Optimize CPC

Your cost per click is your competitive cost of doing business in search auctions. Depending on your industry, you’ll see CPC vary dramatically. Hyper competitive spaces like banking and insurance can have massive costs. 

• Consider your advertising area. Some regions are more costly than others.

• Don’t bid for top placement. Might seem counterintuitive, but sometimes you’ll have a brand willing to pay insane rates to stay #1.

• Ensure you have correct keywords. Do some research into keyword interest and costs, you can sometimes find a winner at a low price. 

• Have negative keywords. You can easily slip into the wrong industry and drive up your costs without knowing it.

Side story: I had a client in industry rig mats. Their previous agency was bidding on the word ‘mat’, which meant they were competing with bath mats, shop mats, floor mats, welcome mats, etc and it was costing them an insane amount.

Remember, you’re paying for every click, so you want to be paying for the best clicks. The better optimized your keywords are and your ad targeting, the more likely you’ll only spend on quality leads.Improve your Ad Conversion

In most cases where you advertise, you’ll be competing. So having an effective ad has many benefits including narrowing to the right customer, surpassing competition and preloading your customer to buy.

As an example, if you have a sale, you can adjust your ads to promote your discount. That’s a huge opportunity versus the competition, which historically, is not good at keeping ads up to date.

Also, consider keyword pairings. If you sell a product, what does it naturally pair with? This could be in stock, free delivery, etc. This creates urgency and overcomes anxiety people may have with their purchase.

Improve your Site Conversion

Every improvement in conversion is absolute gold for your marketing program. Everything is driving to a site that needs to perform. There's more on CRO (conversion rate optimization) that I will be developing, but for simplicity, ensure your website is doing its part in your ad strategy.

For the sake of improving CAC, we’ll speak briefly about landing pages. Every ad should have a target destination that most clearly supports the target customer. Avoid general pages or a homepage which often won’t connect to search intent.

Quick keys for landing pages:

• You have maybe a couple seconds to connect to the customer. Imagery and titles have to immediately tell the customer they’re in the right spot.

• What are your differentiators? Do you have awards, some great reviews or other elements that set you apart?

• Have a call to action prominent on the page. Some people are ready to act quickly, don’t make them scroll a mile to get to the next step.

Expand CAC with LTV

In some ways, CAC is a bit short sighted. Many businesses benefit from multiple transactions from a single customer, hence a lifetime customer value (LTV). It takes some work, but if you can establish an LTV, that will increase your CAC allowance. 

In many industries, getting a customer is actually a loss in the short term. Think of subscription services. The real value is in the long-term, so paying more up front is definitely worth it to lock in potential long term value.