Google Ads is a primary weapon in every marketer's arsenal.

However, your search campaign will do little more than burn your budget if you don't know how to optimize Google Ads.

Google knows this, and that's why they provide the tools you need to test, observe, and adjust on the fly. You just need to understand better the options and metrics provided.

Below, we're going to dive straight into our foolproof optimization process.

Google Ads Optimization Checklist:

1. Keyword Planning
2. Using Keyword Planner
3. Keyword Search Intent
4. Spying on the Competitor
5. Knowing Your Ad Options
6. SKAGs vs STAGs
7. Uploaded Image Ads
8. Responsive Display Ads
9. Ad Extensions
10. Testing & Observation
11. A/B Test
12. Demographics
13. Geographics
14. Time of Day
15. Negative Keywords
16. Lost Impressions
17. Remarketing & Adjustments
18. RLSAs
19. Adjusting Keywords
20. Manual Bid Adjustments

What is Google Ads Optimization?

Google Ads optimization is the process of monitoring and adjusting campaign performance to maximize your ROI.

Optimizing an ad or ad set can be as simple as testing and adjusting ad copy, images, or headlines. But, it may also require more careful metric observation to aid you in changing your targeting, bidding, and ad type.

Furthermore, ad optimization is dynamic. For the best results, you will constantly be testing, observing, and adjusting to get the best results. Additionally, the tune-ups you implement for one campaign will not necessarily be a successful recipe for another campaign with different objectives.

When Should I Start Optimizing My Google Ads?

We get it. You're hungry and want to see results as soon as possible.

This is especially crucial when you have an aggressive client that expects new leads quickly in exchange for their monetary investment.

It will be your job to set expectations appropriately.

Brand-new Google Ads campaigns typically begin with a learning phase. This is assuming that:

• The Google Ads account is new
• The campaign is brand-new and is not using existing or lookalike audiences

During this process, Google Ads will actively collect data from every user that sees or interacts with your campaign. You want to allow your campaign to retrieve a healthy sample size as these details will be what guides your optimization process.

This process length is wildly variable and will largely depend upon your campaign's foundation. Factors such as campaign objective, keyword selection, and initial audience selection will all play a role.

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If you're particularly fortunate, you can start acting on the learning process in 1-2 weeks. In other cases, you may need to observe for up to a month.

It's important to allow this process to play out uninterrupted. Making premature changes will effectively reset the learning process and send you back to square one.

If your client is confused or frustrated by this initial period, be sure to lay out the benefits. The more effectively you understand your ideal audience early on, the more efficiently you will be able to spend their ad budget when it's time to move.

After the discovery period is over, optimization should become routine. At the bare minimum, you'll want to revisit your settings once per month.

However, doing so more frequently allows you to keep a closer eye on positive or negative trends. The sooner you lay eyes on actionable data, the better you're able to pivot your bids to the right areas and maximize your investment.

But, how exactly do you do that?

Let's dive into the best Google Ads optimization strategies that set you up for success.

The Google Ads Optimization Checklist

1. Keyword Planning

How do users discover anything online? Keywords.

We utilize keyword planning in almost everything marketing from SEO to paid ads. These help us connect our ads with the users most likely to engage and convert.

If you select the right keywords, you're going to boost your returns. Selecting the wrong keywords and finding the wrong audience is going to result in wasted ad spending.

The reason for this is that Google Ads prompts you to set budgets and bid on your targeted keywords. This is unlike your typical SEO content, which allows you to boost your ranking through content quality alone. Meanwhile, focusing copy on the wrong keywords in your ads not only is a wasted effort but burns up funds you can't get back.

Google provides us with a tool to assist in this process.

A. Using Google Keyword Planner

You can gain access to the Keyword Planner if you have a Google Ads account here.

If you have yet to begin your campaign, it will walk you through the initial process of setting it up. It will prompt you to answer questions about your business and your goals for that particular set of ads.

You'll then be greeted with two options:

• Discover New Keywords
• Get Search Volume & Forecasts

The first will walk you through the process of keyword discovery step-by-step. It's going to ask you for more details about your business such as the products and services you sell.

You can also plan by entering your keywords or by entering your domain. Note that the latter is only available if you currently utilize AdWords for that website.

Regardless of the option you choose, the Keyword Planner will generate a list of viable keywords relevant to your brand. It will also reveal important details such as expected bid costs.

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Our most important tip - be very precise with the keywords you enter into the planner. While Google can generate many different options, not all will be relevant to your campaign goals. The more precise you are when it comes to your objectives, the better you'll be able to research alternatives that can help your campaign.

The second forecast option allows you to enter a list of keywords you already have on hand. It will then pull up a forecast of metrics such as:

• Estimated clicks
• Estimated impressions
• Estimated cost
• Estimated clickthrough rate
• Estimated average cost-per-click

You can dive even deeper and check out historical data such as average monthly searches and competition difficulty. All of these factors play a pivotal role in helping you select the most optimal keywords, not unlike what you would do for SEO.

Also, know that you need not be limited by Keyword Planner. If your company already utilizes tools like SEMRush or Moz, feel free to research and cross-reference results as needed. This phase serves as the bedrock of your campaign, so more preparation is always welcome.

B. Match Your Keywords to Search Intent

A major, and often overlooked, factor in keyword planning is analyzing search intent.

Any time an internet user enters a keyword into a search bar, they reveal the type of content they wish to see. More importantly, they tell us what they intend to do with the content they find.

To better explain this, let's look at the four types of keywords.

a. Informational

The user is looking for information about a subject or an answer to a question. Their goal is to find a reputable source to educate them. Buying a product or service may be the furthest thing from their mind.

Examples of informational searches could be the following:

“Is beer bad for you?”

“Number of calories in bread”

b. Commercial

Commercial keywords express an interest in particular products or services, most frequently regarding specific brands. While they are not yet at the cusp of making a purchase, they've moved from general inquiries to performing targeted research.

Examples of commercial keyword searches might look like this:

“Netflix vs Amazon Prime”

“Netflix customer reviews”

c. Transactional

We are now at the bottom of the funnel and left with users that are ready to buy. Transactional keywords help users find the best product for their needs. They can then readily buy it at will from the provider.

They will often contain modifiers such as “best”, “cheapest”, or “affordable.” It might even be more direct and feature terms like “buy.”

Examples of transactional keywords are as follows:

“Buy Google Ads services”

“Best marketing company zipcode”

d. Navigational

Navigational keywords simply guide users directly to a brand. The user knows where they want to go and are looking for the shortest route.

In other words, a navigational keyword might look like this:

“DashClicks”

“Nike”

Keyword intention matters as it helps you choose the most effective keywords for your campaign objectives.

If your express goal is to sell a particular product that's on sale, you're going to opt for more transactional terms. This helps you discover leads with high purchase intent instead of wasting your budget on uninterested persons.

On the other hand, informational or commercial terms may help campaigns that are built for audience discovery and lead generation. You would then use the data from that campaign to build a more effective sales funnel down the line.

B. Spying on the Competitor

The final step in keyword planning is researching competitor activities.

Your direct competitors are brands that are actively bidding on similar keywords as yours for their Google Ads campaigns.

