How to Measure and Understand Your Google Ads Performance
Google Ads is an instrumental part of marketing your junk removal business. If you are not doing Google Ads, you are missing out on a large portion of your customer base. However, your Google Ads campaign must be well-crafted in order to be worth the investment. If your campaign isn’t well planned, then you better believe it’s going to be a great way to flush money down the toilet. The question is, how can you boost your Google Ads performance? What investments are worth making in Google Ads, and which ones aren’t? Junk Removal Authority knows the answers—and we’re here to share them with you.
Basic Goals
First, let’s discuss some basic metrics for you to monitor on your Google Ads campaign. The first thing to check is your impressions. In other words, are your ads being seen by your potential customers? This may seem like a no-brainer, but it’s good to make sure your impressions are a nonzero amount. If they somehow are at zero, then you have likely failed to launch your Google Ads campaign.
Next, take a look at your number of conversions. Conversions are when a potential customer sees your ad and does one of three things:
- They make a call;
- They submit a contact us form on your website;
- Or, they book an appointment online.
An average junk removal company should get at least three or more conversions per day depending on that company’s market and budget. Do you have a big budget? Then you should aim for well above six conversions a day.
Next, take a look at the cost per conversion. There are price points you want to aim for here. If your cost per conversion is $60, then we would consider that an okay benchmark. However, a great cost per conversion would be below $30. Of course, this is all relative to your location. If you are in a larger market with heavy competition, your target cost per conversion could be higher. However, in most cases, if you are high above $60 per conversion, it’s going to be difficult for you to turn a profit from Google Ads jobs. At this point, you should reassess your Google Ad campaign’s strategies.
Improving Google Ads Performance
To bring down your cost per conversion, you need more effective ads. There’s no sugar-coating that. However, there are simple ways you can go about this. Here are a couple of our suggestions.
- Improve keyword quality. In the junk removal industry, there are keywords that work, and those that don’t. In fact, there’s a good chance your competitors are wasting money on those ineffective keywords already. For example, “trash pickup” is a bad keyword because it’s mostly people curious about city sanitation services who are searching for it.
- Improve your landing page. Your landing page is the first thing potential customers will see after clicking your ad. If you’ve managed to get someone to click your ad, the last thing you want is for a low-quality landing page to scare them off. A landing page with a professional appearance and clear calls to action is more likely to finish converting a potential customer.
- Aim for the top. Google Ads that rank at the bottom are not going to receive much traffic. They’re only going to get clicked on by “trouble customers” that have intense needs and low budgets. Instead, aim for your Google Ads to have at least 20% top impression shares. The extra money you invest will be worth it. Anything less may be wasted cash!
Avoid Click Fraud
Every time a potential customer clicks your Google Ad, it costs you some money and uses some of your budget. Because of this, some of your competitors may attempt a nasty form of fraud known as “click fraud.” Here’s how it works: they find your ads, click them over and over again, and burn through your entire ad budget before you can reach anyone actually interested in your services. Sounds horrible, right? So how do you protect yourself from click fraud?
We recommend using software such as ClickCease™ to prevent yourself from becoming a victim of click fraud. JRA’s Google Ads Campaigns include click fraud protection in all of our clients’ campaigns. Click fraud prevention software is able to detect malicious attempts to drain your ad budget, including automated attacks. That way, your budget won’t go down the drain, and you’ll continue putting that money where it matters—towards real, paying customers.
These are in no way the only metrics you should be looking at to measure the success of a Google Ads campaign. But these numbers will tell you how much it’s costing you to get contacted, how often your ad is appearing, and where it is positioned. The goal of Google Ads is to get an acceptable cost per conversion and have your ads show as much as possible while maintaining the cost. If you do that, then you will grow a great junk removal business.
Ready to have your Google Ads run by the experts? Reach out for a consultation with one of our JRA marketing specialists today!