How Can I Increase Conversions from English Speaking Countries in AdWords?

[Instabill]

Hello,

So here is the gist: Our company provides credit card processing services primarily to e-commerce businesses. I began managing Google AdWords in-house this past April. I started out by not excluding any countries, but received leads from merchants living in countries we could not serve due to risk of fraud. Then, I excluded countries our company could not work with to eliminate unwanted costs. I then took it one step further and targeted only countries our company can serve. My campaigns performed very well. This month, I have been averaging nearly 14 conversions per day.

[I should also add that four campaigns are Search and Display, one is remarketing so it is Display only, and two are Search only. Prior to what you will read in the paragraph below, the majority of our conversions came from the Display network, but we had a significantly higher conversion rate with our Search conversions.]

However, throughout all of this, we received very few conversion from English-speaking countries--primarily the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. Yesterday afternoon, July 15, I targeted only those four countries. When I came into work this morning, I saw that we received very few impressions and only 7 clicks (as opposed to more than 500,000+ impressions in one day and 1,500-2,400 clicks in one day).

I am no Google AdWords expert, but I do understand that searching these terms in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia may be more competitive, which will require a higher CPC. I set it so Google manages my CPC, so I would assume this would adjust while staying within my daily budget.

I do not know what to do, but am in dire need of guidance. I do not know where to look online for help and Google AdWords Live Chat is not working.

Thank you in advance,
Meghan

[Instabill]

Thank you, Branden, for your advice. Telling me specifically what I need to do is exactly what I wanted to hear.

My company used to work with a PPC agency, but they were horrible in every way possible. That is when I decided to manage the Adwords in house.

I am the senior copywriter for my company (I studied professional writing in school), but the AdWords work sort of fell into my lap. With a new copywriting assistant, I have more time to focus on Adwords. I just never knew where to begin after the basic framework of launching a simple campaign.

I have metrics that show me what ads work well for my specific industry, but I do not yet know how to use keywords differently, such as negative keywords and exact phrases.

Your information will most definitely be coming in handy over the coming weeks and months. I am truly grateful to the both of you who responded.

Regards,
Meghan

[Branden_S]

Adam has provided good advice already, but here's a few things that jumped out to me.

You mentioned that you have 4 few campaigns that target both Search & Display.... which is a major red flag.  Search and Display are very different and should always be separate campaigns.  They have very different Click thru rates, conversion rates and CPC, so they should always be separate campaigns.

You really need to focus on Quality Score & Click thru Rate...Quality Score is Google's primary metric to determine CPC and position.  Quality Score of 7-10 will lower your CPC and move you into a higher position.  Quality Score of 1-4 will increase your CPC and lower your position.  Quality Score is a metric for Search Campaigns that is primarily based on CTR..its a long term average, so if you improve your CTR today, your quality score will slowly increase over the following weeks/months.

You mentioned 8 clicks from 3712 clicks = 0.2% CTR.  This is OK for Display, but if this metric includes search, this is a red flag.  To achieve a high Quality Score you will need a CTR of 5-25%.  Less than a 1% CTR will lower your Quality Score.

There are a few ways to improve CTR & Quality Score... create better text ads, use extensions, create negative keywords, use dynamic keyword insertion & stop using broad match type.

Use Dynamic Keyword Insertion in your headline.. {KeyWord:Credit Card Processor}.  This code will make your headline appear as whatever keyword the person searched for.  This will make the visitor think that you have exactly what they are searching for...increasing your CTR.

Use all site link extensions..this will make you are appear larger and make it stand out...site link extensions ( use 6 or 8).  Phone extensions, location extensions, social extension,etc.  The more extensions the better.

Stop using broad match, especially when you are trying to improve your campaign metrics...broad modified, phrase & exact match are all I use, which deliver more targeted traffic, higher CTR, higher conversion rate, etc.

Also make sure your average position is above 2.7.  At the beginning you will need to bid higher to achieve this. I know this takes a healthy budget, but this is a long term game, and will pay off down the road.  If you ads appear on top (position 1-3), you will have a higher CTR and your Quality Score will improve, which in the long run will lower your CPC.  If you ads appear on the right side (position 4-10), your CTR and Quality Score will drop, which will increase your CPC.

I would also recommend running separate campaigns for each country.  In Editor, you can just copy/paste your current campaign into your new campaign..groups, keywords text ads, etc.  Then just change targeted geography.  This is a quick fix. and will give you the ability to change budgets & bids per country.  You will then be able to determine which countries perform better/worse for you.

I hope these ideas make sense...I know its a lot to take in at once.  By the way, have you ever considered working with a PPC Agency?  I own an Advertising Agency that specializes in PPC with a decade of experience managing over $30 million spend in AdWords.  I offer a free PPC campaign review, where we'll review your current campaigns, and I will provide several in depth action plans to improve your PPC campaigns.  Is this something you are open to?  Usually take 30-45 minutes, and has no strings attached. Private message me if you are interested

Hope this helps...Have a great day

Branden

[Instabill]

I am looking at our average position now. They range from

• 2.4
• 1.4
• 3.2
• 5.5
• 2.5
• 4.0
• 8.8.

I can definitely do some work to increase our average position.

I can also do some keyword research to see if, for instance, merchants in the United States search for more specific terms such as US merchant account as opposed to simply merchant account or online merchant account.

How do you feel about country-specific campaigns? I have seven campaigns that all target the four countries in question. I feel like it might by wise to eliminate multiple campaigns and create new campaigns that target just one country each. For instance, my US Campaign could include the same type of keywords among each of the current campaigns, but could be much more specific to US merchants only.