By using the Google Keyword Planner described above, you can readily spy on your competitor's historical keyword data. You can insightful metrics such as:

• The keywords they use
• The domains they are being used on
• The average monthly budget
• Coverage percentage

This means that not only can you track competition difficulty, but you can see exactly how competitors use these keywords in their ads. By observing their strategies, you can plan your campaigns to incorporate elements that work and modify those which you can do better.

It may also present new keyword opportunities that were overlooked in your initial planning. Likewise, be sure to avoid attractive terms that will end up costing you more than what you can afford.

2. Knowing Your Ad Options

Now that you have the correct keywords to guide your creatives, it's time to explore how you can present them.

Google provides several different ad campaign options to provide you with flexibility. However, each ad type has its positives and negatives that can hurt or harm depending on how effectively you utilize them.

Let's dive into what those types are and their ideal use cases.

A. SKAGs vs STAGs

When it comes to your campaign ad groups, there are two popular options:

SKAG - Single Keyword Ad Group

STAG - Single Theme Ad Group

SKAGs allows you to create an ad group that focuses entirely on one keyword. You can then create different ad groups for each keyword you want to target.

The major benefit of this is that a SKAG has a singular focus. This allows for precise targeting and easier measuring since you are only focusing on one keyword.

If you were to utilize Google's suggested keywords, you may end up with 5, 10, or even 20 related keywords. This can help with discovery, but it can often lead to lower-quality leads. However, this can be mitigated by proactively managing your negative keywords.

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The potential downside of using SKAGs lies in choosing the wrong keywords. Because you only have one avenue to target audiences, you rely entirely on that keyword. Additionally, limiting your targeting option to one can increase the length of your discovery period when your audience size is too small.

STAGs, meanwhile, focus on a target keyword and related terms to expand your reach. Google will intelligently select terms that fall within the theme of your ad group to reach different types of prospects.

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Both have their merits and you can find a plethora of resources arguing for one versus the other. The reality is that both are viable and can lead to amazing results when monitored effectively.

We would recommend beginning with SKAGs to simplify your efforts at the start. They will generally keep your costs low and keep the quality of those leads high. If you need to expand your reach and are willing to experiment, STAGs can create new avenues that lead to even more audience data for future campaigns.

B. Uploaded Image Ads

For the next two ad types, we are dealing with Google's Display Network.

Websites around the internet have the option of opting into the display network. When they do, Google is allowed to generate ads on the site based on visitor data. In exchange, the website owner generates ad revenue to fund the website.

Meanwhile, marketers can choose to opt-in to the Display Network to boost their campaign reach. You can then have your ads appear on websites and apps across any device. It still utilizes your optimized targeting data to maximize your returns.

One way to leverage the Display Network is to use uploaded image ads. This guarantees full creative control over which ads show up on the web. You choose the image, write the copy, and get the final say on the result.

The downside is that you will need to spend the overhead to publish these additional creatives. This leads us to your alternative option.

C. Responsive Display Ads

Responsive ads are becoming more prevalent than ever. However, results can still vary wildly depending on the client and the campaign goals.

Google allows you to upload your images, headlines, videos, or descriptions into your account. The AI assistant will then automatically generate new ads using those assets to display on websites, YouTube, and Gmail.

This allows you to present different types of ads within the same campaign without needing to create and upload them yourself. You can save time and potentially expand your reach as Google's AI learns and refines its ad generation.

Responsive ads can be an amazing tool for optimizing your Google Ads campaign when it works. However, be sure to consistently monitor performance and be ready to pivot if they aren't cutting it for your client.

D. Ad Extensions

Finally, Google provides ad extensions that can further boost campaign results depending on your objectives. There are a variety of extension types that can be installed manually or automatically.

Your Google Ads account should generate relevant extensions if the AI predicts that they can improve your performance. They can assist with the following types of objectives:

• Helping users find your physical location
• Encouraging users to call your business number or tracking number
• Getting users to click on specific domain pages
• Display predefined structured snippets
• Showcase products and pricing
• Getting users to download your app
• Getting users to fill out a form

Be sure to install any extensions that are relevant to your goals. They are free to use and you can find specific instructions for each here.

3. Testing & Observation

The next, and perhaps most critical, step in optimizing your Google Ads is through testing.

When we plan our keywords effectively, we enable our discovery stage to give us ideal results. With this newfound audience data, we can begin testing and exploring new creatives to engage with our most interested users.

From here on out, your Google Ads efforts for this brand will be a consistent pattern of testing and adjusting. The more audience data you accumulate over time, the more refined this process becomes.

Let's start with what may be the most important testing tool for your Google Ads optimization efforts.

A. A/B Testing for Google Ads

A/B testing is the process of creating two versions of the same creative which will display at random to your audience.

These two versions will focus on the same keywords and objectives, but feature key alterations in areas such as headlines, offer presentation, or some other page element.

By allowing Google to randomly select a version to display, we can generate a usable audience sample. This sample group then tells us which version of the creative is ideal for generating more conversions.

The benefits of A/B testing are compounding as they continuously guide you to smarter creative choices. As you allow users to tell you exactly what type of content they want to see, you can then use that data to effectively create the perfect ad for that audience.

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Furthermore, Google can automatically begin to redirect your target audience to the high-performing version once it completes the learning process. You can then eliminate the lower-performing creative from contention.

B. Demographics

Your ad testing will provide you with usable demographic data that reveals details about your average audience member.

To access this data, navigate to the Audiences tab within your Google Ads account. You can then view demographic data by level: Campaign, Ad Group, or Account.

You can then segment your audience by age, gender, income, and even parental status. When you select a certain demographic, you're able to track engagement and conversion rates for that group.

Essentially, you want to optimize your campaign efforts to focus on the highest-performing demographics. This involves going back to your ad creatives and developing new messaging that better speak to that group's needs and desires.

If you have multiple demographics worth pursuing, you can and should create unique ad groups for each. Your messaging to middle-class parents should be different than your sales pitch to a single adult or a teenager. Determining the best way to pitch your brand to the individual is the best way to maximize your conversions.

C. Geographics

Choosing who to advertise can help maximize your budget, but so can choosing where.

Similar to what you did with demographic segmentation, you can use your Google Ads menu to find Locations. Here, you can choose a range of geographic targeting options ranging from whole countries to specific cities.

For example, if you initially try to market to multiple southern states, but only gain traction in Florida and Georgia, you can restrict your targeting to those areas. This helps you to maximize your ROI in those areas while your team revisits how to market to underperforming ones.

D. Time of Day

The time in which you choose to display your ads can be another critical factor in amassing conversions.

If you find that your campaign is underperforming, it may not necessarily be that you're targeting the wrong audience. Rather, that audience may not be seeing your ads as they are displaying at inopportune times.

Your Google Ads account allows you to set up a custom ad schedule for this very reason. You can select specific days and times for your ads to run throughout the week.

If you find that an overwhelming percentage of your conversions happen on weekday evenings, consider scheduling your ads to fit those periods.

