounding button the same. Otherwise, you won’t be able to determine which element of your ad is responsible for the resulting change in performance.
Precise Audience Targeting and Retargeting
Your ads are getting clicks yet those conversions still aren’t rolling in. You could dig back into split testing headlines, or it may be time to admit you’ve misidentified the problem and are simply targeting the wrong people.
You need to narrow down your targeting to buyers who are most likely to purchase. Is a certain demographic more likely to buy? Don’t forget about geographic locations, the time your ad is showing and other factors that affect conversion rate.
Today’s programmatic advertising tools offer advertisers the means to utilize algorithms that latches onto potential customers’ data and ensures ads are being targeted towards customers who are uniquely looking for your products/brands.
Next, we have retargeting, which is also an effective online ad strategy to improve your CTR and CRO. By showing the same ads that users viewed a few more times recently, you can bring them back to your site and increase the odds that they’ll click your display ads, and potentially buy your product.
However, you want to avoid ad fatigue when it comes to retargeting. Imagine being stalked by the same ads across the Internet while completely uninterested. Besides triggering multiple ad blockers, you are also damaging your brand reputation.
Tip: For retargeting purposes, you will need consent from users before using cookies. With AI and machine learning technology such as the ReverseAds app, you can optimize your retargeting without relying on 3rd party cookies. The app also improves the accuracy of your campaign’s audience targeting with a precision technology that drives high-intent buyers through its “Keyword Assignment Algorithm”. Utilizing real-time matching and anonymized match back ID creation, the app ensures that your ads will always be exposed to unique high-intent customers.
Custom Landing Pages and Conversion Funnel
If you are running ads for multiple segments, your landing pages need to resonate with your target audience to make them feel that they have come to the right place.
Company X: Software service for vacation home rentals
Landing page 1: Targeted to customers for family vacation rental booking and payment automation.
The landing page should be designed for families with kids. An embedded video could be a review from previous customers and the language should specifically speak to their unique wants or needs.
Landing page 2: Targeted to home owners looking to rent out their properties for the short-term.
The landing page should be designed for property owners in targeted geo-location and the language should specifically speak to their business goals or needs.
These targeted landing pages increase conversions by making users feel more welcome while also addressing their unique needs. And thus, this is how you drive big conversions on a landing page.
But creating custom landing pages for different segments is only half the battle…
You’ve A/B tested your ads, you’ve tried new headlines, different keywords, and even ran mobile-only ads, yet your conversion rates are still in the ditch. The issue might not be your ads at all — it might be your timing!
To be able to make the most of all these strategies, you need to plug them in the right stages of the conversion funnel.
TOFU (Top of the Funnel): This is the phase to promote awareness of your brand and what it offers. Attract potential customers with display campaigns adapted to their needs and preferences, such as video ads and useful content that answers their queries.
MOFU (Middle of the Funnel): Here is where you want to lead users toward making a considered purchase decision. You can also use lead generation features on display ads and make the most of retargeting based on the data you have acquired.
BOFU (Bottom of the Funnel): Present your unique selling points and explain why your product or service is the best option. Make sure that your ad copy communicates your value proposition and optimize your landing pages to really drive home the message.
Key takeaway: Conversion is a key metric for measuring the effectiveness of your ad campaigns. However, campaign managers and marketers should also evaluate the quality of the conversions and whether they match the target audience. It may be tempting to reach a wider audience and see your online ad conversion rate improving but do they really serve as qualified leads or high-intent users? More importantly, you need to understand the goals and expectations from every ad campaign before analyzing the conversion performance of your ads.
