Stevie Morris Digital Marketing Agency

07410 907 104

27 August 2020

Why are My Ads Not Converting

So here’s the situation you’re running adds spending lots of money but the conversion rate is in the pan so low that a limbo dancer would find it a challenge to get lower. Why is it happening and most importantly what can you do about it.

The first thing you want to check is that your tracking is set up correctly and do you have the right information to make an informed decision. 

Key Numbers

CTR Click Through Rate

The number of times your ad was shown divided by the number of clicks on the said advert. 

Conversion Rate

The number of actions completed divided by the number of clicks you received. Examples of conversions are. Filled out a form, called you, asked for a brochure or made a purchase.

Bounce Rate

The number of times a person has landed on your page and then not gone any further or just clicked the back button without seeing any other content on your website.

Dwell Time

The amount of time someone stays on your website

Macro & Micro Conversion

Simply put macro mean large micro means small. Macro conversions are the big conversions that lead to direct contact or  a purchase or what I like to call money in the bank conversions.

A Micro conversion is not really a conversion in the true sense of the word but is more of an indicator of intent. If a person stays on the site for let’s say a set period of time we could say that they are more interested then someone who jumps on and then straight off a page. Other examples could be they read a few of your articles or added products to a cart. The behaviour you choose will be different for different websites.

Other examples could be that they scroll to the bottom of the content, or did they start to fill out a contact form but didn’t finish. 

Tracking; are you tracking all the metrics you need to make an informed decision? As a paid advertising expert I would expect you to know your numbers but let’s be honest what numbers have an impact on conversion.

Why Track Micro Conversions at all

As we said previously its an indicator of intent once we are able to identify this behavior we are able to attach it to an anonymised user and using the tools and tracking available we are able to retarget either in search or via display advertising on both traditional media as well social channels. Once we can associate a behaviour with a conversion, retargeting can be a powerful way to get those lost conversions to buy or contact you.

Some Non-obvious reasons for failure

  • Trust
  • Bad design
  • Weather
  • Your Competition
  • Click Fraud

Algorithm change

Mid-June 2020 I was checking my ad spend on a certain campaign and I noticed the CPA of a selected number of adgroups had increased quite dramatically. At first sight, I was at quite a loss to figure out why my CPA had increased until I looked at the search term report. 

My keyword targeting was modified broad +Brand +Model-Name +Product so let’s use the example from the world of pushbikes, Brompton; the folding bike manufacturer. My targeting was +Bromton +ML6.2020 +Electric.Bike with a landing page for the Brompton ML6 2020 Electric Bike, so far so good. But Google in its wisdom had started showing my ads to people under the guise of close variant using the search term of “Brompton bikes” and for some searches Just “Brompton”  to me this is crazy although the terms are related as in they are the brand but its not the intent i was looking for my aim was for people who know what the want and are either looking to directly purchase or searching for the best price. The intent I targeted and the intent Google decided to show my ad were at completely different ends of the buying funnel and more inline with the research phase of the process  

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