Another factor to consider is when your strong competitors run their advertisements. If you're confident that you can outpace a rival, you may choose to go head-to-head for the same display times to drown out their messaging while maximizing yours.

Conversely, if costs become unreasonable for certain periods, try to schedule your ads to avoid appearing during those days and times for a better ROI.

E. Negative Keywords

While primary keywords help you target the right customers, negative keywords help Google Ads understand what to avoid.

This is especially relevant when allowing your Google Ads account to dynamically utilize thematic keyword variants to reach new users. Some of these keywords may lead to low or unqualified users that are taking up unnecessary ad spending.

You can determine what terms you want to add to your negative keywords by keeping an eye on user behavior. Specifically, you can look at what keywords a user typed that led them to discover your ad. If you see a trend of unqualified impressions based on unrelated terms, you will then have a better idea of negative keywords to add.

As an example, let's say that a brand focuses on selling shirts. However, they do not carry t-shirts, specifically.

If a user looking for a t-shirt enters “shirt” into Google, there’s a good chance they will find that brand. This is because Google recognizes that t-shirt is a type of shirt and can often be used interchangeably.

For the brand, however, this leads to an unwanted click that burns ad spending. They want to avoid these types of broad associations so that they don't match up with users looking for something they do not sell.

You can use negative keywords to avoid these engagements. Specifically, you can use them to avoid broad category matches, related phrases, or exact matches.

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F. Lost Impressions

Finally, your Google Ads account allows you to review impression share data. This shows the percentage of time your ads appear in comparison to other ads vying for the same audience.

You can add impression share data to your campaign by going to Campaigns > Ad Groups > Keywords. Then, click on Modify Columns > Competitive Metrics > Impression Share.

You can then review the following lost impression data:

• Search Lost IS (budget) – when your ads do not show in search due to insufficient budget.
• Display Lost IS (budget) – when your ads do not show in the Display Network due to insufficient budget.
• Search Lost IS (rank) – when your ads do not show in search due to poor Ad rank.
• Display Lost IS (rank) – when your ads do not show in the Display Network due to poor Ad rank.

Lost impressions due to budget occur due to spending all of the budget before the scheduled ad period comes to an end. This is likely due to overspending on high-cost keywords, which results in losing out on potential ad time.

Lost impressions due to rank signify that your ad quality is lower than the average competitor. If you manage to improve your headlines, messaging, or other creative properties, you can salvage more impressions with the same daily budget.

Monitoring these metrics for Google ads campaign is important and your next actions depend entirely upon the campaign performance to date.

If the campaign is continuously netting you quality results, and you have an additional budget, consider raising the daily budget to capitalize on those lost impressions. On the flip side, an underperforming campaign may not be able to compete at the current cost. You’ll need to pivot your resources and direct your PPC efforts to other areas.

Lost impressions due to rank are unfortunate, but salvageable if you act quickly. As explained above, utilize testing methods to help improve overall ad quality. When your creatives are up to snuff, you’ll reclaim that valuable display time for your client.

4. Remarketing & Adjustments

Our final Google Ads optimization checklist tips focus on making the most out of your existing audiences.

While many of us still refer to the traditional sales funnel as a guidepost, the buyer’s journey is seldom so straightforward. Users that see or click on your ad are constantly bombarded with other information that can distract or redirect.

That doesn’t mean that the lead is uninterested or unwilling to sign up for your offer. Some highly-qualified users require that extra push.

A. RLSAs

RLSA stands for Remarketing Lists for Search Ads.

Remarketing refers to serving ads or other marketing material to users with previous behaviors that expressed interest in your brand.

Creating a sizeable remarketing list gives you a large enough audience segment worthy of creating unique ads and landing pages. Just as you would with demographic segmentation, remarketing to existing customers should feature a unique approach that acknowledges their previous engagement.

Furthermore, users on your remarketing list are already qualified versus the unknowns you’re aiming to attract at the onset. You’ve essentially hit the target, and now it’s a matter of putting together the right sales pitch to get the conversion.

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You can automatically create an RLSA by adding a remarketing tag to your landing page. This way, every user that clicks on your ad will automatically be added to the list. Be aware that Google requires you to have at least 1,000 unique users on the list before you can utilize it in ad creation.

B. Adjusting Keywords

When nothing in your Google Ads campaign seems to be getting results, it might be time to get back to basics.

No matter how well you plan out your keywords and offer, your potential audience will always have the final sale. That’s why it’s vital to never get too personally attached to your creatives as your PPC journey is one of constant adjustment.

The difference is that you now have a wealth of audience metrics available in your Google Ads account to work with. Use your audience data when researching alternative keyword options to see which best describes your average user’s needs and problems.

Also, be sure to revisit how competitors have changed their keyword selection and campaigns over time.

When all else fails, fall back to the rules described at the very beginning of this checklist. Use a keyword planner to research the most cost-effective keywords, be sure to match your offer to search intent, and find weak points in your competitor’s strategy to capitalize on.

C. Manual Bid Adjustments

Finally, bid adjustments allow you to explore the grey areas as opposed to ruling out segments as a win or loss.

At any point, you can manually override your Google Ads bidding based on keywords, demographics, display times, geographic region, and more. Just be wary of where you place these adjustments as even a few small overlapping changes can result in unwanted expenses that eat away at your budget.

When used effectively, manual bid adjustments can help you with your unique goals. You can direct traffic to specific devices or specific demographics for maximum results.

Keep This Google Ads Optimization Checklist Handy

Google Ads is one of the most powerful tools available whether you rely on search or the Display Network.

However, it can simultaneously eat away at your advertising budget in no time if you mistarget or misspend your funds.

Give yourself a foundation for success by taking advantage of the countless tools available for free within your Google Ads account. Take all the time that is necessary to research keywords, learn from your competitor’s best strategies, and craft the perfect offer.

Then, experiment with the different ad options that are natively available. Make sure to take advantage of any recommended extensions to help you with your ad campaign’s specific conversion goals. You can stack as many of these as necessary for optimal results.

Then, it’s time to test, test, test. A marketer’s work is never done, and consistently getting the best results requires monitoring and optimization. Rule nothing out and always be willing to change copy, headlines, images, or targeting parameters. You can utilize the audience data gathered by Google’s AI for better content creation.

Finally, never forget to take advantage of your existing audience. Getting to know a previous visitor and curating a landing page that speaks to their pain points can be the tipping point for many consumers. Once you convert a customer, it’s exponentially more cost-effective to resell to them than to acquire a new one.

If you’re looking to consolidate all of your agency analytics into one convenient place, consider trying the DashClicks 2.0 platform. Our marketing analytics software allows for seamless third-party integration and 24/7 performance tracking for both you and your clients.

Measuring lead quality is a major challenge for many agency owners. Most salespeople waste a lot of time on weak leads. If your conversion rate is low, it reflects that you are not effectively converting leads into paying customers. Maybe they are still not ready to purchase from you or are low-quality leads.

Weak leads will not help you achieve your business objectives. The advantage of high-quality leads is that they close faster and have a larger average deal size compared to poor-quality leads.

It might frustrate salespeople. Without a lead qualification plan, you will probably lose a lot of sales.

