How reviews can lower Adwords advertising cost and CPC

The ever evolving e-business environment becomes more and more competitive as marketing approaches adapt to new technologies and innovations. However, the company-customer relationship remains at the core of all marketing activities.Tech-savvy, able to research and eager to express opinions – this is a sketch of a modern consumer, who eventually lives at the center of all the e-commerce strategies.

Did you know?

Understanding your customer is fundamentally important. Striving to survive in a competitive marketplace, and getting lost in new tools and tactics, advertisers often forget about the easiest way to gain an insight into their audience: customer feedback. We have already mentioned in our previous articles, how important customer feedback is in terms of marketing strategies. For online marketers collecting and displaying ratings and reviews become crucial in building customer loyalty, increasing conversion and enhancing both online and offline presence. Stats shows that 72,4% of customers read online reviews before making purchases. Nearly 79% research online, while preparing to pay a visit to a local store. These numbers indicate a progressive trend of a new marketing communication companies should pay attention to in order to keep a tight bond with their audience.

Having helped over 14,000 companies leverage their social commerce solution and enable trust, eKomi has gathered and published over 50,000,000 reviews to date. Implementing eKomi’s groundbreaking technology means that customers are prompted to write a review after every single interaction with the company, which in turn translates into companies being able to collect more and for the most part better reviews. 

Book a short 15 minute demo with us and see our solutions in action. Reserve your slot here.

Why is it important to collect and display star ratings?

It’s not only the feedback itself that matters, but also the means of utilizing it. Obviously, companies that do not collect reviews, and therefore don’t display their rating in search engines results and social media campaigns, are losing a crucial marketing communication tool. A quick example: In 2017 The Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London conducted an experiment by showing the two images to two different sets of groups and asking them to review the product. The group that saw the image with only product description, rated the product with 2 starts, while the group that saw the product with the summary of the reviews and rating, rated the product with 4 stars and above. This example is a clear display how your company can communicate the value of your product through social proof (visualized in ratings and reviews) and increase the perceived value of your products in general.

Read the study here

One of the best ways for your business to form a bond with customers and gain loyalty from a target audience is through requesting and publishing Google Seller and Product Ratings (you can read about them in our previous articles). It also a great opportunity for PPC advertisers, who can display star ratings for your company and products in the paid Ads. According to Google, featuring star ratings on your brand Ad increases its click-through-rate up to 17%. Another marketing catch to increase online presence is displaying product ratings on Google Shopping, and specifically Ads that display product ratings, are driving more and more qualified traffic to product page, making Ads both more effective and efficient.

Gain more clicks on your Google Ads, increase their effectiveness and your Ad ROI by collecting seller ratings with eKomi. Request a demo here and start generating reviews TODAY!

Yet, reviews and ratings are not only about visibility and brand strength. However effective and beneficial advertising on Google can be, it can also become costly. Unclear understanding of targeting, misused keywords and wrong approach to bidding – these are some of the mistakes that threaten your Ad campaign. And when you’re done with lowering your Ad bids and writing another copy for the next Facebook post, that’s when customer reviews and star ratings will come in handy to maximize the efficiency of your Ads and reduce CPC.

 

Quality Score

 

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One of the most important tools which can assist you in lowering your CPC is the Quality Score. According to AdWords, Quality Score is the metric to display how relevant your ads, keywords and landing page are to anyone seeing your ad. Thus, there are three key factors that influence Quality Score value:

• Click-Through Rate (CTR)
• Landing Page Quality
• Relevancy

As mentioned earlier, displaying stars on Google Ads increases your CTR considerably, which improves the overall Quality Score and allows to lower your average CPC. The more clicks on your ad you have, the more relevant it is recognised by Google. With a Quality Score of 10, you save 50% on your cost per click and 80% on your cost per conversion.

Keywords and Reviews

Creation of a copy for your website content or social media post is not only about finding the right approach to your customers, but also finding the right keywords to improve your company’s position in organic search engines results. Keywords themselves can be divided into three groups according to their intent:

• Informational. User searches for answers or to learn info
• Commercial. Implies to customers who research about product, service or company
• Transactional. Users search with an intent to make a purchase.

Applying the batch of relevant keyword requires a thorough research. Yet, it’s the source for research that is crucial. Customer reviews that eKomi collects is the essential pool of opinions, claims and desires to analyze and compose keywords from. It is highly likely that the text customers use to describe your business (i.e. “the delivery was fast”) are the keywords they will be searching for.

Relevancy and Landing Page Quality

The landing page is the last chance for you to engage a potential customer and make him/her interact with your website. Even if you create a well-articulated marketing funnel with your Ads, if your website is not relevant to the initial search, it’s all in vain. Eventually, high bounce rate will kill your ROI.

By far the easiest way to achieve a maximum level of engagement is by making a unique landing page for every Ad, ensuring the content is relevant to what you are advertising. Ideally, the content of your product or business page channels customer’s desires and offers solutions. That’s why analyzing reviews and any feedback matters. As we mentioned in the previous section, a successful keyword research as well as the overall profiling of your target audience can allow you to keep customers engaged for longer. Furthermore, improving the value of the landing page will increase customers chance of converting. Additional methods to increase conversion include A/B testing and optimization of UX/UI design.

Social Proof and Credibility

When it comes to the bond between your company and the customer it’s not only about the words, but rather the trust your clients have for your business. It’s the basics of any interaction. And it’s vital to gain and maintain it. In order to make your landing page trustworthy and inspire clients, there are two main steps to take:

Share more information about your company. Without deep and irrelevant storytelling, focus on those highlights that matter to your clients: whether it’s the employees that are thought-leaders for the industry or market competitive insights.

Another important means of boosting customers attention and trust with your landing page is social proof – psychological trigger for the customers to perceive your company as reliable. Awards and media mentions are a sure way to generate such trust, but it’s the customer reviews and star ratings that guarantee your website is valuable for your clients and trustworthy for new customers.

Summary

While in general sense customer feedback allows your business to bond with customers and gain loyalty from your target audience, it is specifically useful in advertising as it can serve as a sort of “Marketing GPS” if you will. Reviews and Google Ratings can and should be used to optimize and significantly decrease CPC in Ad campaigns. You can achieve maximum efficiency by improving your Quality Score (CPC down 50%): Google Ratings display increases CTR, page quality and relevance can boost engagement. Reviews are a great way to analyze what your target audience desires and utilize keywords more precisely in Ads. User generated content and Google Ratings displayed on a company’s page improve customers attention and trust to your landing page creating social proof. Eventually, it’s the cycle of from customer feedback to company improvements, that allows a more precise targeting, reduced advertising costs and an efficient marketing communication for your company.    

Improve the effectiveness of your PPC campaign and decrease Cost-Per-Click (CPC) with eKomi. Contact us today!

 

About the author:

Artem Risukhin is a copywriter at eKomi, The Feedback Company. He is an accomplished specialist with experience in market analysis, content writing, and full-cycle project management. Previously, he was a writer for Cadabra Studio, UX/UI design company. He has held multiple analytic positions including senior commodity analyst at Core Consultants and steel markets analyst at Metal Expert. Devotee of solving complex problems which require business savvy approach, Artem organized and held international metallurgical conferences in Europe and Middle East.