6 Steps Turn Wasted Spend into More Leads
Running a successful PPC campaign for HVAC services requires careful attention to detail. With the right strategies, you can significantly reduce wasted spend and boost the quality of your clicks and leads. Here’s are some strategies on how to reduce your spend while increasing conversions and quality clicks.
1. Turn off Search Partners Network
The Google Search Partners Network is a collection of third-party websites and apps where your ads can appear. While it might sound like an opportunity to reach more potential customers, in reality, it often drives lower-quality traffic. For HVAC companies, ads served on the Search Partners Network can end up on unrelated sites, leading to clicks from users who have no interest in HVAC services. This not only wastes your budget but also lowers your campaign's overall performance. By turning off the Search Partners Network, you can focus your spend on more targeted placements that are more likely to convert.
2. Check Location Settings
In Google Ads, there’s a crucial setting under location targeting: "Presence" vs. "Presence or Interest." For HVAC companies, it’s vital to target users who are actually located in your service area. Selecting "Presence: People in or regularly in your targeted area" ensures that your ads are shown to those who are physically within the geographic regions you serve. On the other hand, "Presence or Interest" might show your ads to users who have only expressed interest in your area, such as someone researching from a different state. This can lead to clicks from bots or non-local traffic, draining your budget without delivering viable leads.
3. Turn off Broad Match Keywords
Broad match keywords can be a double-edged sword. While they cast a wide net, they often bring in irrelevant traffic that doesn’t convert. For instance, if you bid on the broad match keyword "HVAC Service near me," your ad could also show up for searches like "car air conditioner repair" or "HVAC jobs," which are completely irrelevant to your business. This lack of control can lead to wasted spend, sometimes costing you hundreds of dollars per month. Instead, opt for more precise match types like phrase match or exact match to ensure your ads are only shown to users with intent to hire HVAC services.
4. Turn off Auto-Applied Suggestions
You might have noticed Google’s campaign optimization scores and the recommendations that come with them. While these suggestions can sometimes be helpful, auto-applied recommendations can be detrimental to your campaign’s performance. When turned on, Google may automatically implement changes that broaden your targeting, add irrelevant keywords, or make other adjustments that don’t align with your business goals. For HVAC campaigns, this can result in wasted budget and a drop in lead quality. It’s better to review these recommendations manually and apply only those that truly benefit your campaign.
5. Improve Landing Pages
Your landing page is the final stop on your customer's journey, and it plays a crucial role in converting clicks into leads. For HVAC campaigns, a well-optimized landing page should load quickly and provide clear, easy-to-access information. Google considers factors like page speed and user experience when determining your ad’s quality score, which directly impacts your ad costs. Additionally, your landing page should feature prominent conversion actions such as a visible phone number, easy-to-complete forms, and live chat options. These elements make it easier for potential customers to contact you, increasing your chances of converting a click into a lead.
6. Leverage Conversion Tracking and Smart Bidding
Conversion tracking is the backbone of any effective PPC campaign. By accurately tracking conversions—whether they are form submissions, phone calls, or online purchases—you provide Google with the data it needs to optimize your campaigns effectively. When you feed conversion data back into Google Ads, the platform uses that information to analyze factors such as the time of day conversions occur, the zip codes or locations where conversions are most frequent, and the types of searches that lead to conversions.
This data is crucial for enabling smart bidding strategies, which are designed to maximize the return on your ad spend by adjusting bids in real-time based on the likelihood of a conversion. Here’s a breakdown of how different smart bidding strategies can benefit your HVAC campaign:
Maximize Conversions: This strategy automatically sets bids to help you get the most conversions within your budget. It's ideal for HVAC campaigns aiming to generate as many leads as possible. However, it requires accurate conversion tracking to function effectively.
Target CPA (tCPA): With Target Cost-Per-Acquisition, Google sets bids to help you get as many conversions as possible at or below a specified cost per conversion. This is particularly beneficial if you know the average value of a new lead for your HVAC business and want to maintain profitability while scaling up lead generation.
Maximize Conversion Value: This strategy focuses on driving the highest value conversions, which is especially useful if your HVAC services vary in profitability. By feeding conversion values (e.g., revenue from a sale or lifetime value of a customer) into Google, the algorithm can prioritize higher-value conversions.
Accurate conversion data is essential for these strategies to work effectively. Without it, Google’s algorithm won’t have the necessary insights to optimize bids correctly, which can lead to wasted spend and missed opportunities. By leveraging these smart bidding strategies, HVAC businesses can gain a competitive edge, ensuring that their ads are shown to the right people at the right time, leading to higher-quality leads and better overall campaign performance.
Want a free audit of your PPC account? Contact LE Digital today at (413) 343-4270 for a free 30-minute account review. We’ll discuss your keyword targeting, landing page optimizations, and more ways to improve your campaign performance.
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