Impact of Qualified Leads on Sales

According to a Somametrics study, qualified leads substantially impacted sales.

A mere 10% improvement in lead quality led to a 33% growth in sales and a 5% increase in net profits. It also led to an 1839% ROI on marketing spend. When the lead quality was further improved by 20%, the increase in ROI on marketing spend and growth in sales saw an increase of 4,044% and 73%, respectively.

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The data speaks for itself! The quality of leads is crucial to your overall success in a business venture.

A drop in lead quality may lead to a sharp decline in sales and net profits.

What's Lead Qualification?

Qualified leads indicate the readiness of a person to buy your product.

The sales-readiness of a customer decides what strategy salespeople should use to convert the prospect into a paying customer.

Likelihood of Conversion

Your sales team's further activities and strategy depend on the results of this process.

They can further categorize these leads into hot, warm, and cold (low-quality ones).

The Benefits of Lead Qualification

The prime benefit of the lead qualification process is to build more effective communication with the prospects. This communication can take place through different channels, such as telephone, email, blog, or social media. The process tremendously contributes to the sales cycle.

It leads to better personalization, which results in a greater likelihood of conversion. It is also helpful in building relationships. Through lead qualification, sales reps can differentiate between hot, warm, and cold leads and prioritize them in their pipeline to build relationships.

To increase the conversion rate, you must clearly understand leads, including their priorities and concerns. Once you develop such an understanding, you may craft messages that appeal to them. It will help you close deals faster, saving you a lot of time, money, and hassle.

According to a study, 50% of prospects will never be qualified to buy your products or services, so wasting your time on them is useless. Instead, you can spend this time on the warm and hot leads who will convert in a fraction of the effort.

Lead Qualification vs. Lead Scoring

Marketers developed Lead Scoring as a process of lead qualification. You can measure and rank a lead's interest level and sales readiness through Lead Scoring. It's usually based on a documented and agreed-upon methodology by marketing and sales teams.

Lead scoring can be done in many ways. You can either assign points or rank them as A, B, C, or D. You can also group them as "hot," "warm," or "cold."

Lead scoring will decide whether a lead should be added to your sales funnel or not. It helps remove the ones with very little likelihood of buying from you. You can prioritize hot leads based on their value to your company. Warm leads need a bit more nurturing, so you can make a strategy to craft messages to increase their interest level and convince them.

Besides that, lead scoring can also be based on many other attributes, such as demographics, psychographics, work information, and their role in decision-making.

These are the vital inputs you need to prioritize your leads.

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3 Ways to Improve the Quality of Your Sales Leads

Here are the three ways to improve your lead quality and overall sales process.

1. Refine Your Lead Scoring System

It would help if you practiced dynamic instead of static scoring to prioritize your leads. The reason behind it is that factors like demographics and psychographics of your prospects keep changing, and for accurate lead scoring, it's crucial to adapt to the changing environment.

2. Commit to Lead Nurturing

According to a 2010 Forrester Research study, companies that performed better at lead nurturing could generate 50% more sales-ready leads at a 33% lower cost per lead than other companies.

However, less than 50% of leads are actually qualified in the B2B business environment, and you shouldn't waste your time on sales calls to the rest of them.

Marketers think everyone who has attended a webinar or downloaded a whitepaper is a prospect and should be handed over to the salespeople. You need more information about your prospects before declaring them qualified leads.

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3. Practice Consistent Lead Measurement

According to a HubSpot survey, 56% of B2B companies don't measure lead generation's contribution to revenue. However, it's interesting to know that you can get great insights into the intent of your online leads, thanks to the various measurable elements.

You can use DashCicks' automated sales CRM software to get an overview of your prospects' online behavior in the sales funnel. Consistent lead measurement will accelerate lead generation.

How to Make Sure That a Lead Is Qualified?

There is no way you can judge whether a lead is qualified or not at first glance. For that, you need to get some information about the prospect. Usually, salespeople can directly ask a few questions to the prospect to assess whether it's a qualified lead or not.

How to Get Qualified Leads?

You need qualified leads to boost sales. To prevent your time from being wasted on low-priority jobs, assess your leads at the organization, opportunity, and stakeholder level by asking relevant questions.

Here is a list of 21 questions you can ask to differentiate between qualified and weak leads.

1. How long have they been operating?
2. What is their employee count and turnover?
3. What industry are they in?
4. What’s their location?
5. What customer pain points do you want to address?
6. Have you availed of similar solutions previously?
7. How are you dealing with your existing issues?
8. Is there anything that doesn’t allow you to resolve your issue till now?
9. Are you considering any other solutions to resolve your issue?
10. What are your chief concerns?
11. Do you have any timeframe in mind to implement the solution?
12. When should I get back to you next time?
13. Are you involved in the decision-making process?
14. Is there anyone else who makes such decisions to avail such solutions?
15. Do you keep other stakeholders in the loop?
16. Would they like and approve the purchase?
17.  What is the standard approval process in your organization?
18.  What is the next step once a decision-maker approves a product for purchase?
19.  Would you like to know more about our product? Can we give a demo to show you how our product can help you?
20.  What are your priorities?
21.  Can you update me on your purchase process timeline?

Pro Tip: To ensure you're sending a qualified lead to your sales team, ask as many questions as possible.

A lead can be disqualified for numerous reasons, including if someone is not a part of the decision-making process. However, you can ask other questions and ensure that the organization you're targeting needs your solution and can afford it. If you find an opportunity to sell, you can approach the decision-maker.

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Final Words

Lead qualification is an essential step, and you shouldn't skip it at any cost. It saves time and helps you improve lead quality and the sales process. You should avoid the practice of transferring weak leads even if the sales team is clamoring for it.

Try to gather reliable information on sales opportunities. Talk to your leads and ask probing questions. Documenting the entire process will immensely help you in lead qualification and making it effective.

Nurture the weak leads. Talk to the people who are not yet mentally ready to make a purchase, even though they need your solution and can afford it. Use CRM data excessively to know how to nurture the leads through the right messaging.

Many businesses fail because they have no idea about their overall health, strategic direction, or the ability to achieve their goals. Your success lies in your ability to measure your performance in different areas of your business.

KPI (key performance indicator) is a measurable expression companies use to achieve the desired results in different areas relevant to their daily business activities.

With the help of the correct KPIs, you can solidify your strategic plan and know exactly where to focus. Monitoring KPIs is akin to an annual full-body health checkup of your organization. It helps you identify the loopholes and plug them in.

Cost per acquisition, customer lifetime value, traffic, page likes, followers, bounce rate, search engine rankings, and profit margin are some KPIs businesses use to evaluate their performance in different areas.

Value Added by KPIs

KPIs deliver value by helping you achieve the following things:

• Clarity: It helps you paint a clear picture of your strategy. KPIs provide you with the stats in an easy-to-understand manner.
• Focus: They allow you to focus on essential areas that require immediate attention.
• Improvement: It helps to monitor your progress towards your coveted goals.

The insights you get through KPIs also help you tweak budgets, manage teams, and create new products.

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What Is KPI Monitoring?

To ensure your agency’s growth and success, you need to track your most crucial metrics by KPI monitoring. It tells you where you stand and what you should do to achieve your goals.

