In some cases, PPC doesn't pay off from the very beginning! Don’t just give up without giving it another try. Follow these simple yet powerful tips to improve your AdWords performance.

1. Use Conditional Keywords

Are you using carefully selected keywords but they are not performing well? You need to switch your keywords strategy right away. Sometimes even targeted keywords don’t convert (for multiple reasons). For example, information seekers search the same keywords and buyers, but are not ready to buy.

Let’s suppose you are a house removal company in New York and targeting the following keywords…

• house removals
• house movers
• moving companies
• removals company

They are your main targeted keywords and are eating your most of the budget.  Pause them! Instead use conditional keywords where the user is looking exactly for the service you are offering but with a solid and well defined condition . For example:

• international removals
• interstate moving companies
• furniture removalists
• nationwide moving companies
• apartment movers
• office relocation
• local moving services

In my experience, these types of users are most likely to convert at higher conversion rates. It will lift up your conversions and decrease your costs.

2. Use Long Tail Keywords

Long tail keywords are another great way to optimize your AdWords account performance. Don’t confuse them with ‘conditional keywords’.

As I said earlier, conditional keywords have clear and solid condition attached to the search query, whereas long tail keywords don’t necessarily need to have one.

For example, for removal companies, long tail keywords might be:

• best house removal companies
• cheap house movers in new york
• where can I find moving companies

To get even better results, use long tail conditional keywords which in this case could be:

• long distance interstate moving companies
• discount interstate moving companies
• best interstate moving companies nyc
• moving companies for interstate moves
• full service interstate moving companies
• interstate moving companies near me

One conditional keyword will have several long tail keywords so there is a solid chance that you get good conversions from such keywords.

3. Create “Near Me” Campaign

This is, perhaps, the most neglected technique for getting more conversions and improving account performance. People are getting more localized day by day in this mobile world.

More than 50% of traffic is already on mobile and they are well aware of the fact that Google knows their location already. I know if I type “near me” next to my search query, this will bring up much more localized service providers.

But there is a catch. In this scenario, you are targeting entire New York and in such big cities, not everyone is close enough to visit your business. Even if they see your ad, they are least likely to convert. You need to target those who are physically close to your business location when make a search online.

Here is how you do it—create a separate campaign for “Near Me” searchers. Let’s suppose you are based in Long Island. Go to you campaign’s setting tab and then location. Click on “Add Location” and then select “Near Me” campaign. Search for “Long Island” and add it.

Now you are targeting people physically located in Long Island (add as many nearby areas as you want). Add all relevant keywords. Few examples are below…

• house movers near me
• house removals nearby
• closest house movers
• local house removal companies

If, in some cases, you don’t find your area in the AdWords location targeting interface, try your zip code instead, and if doesn’t work either, target by “Radius”.

You can even target generic and broad keywords in this campaign with even less fear of losing money. Here are a few more tips to consider:

• Add localized messaging in your ad copy
• Use the location extension
• Enable the phone calls extension

There is another way to target visitors near your location. You must have your business registered with Google My Business . The next step is to link your “My Business” location with AdWords account. Read this Google guide for further instructions on how to link it.

After it’s done, heads toward the advanced location targeting window and click on “location groups” tab and select My Locations from the dropdown as shown in the image below. Select the radius you want to target, let’s say 2 miles and click on Add.

This is a convenient way to target users near your business location especially when you have multiple business locations. This targeting technique will apply to all business locations you have in your Google My Business account.

That’s how your ad will look like on mobile.

(Image courtesy of Google)

At this point you may want to add multiple radius targets to single campaign to find the best radius that works for you. Let’s suppose you targeted 2 miles initially. Now repeat the whole process again and target 4 miles, then 7 and 10 (or what makes sense to you). In this way, you can learn about the impact of distance from your business location and later set your bids accordingly.

You should also check the ‘distance report’ more frequently to see how far the customer was when she saw your ad. This can be found under the “Dimension” tab. Choose ‘Distance’ from the ‘View’ drop down.

(Image courtesy of Google)

If a user happens to be in the area close to your multiple business locations, he will see all of them in the ad and can  choose one which suits him best.

(Image courtesy of Google)

Tip: Schedule your “Near Me” campaign to run during your operating hours.

Note: This technique is applicable to all other campaigns in your account as well and works perfectly fine for the visitors physically close to your location.

