Revising their Google Ads strategy is of key importance for local pest and wildlife control companies during slow times such as winter and the holiday season.
This is why I’m going to go over tasks that you could get busy with during those times. Performing these tasks will give your Google Ads campaigns the much needed boost in order to prepare your business for the next season.
Customize Your Ad Copy
Focusing on your ad copy is one of the most important tasks you should be doing when your business is slow. Make your prospects be aware that you have exactly what they are looking for and what your offering is about.
Mention promotions or discounts, if you offer any. Add a sense of urgency with phrases such as “now” or “limited time”, to attract more clicks as customers search for a quick solution.
Set Up Ad Extensions
Check whether your ads are making the most out of extensions. The more ad extensions you use, the more often Google will show your ads, and the greater the chance that they’ll get people’s attention and click-throughs. Make use of features such as call extensions, sitelinks, or review extensions as they are usually best converting.
Also, location extensions are very important to take into account. Set a radius around your physical address, and set a positive bid adjustment for that radius.
There are so many sitelink extensions to use that enable you to direct people to different landing pages so that they’re free to explore all your website and services you offer.
Do Your Keyword Research
This might seem obvious but many business owners never research their keywords and they don’t update the keywords that they bid for since starting their Google Ads campaign. Researching and bidding on seasonal searches is very important also for businesses in the pest and wildlife space.
Thus, perform your keyword research anytime you have some free time on your hands in times your business is going through a slowdown.
Start by brainstorming your own list of keywords that might be relevant to your services and their seasonality. Use the Google keyword planner to identify those seasonal keywords that are relevant to what you’re offering.
Revise Your Ad Groups
Go through each of your ad groups and double check that they have at least one text ad that clearly mentions the subjext of that ad group. If there is none, create a text ad that is specific to keywords within an ad group. This is going to improve your ad’s Quality Score and will allow the searcher to easily connect your ad to the search phrase they’ve typed in.
Another thing to do when revising ad groups is to organize your keywords. Similar keywords should be first correctly organized into campaigns, and then into the ad groups within these campaigns.
For example, “bird control”, “bird control services”, and “bird control company near me” should all be in the same ad group, while “mice removal” needs to go into another group. When you separate your keywords this way, it will be much easier for you to analyze data in the future.
Pause Underperforming Keywords
Now that your business is slow, you have the chance to verify the performance of your keywords for each of the ad groups and pause those that are underperforming. Look for keywords that are getting a lot of impressions but bringing no or very few conversions, as well as keywords that have high bounce rates. Those clicks cost you money so if you notice they are not turning into leads or appointment bookings, pause those keywords immediately!
Adjust Your Bids
The position your ad appears in is often the deciding factor when it comes to a click-through rate (CTR). Thus, when reviewing your campaigns, pay close attention to the positions in which your ads are being displayed.
A very low click-through rate for a keyword can sometimes be the reason because the ad the keyword appears in is too low in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).
Thus, you need to adjust your bids to facilitate optimal ad positioning.
Try slowly increasing your bid until you notice that your ad has moved to a higher position as this should help with getting more clicks to your site.
In addition, you should take advantage of Smart Bidding, which is Google’s automated bidding version, as it can be especially beneficial in the high season for certain pest control services.
Smart Bidding was designed to handle rapid changes in traffic in real-time. By leveraging Smart Bidding you’ll be able to prevent your ads from being outbid so you don’t miss out on periods when traffic is high.
Link Ads to Relevant Landing Pages
It is crucial that your ads are linked to landing pages that cover the same topic as the keywords in the ad group. If your ads are not much related to the pages, visitors are less likely to convert.
Also, sending the searchers who click on your ad to your existing landing page that covers a topic related to the keyword within the ad group helps improve your Quality Score. So create ads that are as specific as possible. For example, if people search for “raccoon removal services,” and see an ad for “raccoon control”, make sure the ad is linked to a page for “raccoon control”.
Please listen to my podcast episode for even more great ideas for tasks you could now be doing with your Google Ads to get your business ready for the season ahead.