It helps you:

• Identify your realistic business goals and achieve them, whether it’s selling products, improving processes, or boosting monthly subscriptions.
• Identify the most feasible options and best practices for your business, such as the best marketing and social channels.
• Optimize the processes and maximize your marketing ROI to improve future campaigns and replicate the success of the most profitable campaigns.

The KPIs You Should Monitor

DashClicks’ dashboard displays almost everything you may need to measure your business’ performance using the most crucial data points. Use your discretion to choose the most suitable KPIs for your business.

Make a judgment call to see which KPI examples apply to your business and track them accordingly.

A. SEO KPIs

SEO is a skill to master, and it needs to be appropriately done over a few months consistently. Otherwise, it won’t yield any results.

It will help if you put in a lot of effort to attract quality leads through SEO. Create quality content that is unique and engaging to win over your competition.

Use DashClicks’ Analytics tool along with Google Analytics to achieve the best results for your SEO campaigns. Here are some of the SEO KPIs you can track:

• Organic traffic
• Time on page
• Landing page visits
• Number of quality backlinks
• Search engine rankings

Monitoring SEO Campaigns

This screenshot explains how you can track your SEO campaign in the DashClicks dashboard. All you need to do is click on the SEO tab from the Analytics app, which you can fetch from the app drawer.

It displays all the campaign data with prominent SEO metrics.

B. Sales KPIs

Low-quality leads are a familiar problem marketers face. You need to align your marketing and sales teams to achieve high-quality leads. It will work wonders if you can also align customer support and the product development teams.

Here are some sales and revenue-related KPIs you should monitor:

• Customer lifetime value (CLV)
• Sales revenue
• Profit margin
• Cost-per-transaction (The average cost of a single transaction)
• Cart abandonment rate (specifically for eCommerce websites)

C. Social Media KPIs

Social media KPIs are crucial for those brands that attract a sizeable clientele from social media. They also have lots of dedicated followers on social media. It’s assumed that social media has a minimal direct impact on sales, as it’s primarily meant for marketing. Google recognizes social media as a significant ranking factor, so along with SEO, it can do magic for your sales.

To achieve these, you need a better performance in social media metrics such as lots of impressions, likes, and comments. It would help if you also had numerous followers and a highly engaged audience. It increases your brand’s exposure and helps more people know about it.

You can pay attention to the following metrics:

• Followers and Page likes
• Engagement rate
• Reach and impressions

How to Monitor KPIs?

Consolidating data from different channels is tedious, but KPI monitoring tools help you do it faster.

Using the DashClicks platform with a single dashboard, you can quickly view all of your campaign data in one place here.

First, go to the DashClicks Dashboard and:

App Drawer in the DashClicks Dashboard

• Integrate with your chosen data sources
• Open the relevant app from the app drawer
• Select the most crucial metrics
• Drag and drop as you wish

Steps to Monitor KPIs for Your Agency

Here is a three-step procedure to use your chosen KPIs to achieve your business goals.

Step 1: Identify the Most Relevant KPIs

Requirements vary from business to business; hence, identifying the most crucial metrics becomes essential to measure your success. For different companies, there can be different relevant metrics such as traffic, cost per acquisition, outbound sales, and leads, etc.

However, CPC, ROI, and campaign performance are the three most relevant metrics for marketers.

The next step is to know just how well you should perform for each metric to meet your business goals. For example, you might need 40 new customers for your premium subscription plan to break even. It entirely depends on your business type and current situation.

Step 2: Identify the Best Marketing Tools

Thanks to white-label platforms like DashClicks, you can easily plug in KPIs and track them via dashboards. For example, with DashClicks' central dashboard, you can access many apps such as Deals, Analytics, Inbound, and Contacts to manage your sales pipeline.

You should consider the following factors before you choose a marketing tool:

1. Pricing: Buying numerous expensive marketing software can be disastrous for your marketing budget. If you sign up for the DashClicks platform, you can get all the necessary tools for a reasonable and affordable monthly subscription fee.
2. Features: Before buying a marketing tool, make sure it’s feature-rich and has the monitoring features you are looking for, such as a central dashboard and split testing, etc.
3. Integrations: Third-party integrations become crucial in certain situations. Also, ensure that the software you’re buying integrates with your existing tools.
4. Users: Check the number of users it allows and if you need to pay a monthly fee for extra users.

Use the trial period to see if the tool works fine for you, including the integrations and user additions.

Step 3: Optimize With Your Findings

Once you’ve set the KPIs, defined your goals, and bought a new tool, it’s time to see whether you can track your performance with the data provided by your software.

Again, there are two scenarios – underperformance and high performance.

1. Underperformance – If you fall behind your KPIs, you need to check what’s causing this to happen. Can an automation drive or additional sales training solve the problem? Or do you need to rework your sales and marketing strategy altogether?
2. High Performance – If you are performing fine, it isn’t the time for being complacent but to get to work! Determine the factors leading to your performance and optimize them to strive for even better performance.

Final Words

Identifying and tracking your most relevant KPIs gives you Nirvana if you want to ensure that your agency is on the growth path. Many businesses fail because they are unable to track whether or not they are on the right path.

Figure out what metrics are game-changers for your business. Is it CPC, ROI, search engine rankings, traffic, or campaign performance?

Then, search for the best tools and platforms online. If you run an agency, a white label platform that offers analytics, sales pipeline management, lead management, CRM, project management, and a single dashboard can be the best option for you.

Avail free trials to shortlist the best platform for your needs and get your team onboarded. Later on, you can also integrate other tools you use.

You can try DashClicks for free. It's specially designed for digital marketing agencies to scale faster and better.

In today's data-driven business environment, data is the new "oil," according to Clive Humby, a British mathematician and entrepreneur. Raw data is useless, so marketers need specific metrics to analyze their businesses and use them to enhance their processes. CRM analytics provides crucial insights directly into multiple areas linked to your business's survival and growth.

Importance of CRM Analytics

Using key CRM metrics, you can manage many areas of your business such as internal workflows, customer experience, ongoing sales, and customer acquisition. Measuring these metrics at the surface level will not yield any results, so you need to dive deep into the CRM data to find ways to boost your revenue.

CRM Analytics You Should Track

Here are 13 key CRM metrics to help you build successful customer relationships and confidently scale your business.

1. Sales Activity Reports

You should track sales activity reports to track whether the MQLs (marketing-qualified leads) shared by the marketing team are converting into sales or not. It will also assess the prospecting tactics used by your sales teams and their effectiveness.

For that, you should track the performance of your emails, etc., using vital email marketing metrics such as open rate and reply rate. If these metrics indicate a dismal performance, you should tweak your email copy.

You can also measure the call to appointments ratio to determine your outbound calls' effectiveness. How many calls turn into meetings indicates your fronters' performance. At the same time, it also tells you the capability of your sales team to convert those sales calls.

Consider implementing an auto attendant to efficiently route inbound calls, helping your sales team connect with the right prospects and improve call-to-appointment ratios.

Pro Tip: AI-powered CRM tools are extremely useful in measuring such KPIs as they help you analyze your prospects' engagement with your brand. They will also suggest what should be your next move.

