While Google Ads is a great marketing tool and has a huge customer base with the potential for high ROI, the truth is that you could be losing a lot of money with simple mistakes. If you find yourself struggling to position your campaigns at a low cost for quality results, then this guide is for you. We will walk you through 6 tips to save big on your next campaign.
1. Improve your ad.
This seems obvious, right? But nothing else matters if the ad itself is not persuasive and doesn’t give the user a reason to click. Create a great offer for the target audience and use a clear call-to-action. Include keywords in the headline and description so that your audience sees the relevant content.
Check what your competitors are creating. Type in a keyword and see how they structure their ads and see how you compare. Make sure that your ad is written to connect to your audience with the benefits of the offering clearly highlighted.
2. It’s all about the keywords!
Researching your customer needs to understand their search intent. Then, choose keywords that match their search intent to ensure that your ads show up with relevant search queries.
Delete any keywords that have less than 1% click-through rate (CTR) after ~300 impressions. These are not highly-converting keywords and end up as wasted ad spend. Google Keyword Planner is a great tool to help find keywords since it can recommend keywords based on your website.
Pro tip: There are three types of keywords to choose from broad, phrase, and exact match. Broad matches will deliver the most impressions but have the lowest CTR. Phrase keywords offer more control since the ad will only appear when someone searches the exact phrase but there may be other words before or after the phrase. Exact matches will have the lowest impressions but highest CTR since they only trigger if someone types in the exact keyword phrase.
It can help to start off including broad match keywords to help generate more data and then switch over to phrase and exact match keywords.
3. Choose a bid strategy.
Google uses a bid auction system to choose which ads are shown. A common mistake many advertisers make when trying to save money is keeping their CPC on the lower end, which results in poor ad placements, lower impressions, and thus, lower conversions. First, use manual bidding to have an understanding of what’s working and how your ad placement is going. Then, shift from manual into automatic by changing settings to “Maximize Clicks” or “Maximize Conversions”. Go for high-intent keywords rather than high volume.
4. Target specific locations.
Identify areas where your target audience is located and update your preferences to only target those specific areas. For instance, if you are a small service-based company with customers only coming to your shop in a 20-mile radius, then you want to limit your ads to that radius. To adjust the locations, click through the campaign level settings to adjust for zip codes, states, or cities.
5. Improve your quality score.
Quality score reflects ad performance and is based on three factors:
- Ad Relevance
- Landing Page Experience
- Expected CTR.
A high-quality score will lead to lower CPC and better-positioned ads, which can help drive more leads.
If your ad groups continuously have low conversion rates, then this may be a sign that your ads and landing pages have a disconnect. Refine your landing page experience to ensure that the pages are informative; offering and driving conversions. This will in turn improve your quality score.
6. Schedule your ads.
Use your data to focus on which days or hours have the best conversions. Adjust your ad visibility to only show during peak times to improve your ROI.
Pro tip: It may take a few months to gather enough data to see your peak times, so be patient! Running broad match keywords can help you gather more data faster, although this data may not be of the quality that you are looking for.
Conclusion
Since you work in a competitive market with limited resources, taking these steps to optimize your Google Ads will maximize your overall value from online marketing. Book a discovery call if you are ready to bring your business to the next level with professional campaign management.
