Search marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach a target demographic. As such, lowering your Cost per Acquisition (CPA) has never been more relevant than it is today.

CPA refers to the amount of advertising or marketing money you spend to acquire leads who respond to a call to action (CTA) or click on your site.

In other words, it refers to the amount of money you’re going to spend to get a paying customer.

How to lower your CPA?

Work on your bids

Applying good AdWords bidding strategies is an essential part of maximising the performance of an account and achieving key business goals.

There are two types of bidding strategies and both can be used together or alone depending on what you want to achieve.

Automatic bidding: with an automatic bidding strategy, AdWords will automatically adjust your bids to achieve the objective of your campaigns as it sees fit i.e. when it is expected to perform best.
Manual bidding: differing from automatic bidding where you allow AdWords to do the work for you, a manual bidding strategy gives you complete control over the maximum CPC which can be adjusted according to historic data and general account performance.

Separate by platform

Rarely (if ever) should you target desktop, mobile and tablet all at once. User experiences and behaviors vary across platforms, and people on a particular device may be more inclined to engage with your content.

For example, a desktop user that enjoys fashion content at home may prefer other types of content while on-the-go and using a smartphone.

Experimenting with platform-specific promotions can help you learn where your audience is most engaged, enabling you to better focus your campaigns.

Platforms have different levels of competition for clicks (e.g. cost-per-click, or CPC), so targeting the right audience, on the right platform, at the most cost-effective CPCs will ultimately lower your CPA.

Qualify your ad text

One of the best ways to reduce your CPA is to analyze your existing ad text and modify or get rid of ads that are attracting too much of the wrong traffic.

Look for ads that have a high CPA and consider whether or not they appeal to your customers. For instance, consider whether a more specific ad that includes more details and syncs better with your landing page can reduce the number of stray clicks and improve conversion rates.

Match your keywords

Good click through rates (CTR) on your ads are great but not so great if your visitors don’t convert. However, a great way to lower CPA is to analyse your existing ad copy by looking at which ads are driving traffic of no value to your site.

When a user searches on Google, let’s say for instance “digital transformation services glasgow” and these keywords are included in both the ad copy and on the landing page, AdWords will display the ad with the keywords emboldened.

With the keywords standing out and indicating relevance, this increases the chances of the user visiting your site and making a conversion.

Learn, revise, re-test

There is no magic formula to increase your conversion rate or get more users to engage, but there are best practices that can guide you in the right direction.

If your CTR is low, check out our infographic on optimizing thumbnails and headlines for maximum engagement. If CTRs are strong, but your conversion rate is low, our infographic on creating content pages that convertcan help optimize your landing page to encourage intended actions.

Never underestimate the value of learning through a rigorous trial-and-error process. And when the numbers finally do hit home, be sure to analyze what is working so you can replicate it on subsequent campaigns.

Short conclusion

As with most things, every situation is unique. Some strategies may work for you while others may not. Regardless of the strategies you choose, be sure to regularly monitor and evaluate so you can continue to improve on performance.