Pro Tip: You can also use DashClick's Sales CRM software to shorten your sales cycle, automate tasks, and close deals faster with actionable insights.

2. Sales Cycle Duration

A sales cycle indicates the time taken to close one deal. So, it's a rough estimate of the number of days a sales team takes to convert a prospect into a paying customer. The sales cycle largely depends on the industry and product type. Other factors influencing it are product or service cost and stakeholders involved.

Again, identifying the right decision-makers and persistent follow-ups may help shorten your sales cycle. Similarly, contextual engagement and relationship building can also help you in a significant way.

Pro Tip: You can fix many issues related to Sales Cycle Duration using DashClicks CRM. The deals app on our platform will give you comprehensive information about your deals pipeline.

3. Close Rate or Sales Closing Ratio

You can get many sales opportunities through different tactics such as social media advertising, Google Ads, and even organic traffic, but what matters the most is the deals successfully closed by your sales team.

Close rate is a metric that helps you track your sales team's actual performance and the factors responsible for it to take corrective measures. So, this CRM metric is needed to evaluate your sales strategy and identify the factors that lead to lost opportunities.

4. Net New Revenue

Money comes first in a business. If there is no revenue, you can't do business. Net New Revenue is a metric that informs you how much revenue your startup earns. You can periodically track it to check your business's health and your sales team's performance. You can track it every month, once in a quarter, or once a year.

5. Marketing ROI

Marketing may attract an unlimited budget, yet you can be unsure of its impact on your overall sales and profits. Marketing ROI lets you track how your marketing expense contributes to revenue growth. You can easily track it by the number of leads generated against the number of conversions. It helps you decide your marketing spend for future campaigns.

Pro Tip: DashClicks' CRM software and apps will provide insights into your customer behavior. It will also help you refine your target audiences and messaging.

6. Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is a crucial metric that helps you project the average revenue you'll earn from a single customer when they stay with you.

You can use the 80:20 rule to target high customer lifetime value. To improve your CLV, you should also pay attention to the customer support and customer experience (CX) you offer. Without that, you will only increase your churn and the number of unhappy customers. It's also directly linked with your branding. If you have a higher CLV, your brand will grow and vice versa. You can increase it by boosting your cross and up-sell and regular subscriptions. If you offer value, your customer would love to buy from you.

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7. Outreach Activity

It's an important metric that helps you track every point of contact your salespeople have with prospective customers. It enables you to measure the effectiveness of your prospecting strategy and provides crucial information about the average sales cycle and average follow-ups required to close the sale.

You should pay more attention to quality here than quantity. So, making 15 well-researched and quality daily calls on your refined list is always better than making 40 random cold calls.

8. Leads by Source

This is the Internet age, and your best leads may not come from your sales department. Brands use multiple online channels and consistently receive genuine inquiries and leads. Tracking those sources will give you a good picture of how marketing channels are helping you in lead generation.

Some might be your website visitors, while others may come from social media and other marketing channels. Identifying the channels offering you the best return on your investment might be crucial to your success. Investment of time and effort also pays you back, just like monetary investments.

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9. Customer Retention Rate

According to a study, acquiring a new customer can cost five times more than retaining an existing customer. According to another analysis by Small Biz Trends, increasing customer retention by 5% can increase profits from 25-to 95%.

The above stats prove that gaining a new customer is much more expensive than retaining your existing customer. That is the reason brands should focus on retention as much as possible. You should maintain excellent relationships, provide top-notch customer support, and offer an outstanding experience. It will always pay you back many times over.

The formula to calculate the custom retention rate is as follows:

Once you start tracking it, you can further improve it.

10. Net Promoter Score (NPS)

The metric is used to measure customer satisfaction. Customers are asked to share their experiences and feelings about your brand on a scale from one to 10. The lowest score is 0-6, whereas 7-8 is considered good. The latter score suggests that the customers passively enjoy your products and services. But a 9-10 speaks volumes about your business and indicates that they can recommend your product to others. With that score, your customers become your brand ambassadors.

11. Rate of Renewal

This metric is highly beneficial for you if you have a subscription-based business model. It represents the number of customers renewing their subscriptions after their expiration date. It also indicates the value you offer your customers and how fast your business grows.

12. Customer Churn

Customer Churn is also a critical metric because it tells you why customers are leaving your brand. Customer churn or attrition represents why customers are unhappy with your products or services and what you can do to plug in these major loopholes. It is as important as new customer acquisition because if you do not arrest customer churn, it will backfire on you.

13. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

It is an important metric that tells you about the feasibility of your business model and whether your business is sustainable in the long run or not. It also tells you which processes you can automate and how to reduce costs in order to decrease the customer acquisition cost.

A high customer acquisition cost can be disastrous for your business. It would help if you revamped your strategy in that case. It also enables you to identify the red flags in your overall strategy to reconsider your costs and pricing, etc. Your expense may include staffing, marketing, software and tools, taxes, third-party partnerships, training, etc.

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Final Words

It would help if you started tracking these crucial CRM metrics to improve your business performance. According to a CRM tool survey, 70% of the businesses saw a noticeable improvement in customer satisfaction.

You can use CRM tools like DashClicks, to improve your company's performance and customer satisfaction. It is equipped with apps such as Deals, Analytics, and Inbound, which bring valuable insights into your business processes. You can access them through a single dashboard.

Sign up for the DashClicks white-label platform for free and improve your business performance.

When sales and marketing get in sync, magic happens. The combination is an elixir for organizations willing to perform better. But how do sales and marketing find a more cohesive path to deliver the business results you want? And, how to forge a stronger partnership between sales and marketing teams?

Businesses have been asking this question for many years now.

Aligned teams can dramatically improve your sales and revenue. Working in sync drives growth increases sales, and allows different teams to work better, together.

Still, teams struggle to work in harmony. Do you know the reason?

The bottlenecks often include office politics and distributed workforces. So, here we will discuss how to forge a better sales and marketing alignment for the best business results.

Why Do You Need Sales and Marketing Alignment?

With endless choices in front of them, the modern customer is already struggling with information overload. Brands also push personal services and numerous product lines to meet people's needs. But, it actually overwhelms a customer.

Together, all these things make a purchase decision much more difficult. Trust factors also play a significant role here as customers can't trust every other brand brandishing the USPs of their products. According to a study, 81% of customers admitted that numerous options and too much information make a purchase decision difficult.

One significant benefit of working with aligned teams is that they help consumers navigate the complex emotional process of making purchase decisions. The marketing department shares these inputs with the sales teams so that they can refine their communication accordingly.

Now, let's discuss their roles.

The Role of a Sales Team

The sales team is directly responsible for converting leads into customers. They build and manage relationships and also work on retention. If the need arises, they also resolve customer issues. Since sales is a multi-stage activity, the salespeople must keep an eye on the entire customer journey and adapt their communication accordingly. That's the reason sales is so crucial for businesses. They are the lifeline of any organization.

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However, a blind focus on sales may backfire, and you may end up ruining your prospects and clients in the long run.

