Search marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach a target demographic. As such, lowering your Cost per Acquisition (CPA) has never been more relevant than it is today. CPA refers to the amount of advertising or marketing money you spend to acquire leads who respond to a call to action (CTA) or click on your site. In other words, it refers to the amount of money you’re going to spend to get a paying customer.
Lowering your CPA allows you to control the cost of acquiring new customers from the onset. That gives you the opportunity to get better value for your investment within a relatively short period without the added cost of acquiring new traffic. Here are a few practical strategies you can implement to reduce your CPA in your PPC campaigns.
1. Increase Your Quality Score
The Quality Score of your PPC estimates the quality of your keywords, ads and landing pages. A higher Quality Score means your ad is relevant, so it’s shown to a higher number of people, and you can enjoy lower average Cost per click (CPC). Higher conversions and lower CPC ultimately mean you’ll have lower CPAs. Optimizing your Quality Score rewards you with overall cost reduction and improved search rankings.
The key to improving your quality score lies in tightening your keyword groups, creating better ad content and ensuring you deliver on the promises on your landing page.
2. Qualify Your Ad Text
One of the best ways to reduce your CPA is to analyze your existing ad text and modify or get rid of ads that are attracting too much of the wrong traffic. Look for ads that have a high CPA and consider whether or not they appeal to your customers. For instance, consider whether a more specific ad that includes more details and syncs better with your landing page can reduce the number of stray clicks and improve conversion rates.
You also want to differentiate your ad copy from your competitor’s copy. If you’re offering something your competitor doesn’t offer, be sure to include it in your ad copy, offers, prices, keywords and exclusive promotional material.
3. Optimize Your Landing Page
Your landing page is like your physical storefront as it’s the first page your visitors see when they click on an ad. Analyze your landing page’s effectiveness by doing an A/B test that measures the impact of changing a single characteristic on the landing page.
The trick here is to test for improvement. For instance, think about running a 50/50 split in traffic between a single landing page and a more precise landing page and analyze the results. Based on your results, merely switching where you drive traffic may result in a lower CPA and significant boost in conversion rates.
4. Customize Your Ad Schedule
Another way to lower your CPA is to monitor CPA performance by time of day. For example, a coffee delivery house may want to schedule their ads to display only when their delivery service is available, say from 7 am to 8 pm. However, that does not mean that advertising during other times would be a waste of money, but you should consider scheduling your ads to show at the best performing times of the day to get a good band for the buck.
5. Update Your Ad Copy
PPC is a dynamic field. You need to continually monitor and optimize your campaigns until you strike a balance. Examine your current ad copy. How does It compare to better performing campaigns? Does your message align with the ad objectives?
You may need to make a few changes to your current copy or CTA to help you increase your conversion rates.
6. Lower Your Bids for Keywords
Run a Google Experiment on your keywords to see how they affect your rates of conversion. Based on your results, you can adjust the current keywords and drop keyword bids that are costing you more and just not working.
If your cost per conversion is too high, then it means your CPA is higher than it should be. Most marketers tend to focus on conversions and forget about costs. Understand your conversion rate and CPA, and know what you can afford to pay for each click, on average, to make your campaign profitable.
As with most things, every situation is unique. Some strategies may work for you while others may not. Regardless of the strategies you choose, be sure to regularly monitor and evaluate so you can continue to improve on performance.