Also, how do you feel about the Display Network? I feel like since my industry has such specific jargon, using the Search only would generate more qualified conversions--merchants searching for the term US payment gateway and seeing my ad as opposed to a random consumer seeing my ad in the Display Network, clicking on my ad, and then I have to pay for the click when the consumer was not even part my target audience to start.

It is a very big task to get the results I want, but I am willing to do the work if it will pay off in the end.

[Adam_Cochran]

1. CPC and Positioning: Here is some detailed info on qualityscore: https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2454010?hl=en it will help raise your add position without raising your price (depending on competitive factors)

2. Linguistic Differences: Noted just wanted to cover all our bases!

4. Conversion Opportunity: Excellent! Consider linking your Adwords and Analytics to run A|B testing on a landing page for your Ad as well!

Yeah it certainly sounds like your campaigns are going to cost more in these regions! In your Google Adwords dashboard on the 9th column to your right, you will see "Avg Pos" this is the average position which the ad appears. Just like Google organic search lower position means less visibility and less clicks by an exponential factor. The first 3 ads display above the organic results and get roughly 60% of the ad clickers, and then 4-10 sit to the right of the organic results and get the other 40% (diminishes quickly). Anything below 10 is seen only if the user goes to the 2nd page or further.

Your average position will be expressed as something 2.7 it's an average of all the times you appeared. This is a good indicator that you may need to increase your bid and your qualityscore.

You can check your QualityScore by hovering over your keyword in the dashboard to see its performance results!

Best of luck!

[Instabill]

Hi Adam,

Thank you for your in-depth response.

1. CPC and Positioning: I do not doubt that the CPC in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia are more expensive than in other countries my campaigns were successful in--India, Pakistan, and the Philippines were the highest converting countries. I am not familiar with QualityScore, but I will look into this term and try and see the average CPC for the terms I use in the four countries listed above.

2. Linguistic Differences: I do not think this is the issue. I use a large variety of keywords related to our services. For instance: Internet merchant account, online merchant account, ecommerce merchant account, e-commerce merchant account, online payment processing, online credit card processing, website credit card processing, payment gateway, Internet payment gateway, etc. I use a spectrum of terms to hit the different variations e-commerce merchants use. They are pretty niche terms, but also universally used worldwide within this industry. Although I am relatively new to Google AdWords, I am well versed in my industry's jargon.

3. Service Discovery: Merchants in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia may very well use other sources to search for merchant account services. We have many listings on website directories and have been trying to implement PPC banner ads (completing this task is a timing issue since we have other projects to complete first). I can definitely look into this matter.

4. Conversion Opportunity: I agree with you 100% that merchants in these four countries have a higher standard when it comes to apply for services. Our office is located in New Hampshire and as a consumer, I feel the same way. I have been with my company for 2+ years and we are constantly working on improving our website for conversions. We are currently working on completely re-vamping our Home Page. The A/B test results will encourage us to try another layout or to redesign our other highly-converting pages.

Honestly, I am not seeing the same traffic at all. By this point today, my campaigns have only received 3,712 impressions with 8 clicks. We typically have at least 250,000 impressions by mid-day and between 500 and 750 clicks by the same time. Now, my company's website was receiving clicks with no conversions, then I think it would definitely be the website, which it could still very well be.

What I think this boils down to is that I need more time to analyze the data from Google Adwords. I made these changes to target the four countries around 4 p.m. yesterday so I know I will not see the conversions right away. It was just very alarming to not see the same amount of impressions and clicks.

I launched two new campaigns yesterday and one received one clicks today that cost $2.46. Our previous average CPC was around $0.16. This information tells me that the keywords in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia are most likely more competitive and cost more for visibility.

[Adam_Cochran]

Hi Megahn,

You don't have a small task in front of you so I am going to break down a number of steps and suggestions that will hopefully guide you through this process.

1. Consider your CPC and Positioning - While you didn't mention it, there is the possibility that due to the economic regions you are targeting that your ads are either more costly or simply more competitive (via QualityScore) compare your average position of the ads in these countries with ads in other countries. This may be where a lot of your discrepancy comes from. If your ads are at a lower position consider doing what you can to improve your QualityScore.

2. Consider linguistic differences  - One of the more challenging concepts for many PPC campaign coordinators to grasp is the HUGE impact of linguistic changes in your ad copy. Things that preform well in one region may not perform as well in another simply due to cultural bias, or linguistic nuance. Use the Google Keyword Tool Keyword Planner (https://adwords.google.com/ko/KeywordPlanner/Home?__c=9069233028&__u=4674907968&__o=kt) and target each of your regions individually, run a number of searches (and search suggestions) on those geographic locations to see the difference between how users search for your service in those countries as opposed to the ones you are performing well in. Consider modifying your ad copy to match this.

3. Service Discovery - Another thing to remember is that in each part of the world people discover services differently. While in some places people Google search for a plumber, others may still just instinctively use the yellow pages. Check to see the differences in the amount of search traffic you have between the countries you are performing well in and the western countries where you aren't. Consider in regards to your service if another strategy may be worth while.

4. Conversion Opportunity - The countries you are discussing are a little more challenging to convert. They expect a more professional looking website, detailed contact information and a well laid out service guide and pricing information before buying. If you are seeing traffic but it isn't converting the same it may be worth while reaching out to individuals in these regions and working through some site useability testing.

When going through these steps the problem should become clearer to you - if you still don't know what to do about the problem once identified (or once you have more data but aren't sure what the problem is) I encourage you to reply to this thread and I'll continue to do what I can to help walk you through this process.