4. Enable Mobile Click-to-Call

This is most important and least used feature by AdWords advertisers in this mobile world. Please note that I am not talking about the “phone calls extension,” I am not even talking about the “calls from website.” I am specifically talking about “phone number click” on your mobile site.

There are 3 types of call conversions you can track from within AdWords interface. If you have a phone number displayed on your website and are not tracking all three of them, your stats are not accurate (especially when you have to report to client about AdWords performance ).

i) Call Extension

Majority of the advertisers are well aware of this feature known as “Call Extensions”. Visitors see “call” button next to your ads on mobiles or your “phone number” on desktop devices.

(Image courtesy of Google)

ii) Calls from website

In this type of conversion, Google displays a dynamically-generated forwarding number when someone visits your website after clicking your ad. Your own phone number will be replaced by this forwarding number, so you can measure how many people called you after landing on your website either on mobile or desktop.

(Image courtesy of Google)

Fewer AdWords advertisers are taking advantage of this feature as compare to call extensions.

iii) Phone click on mobile site

This is perhaps the most important call tracking source. It will turn your dead phone number on your mobile site into live clickable phone number. Here is how Google describes it…

“When someone visits your mobile website after clicking one of your AdWords ads, conversion tracking can help you identify clicks on your phone number. Unlike website call conversions, this feature only tracks clicks on your phone number, not actual phone calls. You'll see click data instead of call data (such as call length) in your conversion reports.You can measure clicks on a text link, image, or button.”

(Image courtesy of Google)

You can read more about adding this tracking to your mobile site on this Google support link . Check out this guide if you're interested in tracking conversions with Google Analytics .

When visitors land on your mobile website after clicking your ad and decide to call instead of signup, they have to manually dial your number. Giving them the option to click to call will definitely increase your conversion rate.

On a side note, I checked ten different websites currently running paid campaigns in New York for “ house removals ” related keywords and found the following worrisome facts…

• 3 out of 10 companies don’t even have a phone number displayed on their websites
• 4 out of 10 websites are not even responsive (mobile-friendly)
• 10 out of 10 are not tracking phone number clicks on mobile devices
• 9 out of 10 websites aren’t tracking calls from website
• 8 out of 10 haven’t enabled click to call function for organic users on mobiles
• 2 out of 10 don’t have Google Analytics installed on the websites
• 9 out of 10 don’t have AdWords conversion tracking installed on their websites

Let me remind you once again, all these 10 websites are currently running paid campaigns on AdWords.

5. Find & Use a Winning Landing Page

Easier said than done, right? Give me few moments and I’ll show you how easy it is to implement a winning landing page on your website especially for paid campaigns right from the beginning.

The best practice to be always testing your landing pages and ultimately find best performer. But it’s time consuming and can cost you good amount of money if you are running paid campaigns so where should you start?

Start from spying on your competitors, we need to take help from a PPC spying tool here. Let me give you an example of SpyFu which is very useful to look at the ad history of our competitors and for how long they are using the current landing page.

Enter a domain of your well established competitor and look back into history for how long they are using the current landing page, also check their ad copy, call to action, display URL, landing page content and If the competitor is using the same landing page for several weeks or months then you find yourself a winner.

6. Bid on Competitors

This might be the most effective and cheapest way to get more conversions. Most of the advertisers are aware of this technique and they are bidding on the brand names of their competitors but you know what?

They are bidding on their online competitors, what they are not doing is considering the offline competitors into online landscape.

Every business has offline competitors spending heavily on TV, print, or radio advertisement and you know what the interesting part is? They don’t even have a websites!

This is a huge opportunity for you to bring their customers to your own website.

Let’s suppose you just find out that you need a plumber and at that exact moment, you watch a compelling TV ad about “Acme Plumbing Company,” after the ad is gone, you don’t remember the phone number they shown on TV or the address, what you remember is—the company name.

So what the next thing will you do? You’ll search for them online.

I am getting 400 leads a month for one of my client by using this technique and these 400 leads are coming from a single competitor who is advertising heavily on TV and print but doesn’t have a website. I am just bidding on their brand name and you can imagine the cost/conversions, right? It’s less than 20% of avg. cost/conversion of that account.

Now it’s up to you!

Let me know in comments which technique you are NOT using yet?