Tips to help you stretch your Google Ads budget further
Are you new to using Google Ads and wondering why your ad budget always runs out so fast? You’re in the right place. In this article, we’ll look at a few basic steps you can take to help stretch your advertising budget further.
Why these tips are important
Competition for online visibility is getting more intense as businesses realise Google Ads is a great way to get in front of customers when they actively search for products, browse websites or use apps. This not only forces advertisers to work harder to earn potential customers' attention, but as more brands compete for the same keywords or audiences, it can quickly become more expensive to reach the right people.
If you’re new(ish) to using the ad platform, it can be tricky to know what to do when your average cost per click (CPC) or cost per acquisition (CPA) creeps up.
There are the five common costly mistakes I see beginners make. Are you guilty of any of them? They are:
Going too broad with the keyword or audience selection
Not using negative keywords
Not tailoring ads to keywords or audiences
Ineffective Google Ads account structure
Having a poor website experience
If you’re making one or more of these mistakes, there’s no need to panic. In this article, I’m going to share some simple tips that you can take away and try today.
A quick note before we dive in: this article won’t cover Google’s ad auction, but it’s essential that you understand how it works if you want to lower your average CPC or CPA. If you’re still getting your head around the mechanics of it, hit pause and visit Search Engine Land to read their in-depth guide.
Focus on the people who matter
Getting your keyword or audience selection right can be tricky. Going too broad can result in your ad budget being wasted reaching people who aren’t interested in your product and not having enough left to reach those who are. Go too narrow and you won’t be able to reach as many people in your target audience as possible for your budget.
Bidding on keywords that are too general, using broad match in the wrong way, letting Google Ad’s AI campaigns run wild or targeting overly generic audience segments are usually to blame for ads appearing for irrelevant searches.
When this happens, it can tank your click-through rate (CTR), waste your ad budget on poor-quality traffic which immediately leaves your site and overall, it signals to Google that your ad isn’t a good fit for those terms.
This will negatively impact your Quality Score and you’ll have to increase your bids to secure a prominent place on the search results page (this is true whether you're manually managing bids or using an automated bidding strategy).
Going too broad can also result in your budget being eaten by expensive overly-generic terms that a lot of companies are also bidding on - rather than being used strategically on relevant, targeted keywords that your target audience is likely to use.
An example of going too broad is bidding on the keyword: House to promote a housebuilder’s new development. The keyword House could relate to anything from buying a home to the TV show of that name. Instead, you may want to try terms like New build houses for sale in Glasgow.
If you're new to search advertising, remember that targeting isn’t a “set and forget” thing. It needs constant monitoring and adjusting to get the best results. Once your keywords are up and running, test different - yet closely related - terms and match types to see which options give you the right balance of visibility vs. clicks/CTR.
Don’t forget to keep a close eye on the CPC! If you're testing new keywords that could be expensive or too broad, try separating them into a new campaign so you can limit the daily spending and protect the quality signals of existing campaigns
Also, keep checking the Search Terms report and doing regular keyword research to find new terms to include to boost your reach and ones to exclude to avoid spending money reaching people outside of your target market.
There are five common costly mistakes that I usually see Google Ads beginners make. Are you guilty of any of them?
Be smart about negative keywords
Negative keywords are your ally so don't be afraid to use them! Even if your ad groups are highly focused, your ads can still appear for unwanted search terms or low-intent search queries thanks to how Google handles match types and what it classes as a “close variant”.
Keep on top of it by reviewing the Search Terms report on a regular basis (you won’t see all terms but you will see some), using the keyword planner to learn what variants your ads may be appearing for and conducting SERP analysis. These techniques will let you spot, predict and exclude irrelevant terms to avoid spending money on low-value clicks.
When you’re going through the data, think about searcher intent and exclude terms that are unlikely to convert. For example, if you’re managing a PPC ads account for a clothes shop, you may want to exclude terms like “jobs” or “contact number” as you’re unlikely to get an online sale from these searchers. When I start managing a Google Ads account, I usually set up negative keyword lists based on the client's industry and type of business to avoid their ad budget being spent on low-quality or low-intent clicks right from the start.
Tailor your ads to your keywords
Are you using your top keywords in your ad copy? Is your copy on-brand? Do your ads match the searcher's intent? If you want to improve your Quality Score you must show Google that your ads are relevant to your keywords while at the same time making sure they are a good match for the searcher’s query, communicate that your site will solve their problem and encourage them to pick your brand over a competitor.
This is easier to do if your keywords are split into focused ad groups. Then you’ll be able to easily spot top-performing keywords and work them into your ad copy in a way that looks natural and compliments other elements of your ad such as unique selling points or promotional messaging for example.
If it’s a new ad group, you may want to start by using the keywords with the highest search volume and then testing other ones as the data starts coming in.
Account managers that have a sprawling selection of keywords in "catch-all" ad groups won’t be able to craft ad copy that’s relevant to the keywords and theme of that group (because there isn’t one). Not only will it be less likely that Google sees the ad as relevant to the keywords, but you could also lose out to competitors who have highly targeted ads which immediately tell people their site is a good match for their search query and intent.
Large “catch-all” ad groups may be quicker to set up, but it will make it harder to bring down the average CPC and you could end up missing out on sales and leads in the long run.
Make your account structure work for you
Your account structure impacts how much control you have over how your budget is spent. It allows you to allocate more budget to your best-performing ad campaigns and less to areas of your business that are lower priority.
Also, if you only have one campaign and then throw all your keywords into one “catch-all” ad group, expensive yet poorly performing broad keywords may end up using the majority of your daily budget. This means that your more targeted keywords may not be able to enter relevant ad auctions (even if you're using an automated bidding strategy).
If you’re strategic about how you structure your account, you’ll be able to separate high-spend keywords when needed and control how much budget goes towards promoting different areas of your business. For example, you may want to allocate more or less to campaigns in line with seasonality, customer trends, demand, etc.
A well-structured account will give you the power to map your spending to your business needs and goals.
Provide a great website experience
Getting a potential customer to click on your ad is only half the battle. Once they reach your site, it’s important that they have a great user experience to secure that all-important lead or sale.
You already know that landing page relevance to your ads and keywords will impact your Quality Score, CPC, etc., but a lot of people forget to make sure their site is optimised to take people beyond the landing page and into the conversion process.
If your site is difficult to use, has a slow load time, no calls to action or it's not immediately obvious that it contains the information or products the person is looking for, they may simply bounce off your website and find your competitors. If this happens too often, Google will take it as a sign that your site is poor quality or isn't a suitable match for that search query after all, and you’ll need to pay more to secure good ad visibility.
When people reach your site, make sure all of the elements work together to effectively encourage potential customers to sign-up or make a purchase in a way that’s as frictionless as possible. You can identify underperforming landing pages by using Google Analytics to find drop-off points in the conversion process.
Don’t get frustrated if your PPC account isn’t generating results. I can give you a hand with account management, auditing your existing PPC account or building your account from scratch. Simply get in touch for a chat today.