Google Adword enables marketers to define exactly how much they intend to spend on advertising. However, while you can cap your budget, it doesn’t prevent you from paying too much for your online ads. Indeed, even if your monthly budget doesn’t increase, the CPC of your ads could affect the campaign’s effectiveness.
When the CPC is high, it means your capped budget could run out for the day, which will limit the number of times the ads can be displayed.
Additionally, you can also compare your CPC to the average Google CPC for search ads and display ads. If your CPC is significantly higher, it could be a sign that your ads are not optimized for the advertising budget. As a result, you are at risk of wasting money and spending more than you should per click.
What can you do to make the most of your budget? Using A/B testing to improve your ads is a no-brainer. You can also create tightly related ad groups to make your ads more relevant and targeted and improve the quality score. Finally, improving your keywords with long-tail phrases and different match types can help. You’ve tried all this, and your CPC remains high.
What else can you do to reduce your CPC and increase your campaign success?
Optimize your website
A pretty website is no guarantee of success. Ideally, when you use paid advertising to drive traffic to your site, you want to work with an expert such as Single Origin Media, who has experience in web design and digital advertising. Indeed, those skills are instrumental in the creation of a landing page that can capture leads and support your business goals. Your website performance can affect your ad quality score. Therefore, it’s worth considering a new website design if you notice that ad traffic fails to convert.
Check what your competitors are doing
You can learn a lot from your competitors. You may be tempted to type in your keywords on Google and watch whether your competitors appear. However, marketers can tailor their ads to appear depending on schedule, budget, geography, etc. So, instead, you may want to try other tools that can help you observe your competitors. A tool such as Similarweb will reveal the different traffic sources to your competitors’ site, so you can find out their paid search traffic and display traffic data. Not all data will be visible, but it’s enough to get an overview and check whether you’re doing the right thing.
Alternatively, you can also check your Impression share on Google Adword. For instance, an ad with 35% of impression share shows up only about a third of the time. This can show as well the share lost due to ranking and budget, which can be useful for improving your ads in the future.
Adjust your bid to address behavioral segmentation
People do not click on your ads according to the same pattern every day and everywhere. On the contrary, some times and days may perform better. Similarly, some devices and locations can also be more effective. Plan your bids according to:
- Days that drive the most traffic and leads
- Time that converts the best
- Device(s) that drives the most conversions
- Locations with the best quality traffic
Hopefully, these few tips can help you make the most of your advertising budget without wasting money.