The Role of a Marketing Team

Enter marketing. Marketing takes care of the parts sales often overlooks, e.g., creating awareness, educating about the product, ensuring the quality of leads, and crafting enticing messages.

The customers need to be made aware of your product, and marketing people know precisely what they need to hear. Their job is to craft thoughtful marketing messages to push the prospects down the sales funnel. Without a marketing strategy, you won't have a target audience and, ultimately, no sales.

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So, why do you need to align the two teams?

Reasons Sales and Marketing Alignment Is Crucial

According to a study, nearly 75% of leads never reach the conversion stage when the sales and marketing teams aren't aligned.

This statistic indicates how wasteful misaligned sales can be. Aligned teams achieved a 34% increase in new business revenue. So, even though the ultimate objective of both teams appears to be the same, their playing fields are entirely different.

The marketing team aggressively generates leads, and the sales team leaves no stone unturned to convert those leads. But sadly, both the teams work independently and hence fail to achieve their common objectives.

Here are five significant reasons why aligned teams are so crucial for the growth of your business.

1. Helps Create a Single Customer Journey

Aligned teams collaborate and share their insights about their customers. Otherwise, a major disconnect can happen in their degree of understanding of the customer.

Your marketing and sales teams may be on entirely different trajectories regarding their perceptions of how a customer moves between different stages in the sales funnel.

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This is one of the major reasons why leads don't turn into customers. Customers are smart. They can sense a disconnect between your marketing pitch and your sales process as soon as they interact with your brand.

The results may surprise you when teams are aligned towards a mutually understood customer journey. The collaboration should start right after a customer is first exposed to your brand, i.e., when they hear about it. And it should last till your last communication with them.

2. Helps Different Teams Agree on a Customer Persona

Again, serious disagreements often happen between marketing and sales teams about their perceptions of the target audience. It results in both the teams looking for different qualities in the same customer persona. If your idea of your target customer is unclear, it affects everything from marketing messages to sales plan.

With that said, it becomes crucial to agree on a customer persona. It will allow you to market to them as per their personality traits at each stage of their journey without any disconnect.

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3. Helps You Deal With the Shifting Nature of Markets

Your marketing team will identify people interested in your product. In contrast, the sales team filters this list and focuses on people ready to make a buying decision soon.The driving factors that make a person interested are pretty different from those that make them ready to buy.However, with the changing nature of markets, sales and marketing teams should be flexible about their buyer personas. Customers' pain points keep changing, and if you don't adapt, you won't move even an inch ahead.These dynamic changes in market trends can be overcome by the marketing and sales team collaborating and working in tandem.

4. Helps You in Customer Outreach

Even though both departments are equally valuable, marketing should take precedence. Sales have become increasingly difficult in the past decade, mainly owing to the boom in cold calling, cold emailing, and other forms of unsolicited marketing. People just don't like it.

The best marketing approach is to figure out where your customers usually hang out. This allows you to meet them at their preferred hangout place, whether online or offline. Ofcourse, we are talking about various popular online channels here. Once your marketing team figures that out, they can start a targeted campaign to attract customers.

And once a few interested customers show their hands, your sales team can easily take it from there!

5. Helps You Track Joint KPIs

Even if you hate tracking joint KPIs, the strategy tells you what you need to fix. When the teams are not aligned, they might track different KPIs. For the sales team, KPIs like overall conversion rate and new accounts created are far more critical than lead quality and quantity or advertising results.However, aligned teams can reduce this friction through weekly meetings and daily collaboration. In those meetings, sales and marketing teams can share customer pain points and their preferences and discuss how they can use this data to turn missed conversions into sales.

Final Words

Aligned teams can refine your brand message and make it look uniform, consistent, and professional. If different teams use different terminologies, it may not only sound unprofessional but will also confuse your customers. It will quickly erode customer trust.

Again, it's essential to craft your marketing messages according to your buyer personas and their stage in the customer journey. Targeted marketing also helps you plug in the various loopholes in sales. Any disconnect here will lead to the failure of your entire sales campaign. That's why sales and marketing alignment are often called innovative marketing and should be practiced by every business to succeed.

Website traffic is a vanity metric.

There are countless ways to drive more clicks to your domain. However, it matters very little if those users aren't interested in converting. In these cases, all you're doing is wasting your budget.

Traffic quality is a superior metric regardless of traffic volume. By extracting optimal engagement from each person, you maximize your returns.

We're going to show you the telltale signs of poor traffic. Then, we'll teach you how to improve website traffic quality with several easy-to-implement changes.

Signs of Poor Website Traffic Quality

1. Your Domain Has a High Bounce Rate

Your bounce rate refers to the number of times users visit your site and leave without taking any action.

Your team of SEOs and content writers is doing the job of getting your pages to appear on SERPs. However, something about the on-page content is either actively driving users away or failing to grab their attention.

To analyze your bounce rate, track your website stats through Google Analytics. The guidelines for a high bounce rate vary depending on your marketing goals and your industry. Check out this detailed list of bounce rate industry benchmarks by device and industry courtesy of Content Square.

The other factor to consider is the overall goal for your site. For your brand's main website, a higher-than-average bounce rate is not ideal. Your website should keep users active and encourage them to click on other pages. If they're leaving soon after they arrive, it's likely a sign that your site is finding users that do not have an interest.

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On the other hand, a higher bounce rate for a direct sales funnel is normal. Going straight for the sale is a difficult task, meaning that you should expect more users to bounce than to convert.

Be mindful of your company's goals when analyzing your bounce rate. If the numbers do not agree with your aspirations, then your traffic is likely low-quality.

2. Your Site Has Low Conversion Rates

In marketing, we define a conversion as an event in which a user completes a desired goal.

While a sale is your ultimate goal, your site can have any number of additional conversions to chart the buyer's journey.

What your conversion goals are will once again depend upon the goals for your website. If you're looking to increase your average session duration, you might set goals for the user to click an internal link to another page.

Other examples of conversion goals can be:

• Filling out a form
• Watching a video
• Signing up for an email list
• Creating an account

If your users are not converting, then it may be a sign that your traffic is of low quality. However, it may also be a sign that your webpage design or content is failing to earn that conversion.

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With many of these factors, no one metric will tell the whole story. You must look at underperforming figures in the context of the user's journey. That's why these other factors will play a role in determining if your traffic is not ideal.

3. Your Site Has a Low Session Duration

The average session duration is approximately how long a typical user spends on your domain.

You can quickly determine roughly how long it would take the average user to complete any number of goals. One page of content may take two minutes to read while clicking to read another page can extend that visit to be much longer.

However, a sharp decline in session duration is almost assuredly a sign that the user is not interested. Once again, the users that are discovering your site are not interested in your offerings.

If your average session duration is a little closer to the industry average, then the story may be different. Once again, it may be that your content fails to drive engagement. Without a reason to interact and convert, your sessions are going to consistently fall below expectations.

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Try to look out for low session duration particularly if you're also seeing higher than normal bounce rates.

4. Visitors Find Your Site with the Wrong Keywords

This is one of the most likely culprits of low-quality traffic. Not only will the wrong keywords bring in the wrong users, but it also leads to the other negative metrics listed previously.

