Paid Search Management With Measurable Results
Successfully managing paid search campaigns is a challenge, but what about measuring your success? Knowing whether your efforts are working can be extremely complicated and confusing. This is particularly true, since the metrics that work well for one industry may not be ideal for your niche.
So, what numbers should you actually be looking at to know you’re performing well within the confines of your own industry?
WordStream dug into their own clients’ data and shared their findings with us all, including:
- Average Click-Through Rate (CTR) in AdWords by industry, for both Search and Display
- Average Cost per Click (CPC) in AdWords by industry, for both Search and Display
- Average Conversion Rate (CVR) in AdWords by industry, for both Search and Display
- Average Cost per Action (CPA) in AdWords by industry, for both Search and Display
The industries they highlighted include Advocacy, Auto, B2B, Consumer Services, Dating & Personals, E-Commerce, Education, Employment Services, Finance & Insurance, Health & Medical, Home Goods, Industrial Services, Legal, Real Estate, Technology, and Travel & Hospitality.
Let’s take a look at the numbers a little closer:
Average PPC Cost In Adwords By Industry
Legal services have some of the highest CPCs on the search network (“Lawyer” and “Attorney” are among the top 10 most expensive keywords on both Google and Bing). Average CPCs in the legal industry are $5.88, whereas Advocacy and nonprofit groups have a cost per click under $2.
Average Conversion Rates In Adwords By Industry
The Finance and Insurance industries perform well on Search and Display (7.19% CVR and 1.75% CVR respectively).
Home Goods and Real Estate stand out with their conversion rates on Display network (2.19% and 1.49% respectively), most likely due to their reliance on a visual medium.
On the other hand, E-commerce folks suffer a pretty poor average search conversion rate (1.91% CVR). Let’s not also forget that E-commerce folks typically have huge inventories, which prevent them from fine-tuning ad copy across all e-commerce keywords.
Average Cost Per Action In Adwords By Industry
Dating and personal sites reign supreme here, with the lowest average cost per action from search ($6.91 CPA). However, employment services, medical services, and legal services don’t fare so well ($105.79, $126.29, and $135.17, respectively). While those numbers seem high, it’s also important to remember that the lifetime value of a new client within these latter industries is pretty high, meaning that the initial costs per action tend to pay off in the end.
What You Can Take Away From All Of These Numbers
Let’s say that you find yourself on the lower end of these numbers. What’s this mean? Well, it simply means that you have room for improvement. We suggest you turn to the experts to help you find out where your campaigns are failing, particularly when compared to peers in your industry.
So, what if you’re hitting your benchmarks; what then? Well, for starters, don’t settle! Strive to get that ad that brings in the huge results (you know, the unicorn ad). Work on your ad copy and design landing pages that will convert better than those of your competitors.
Need help making sense of the data and getting the most out of your AdWords performance. Contact OperationROI today – at 1-888-277-5429 – or by filling out our contact form – to learn more.
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