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Most advertisers face the typical scenario of starting a new campaign and not getting the expected amount of clicks and traffic to their website.

The problem with low traffic is that if you’re not driving qualified traffic to your campaign, even after implementing a thorough list of negative keywords, then you’re probably not going to have enough clicks that will turn into a lead or a sale for your campaign.

Let’s say you currently convert 4 out of 10 leads, so that would be a 40% conversion rate (Conversions/Clicks x 100).

Now, if your campaign is only generating 10 clicks a day, you’re going to get 4 sales or leads a day. But if we double the clicks from 10 to 20 and keep the 40% conversion rate, then you’ll receive a total of 8 leads a day!

A campaign with no traffic is practically dead in the water, so let’s explore some basic ideas you could implement to increase the clicks for your current campaigns.

1. Increase Your Bids And Campaign Budget

This is perhaps the most simple of all measures you could use to increase clicks. By increasing your campaign bids, you’ll achieve a higher ad rank and therefore a higher avg. position on Google’s search results page.

Being in a higher position will make your campaign ads more visible, which tends to increase the potential clicks your campaign will receive.

Now, keep in mind that if your campaign is currently limited by budget, increasing bids and not the campaign budget will reduce the number of clicks; as your Avg. CPC will increase and you will have fewer total clicks for the same daily budget.

If you’re considering increasing bids to drive more traffic, make sure your campaign is not reaching its budget. If it is, then you have to increase the total daily budget as well.

2. Target a Greater Geographical Area

A lot of times people that are new to PPC want to start “small” to try it out. But by using such a timid approach, they’re missing out on potential lead generation.

If you’re running a local auto repair shop, you might consider targeting a few nearby cities or a 10-mile radio from your shop.

This approach is perfectly fine, assuming you get a decent amount of clicks to generate potential leads for your business. But if you’re not driving enough traffic, you should definitely consider increasing your targeted area.

Let’s assume you can take care of clients as far away as 20 to 30 miles from your shop, so you could try gradual increases and see how clicks improve. If you notice that a 20-mile radio does the trick, then you could stick to it, and your campaign will start to generate the leads your business needs to prosper.

3. Use Broader Keyword Match Types

As a norm, we want to get as many clicks as possible given the campaign’s daily budget, but we also want to make sure we’re attracting relevant traffic to avoid wasting money on low-quality leads or completely irrelevant traffic.

A lot of times when creating a campaign, we tend to use either Phrase Match or Exact Match keywords, as those are of a more restrictive nature and tend to provide better CTR and more relevant traffic.

The problem with those more restrictive match types is that they usually have lower search volumes, so unless you use short tail keyword variations that have higher search volumes, you’re likely to have lower click volume for your campaigns.

A good way to deal with this situation is to try out broader match types.  Perhaps, you could try out some BMM (Broad Match Modifier) keywords on some of the main ad groups for your campaign.

BMM usually drives more traffic than Phrase or Exact Match, and that should boost your campaign’s total click volume.

If you’re going to use BMM, just remember to keep a close look at your daily budget to make sure it’s not being depleted too early in the day.

Also, take a look at your Keyword Detail and Search Query Reports to make sure you’re not driving too many irrelevant clicks.

In case you notice irrelevant searches, don’t panic; take this as a good opportunity to renew your negative keyword list and develop a bulletproof campaign.

4. Find Keywords Variations with Higher Search Volumes

If you’re not getting the desired amount of clicks on your campaign, then it is time to do some keyword research to find keywords variations with higher search volumes.

A good way to do this is by making use of Google’s Keyword Planner. Here you could include your targeted location, the languages you’re going to target and enter your campaign’s main keywords to get ideas for ad groups and keywords.

Once you input the main keywords you want to search for, the Keyword Planner will give you many options for related variants. With this list, you could filter keywords by search volume and consider including in your campaign relevant variants with higher search volume.

5. Use Short Tail Keywords

As a general rule, shorter tail keywords have more traffic. In this case, if you have main keywords such as affordable equipment rental, you could try shorter tail versions such as equipment rental.

These short-tail variations will have way higher search volume, as most people searching on Google don’t tend to be too specific with their search queries.

A word of advice, if you’re going to try out the short tail keep word approach, just make sure you have a healthy campaign and ad group level negative keyword list to filter out potential irrelevant searches.

6. Include Appealing Promotions In our Ads

No matter how great of a relevant keyword list you have developed and started running on your campaigns, if you don’t have relevant and compelling ads, chances are not many people will find them attractive and therefore the clicks to your web page will suffer.

A good way to increase traffic is to develop really good ads to attract more clicks.

Including new special promotions highlighting special benefits that your product or services have, etc. will help you become more competitive and differentiate your campaign ads from those of your competitors.

Lower avg. CPC is a plus as you will be able to get more clicks for the same budget you’re running on your campaign, so improving your ads you could say is one of those “win-win” situations.

As you can see, there are many valid options to get more traffic and clicks for your campaigns. Depending on your industry and overall goals, you can choose any of the tips mentioned throughout this article and adapt them to your Online Advertising efforts.

As a final note, remember that once you have achieved a healthy amount of clicks for your campaign, just make sure you continuously optimize your campaign and update your negative keyword list to make sure you keep driving relevant clicks to your campaign.

If you found this post useful, you will also enjoy ‘6 Ways to Boost Your ROI from Online Marketing.