Ranking for the wrong keywords may happen by accident. However, you may also be doing so intentionally without realizing it. Many site owners make the mistake of choosing keywords purely by search volume without considering the keyword intent.

Know that there are four primary types of keywords:

• Informational – the user is looking for unbiased information on a subject
• Commercial – the user is looking for more specific data about certain brands or products
• Transactional – the user is looking to purchase a product relatively soon
• Navigational – the user is looking to find a specific URL

Understanding the keyword types and their purpose should be the driving force behind your content.

If you choose to rank for an informational keyword, but your content is tailored toward transactions, you're going to get clicks from low-quality traffic. In this example, the user wanted to be educated, but you served them a hard sales pitch.

Not only does this create a bad user experience, but it may also actually cause users to avoid your brand going forward. Unwanted approaches come across as unpersonable, spammy, and a nuisance. Getting the correct type of content to the correct users is how your website analytics improve overall.

On the other hand, make sure that your content is not accidentally ranking for keywords. When using GA, you can see which page the user visited and which keywords they used to find it. If you spot any red flags, then it's time to examine that content and determine how this particular event happened.

How to Improve Website Traffic Quality?

1. Monitor Your Website Analytics Every Week and/or Month

With tools like Google Analytics, it's much easier to spot issues with website traffic quality.

As long as we know the particular URLs at the source of the problem, we will have an easier time analyzing the direct factors. While minor highs and lows are to be expected, negative trends are something to keep an eye on.

By checking in on your website traffic regularly, it's much easier to identify issues before they become a real problem. This is particularly important if you're using paid campaigns to drive website traffic. Every user that visits costs money regardless of the traffic quality.

In addition to the metrics above, Google Analytics offers a breakdown of all website traffic. It will divvy up the results by real traffic, spam, and bots. You can find this by utilizing the Overview dropdown and clicking on Quality.

Anything in green is indicative of real traffic. You want to make sure that most, if not all, of your traffic fall within this category. Then, you can begin to analyze page-by-page to determine how that traffic is arriving at your domain.

2. Set Up Custom Goals for Your Site

Custom goals are an incredible feature that every website owner should utilize.

Creating your own goals allows you to gain greater insight from your traffic regarding your unique business objectives. It allows you to determine exactly where you're losing the user and what you might be able to do to improve your retention rate.

If a user fails to complete the initial action, it's much more likely that the traffic is unqualified. Meanwhile, if a user abandons your site halfway through the journey, it's more indicative of the content or offer quality.

To set up a goal in Google Analytics:

1. Go to your Admin page.
2. Click on the View column. Then, click Goals.
3. Click +New Goal to set up the custom configurations for that objective.

You should utilize these new goal metrics in conjunction with all other measurements. Doing so paints a more concise picture and allows you to make a more educated guess when it comes to your traffic and targeting.

Generate a hypothesis, develop a new strategy, then test again. You must continue to do this until you begin to see your metrics trending once again in a healthy direction.

3. Improve Your Content Quality

It's possible to attribute low-quality traffic to poor content quality.

This can start as early as the keyword selection process as explained above. If you are selecting the ideal keywords for ranking, your content may fail to meet Google's EAT principles.

Setting up custom goals for conversions (see above) is an excellent way to start gauging content quality. Whether you want users to visit new pages or sign up for an offer, your content is what will do the heavy lifting. Failure to meet these objectives is a red flag that your copy, images, or video need a closer look.

To start improving your content quality:

• Choose the right keyword for your audience. Remember keyword intention when choosing your page topics.
• Refocus existing content to not incidentally rank for the wrong keywords.
• Motivate the audience by providing a call to action. Help them get involved.
• Support your text with high-quality images and video. As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words.
• Offer social proof. Leverage the momentum of your content by including references, testimonials, or research depending on the subject matter.
• Find natural ways to link to internal content. Make it easy for your users to spend more time on your site.

4. Improve Your Paid Ad Targeting

For many brands, paid advertising campaigns are a huge source of new website traffic.

Traffic coming from an ad or sales funnel should almost always be of high quality. If they're already showing interest in your ad, then they should be a qualified user for your website content.

Paid ad platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or Google make it easy to learn about your audience. These tools automatically gather data from every impression and click. It knows who is seeing your ads, who's interested, and who you should avoid.

PPC marketers then utilize this data to continuously refine their campaign efforts. The more we learn about the user, the better we can create content that drives conversions. Conversely, misinterpreting the data and presenting ads to unqualified users leads to a wasted budget.

Always be sure to revisit your audience data periodically. Remember that discovery campaigns must be allowed a significant period (at least 2 weeks) to gather sufficient data. Then, utilize this data in both your ad campaigns and your website to attract the right type of traffic.

5. Generate High-Quality Traffic with Remarketing

An effective ad campaign type is known as remarketing. This allows you to re-engage with users that have already shown interest in your brand.

It's far easier to leverage data that you have regarding a previously engaged user than a brand-new one. This is because we have access to analytics that show what that person likes, where we lost them, and what we might do to win them over next time.

This is particularly valuable when it comes to customers that made a purchase. Rather than thinking of each sale as a one-and-done, keep that momentum going and leverage their earned trust to your benefit.

The internet changed the buyer's journey forever. No longer do we need to make a purchasing decision on the spot. Instead, we might engage with a funnel, leave, then come back later.

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That user may be on the fence regarding a purchase. Then, a Facebook ad appears on their timeline once again reminding them of your brain. You catch them at a different time in a different mood, and suddenly they're more open to converting.

Remarketing almost always leads to high-quality traffic. Rethink your strategy to consider new ways to capitalize on previous website visitors or customers, such as:

• Paid ad remarketing campaigns
• Email marketing lists
• Abandoned cart emails

6. Rethink Your Existing Marketing Channels

Finally, it may be time to reconsider whether a specific marketing channel is worth the effort.

Marketing is a continuous trial-and-error process. The more we learn about our audience, the better we are equipped to make smart choices that lead to better returns.

If you've been utilizing a channel, exhausted different types of creatives, and still see low-quality traffic, consider dropping it from your strategy. It can simply be a case of the wrong place or the wrong time. It may also be that it's worth pursuing better-qualified users elsewhere.

We can’t stress enough that analytics is your savior when it comes to determining traffic quality. Don’t just analyze your site through GA, but constantly observe your metrics across:

• Paid ads
• Social media
• Influencer marketing
• Email marketing

Some channels may better suit your particular brand or industry than others. It’s up to you to determine if there’s something you can improve or if that platform’s audience just isn’t up to standards.

Prioritize Website Traffic Quality Over Volume

Low-quality traffic often comes as a result of pursuing volume over quality. When we fail to properly analyze our website and our marketing channels, we end up with traffic numbers that mean very little.

Instead, we must carefully monitor website analytics for signs of poor website traffic quality. Be mindful of:

• Bounce rate
• Average session duration
• Low conversion rates
• Keywords & channels used to find the site

Any one of these can be indicative of problems on the site, within our ad campaigns, or within our SEO strategy. The sooner you identify the problem and its source, the sooner you can weed out your low-quality traffic.