Not Made Out of Money? Tips Lower Click Costs on AdWords.
In the last 30 days, I have seen an escalation of click costs in AdWords across the board. Here’s how you can combat that trend and get lower cost clicks.
Move to Maximum Click Bidding
If you have been using manual bidding with an eCPC component, now may be the time to try moving to Maximum Cost bidding. Although I love the option to bid to the first page of search results using manual bidding, I am finding that I am not getting more conversions, just more expensive conversions.
Pause All Broad Match Keywords
Make sure you have taken a careful look at the queries that are triggering your AdWords ads. You may be shocked at some of the search queries that are triggering ads for expensive broad match keywords. You have two options, try to stem the outpouring of cash through negative keywords or start to move our of broad match keywords. I do not mean move out of broad match modifier keywords, but rather true broad match terms.
These two simple actions will bring your cost per click costs under control rapidly.
Not Made Out of Money? Tips to Spend Low on AdWords.
Got less than $500 a month to spend on AdWords clicks?
Want to promote your business on AdWords but don’t want to pay an account manager?
Don’t want to use AdWords Express as it has not worked for you?
You can still use the professional grade AdWords program even with a low ad spend budget.
• Once you set up your AdWords account, go to the Shared Library in the left navigation flyout and set up your first audience. Grab the code and install it on all pages of your website. When your lists gets up to 100 cookie sets you can show ads. Then set up a campaign and ad group in your account to target remarketing in the Display network. People do not even need to have clicked an AdWords ad to see your remarketing ads as they surf around the web.
• Set up Dynamic Search Ads. This is another low cost great way to get coverage for your services without setting up keyword lists. Just set up a Dynamic Search Ad campaign, tell Google AdWords your domain name, and set up a dynamic search ad. Google does all the work. It knows what your pages are and services from indexing your website for Google.com organic searches. AdWords will then use this power to serve ads based on what you offer and have on your website, dynamically creating an ad title and linking the ad and person who clicks your ad to the exact right page on your website.
• Consider showing your ads only in the Display Network. For pennies a click you can get wide exposure on quality websites. Just take a little bit of time to opt out of mobile games and mobile apps or you will bleed cash into mobile and not see any tablet or desktop activity.
There are lots of other great ways you can get exposure and keep your AdWords budget low. Consider call only campaigns, scheduling your ads only in the evening when others have run out of budget, running ads only at certain times during the day, and limiting your geographic area.
If you need professional, experienced AdWords account management, check out our service offerings at www.McCordWeb.com.
One of the biggest issues with the setting of the maximum cost per click and daily budget is that the daily budget will not be set high enough for Google to properly serve an account.
Many times a client will have a high click cost, relatively low daily budget, see that the average position on the page for their keyword is high, but impressions are very low. The erroneous assumption is that there is simply not enough click traffic to spend the daily budget.
In reality the daily budget is too low and cannot support the ability for Google to deliver the ads. With a high click cost and low daily budget, Google simply tries too hard to meter out clicks throughout the day, the result is the program is hardly served.
Typically I will see this type of issue when in a 30 day period only $100 of clicks are served in a $900 budget. The disconnect is that the daily budget needs to be raised if the maximum click cost is set appropriately. I will also see this scenario when the account is also out of the ad auction, meaning that the daily budget may be right but the click cost is too low.
A careful review of the account and testing of various cost per click settings and daily budget settings will isolate which is the correct problem that needs to be addressed further.
In all cases, it is important for the account manager or account owner to assure that conversion tracking is enabled and being used in an AdWords account before you simply start to raise ad spend budgets and click costs. Decisions must be made on statistical documentation.
There is nothing worse for an account that to simply throw money at Google without having conversion tracking in place to assure accountability. Google will gobble up every penny you give it if you allow unfettered access to your wallet.
One of the most difficult things for a new AdWords account manager is to determine the best initial budget for an account. Here are a few of my tips that will help get you thinking.
1. Start with the highest budget initially that you can. It is easier to ramp down than to ramp up in a brand new AdWords account due to the way that Google AdWords will serve a brand new account in the first week.
2. Use the AdWords Keyword Planner. This tool is found in your account in the drop down under tools. Typically I will sit at my computer with this tool open and run numbers for a brand new client before we even go to contract for management services to help set an appropriate budget. There is nothing worse than taking on a new client only to find that you cannot get performance for them due to an unrealistic expectation of what they need to pay to get into the AdWords auction.
3. Know that the AdWords Keyword Planner dollar figures for keywords are estimates only. In the real auction you will typically pay about 20%. The tool estimates are on the low side.
4. A good rule of thumb is to remember that the higher the final sale the higher the click cost will be and so the budget should be higher. For example if a client is selling $10 widgets, you will want to have your click cost be low. It the sale is a $50,000 software platform, your click cost will be high. Surprisingly you will find many who do not understand this and will expect to pay $1 or so for clicks when their cost of sale is high.
5. Once you have roughed in a typical high/low click cost using sample keywords using the Keyword Planner with the client, then work backwards to ascertain how high the daily budget should be. If the Keyword Planner says the typical click cost is $2.50 to $3.50 know that you will most likely be using a maximum cost per click setting of $4.00 to $4.50 in the control panel on set up. Make sure that you and the client set a high enough daily budget to accommodate the ability for Google to serve the ad during the day. At this click cost the best daily budget would be $30 and up or a 30 day ad spend of $912, to start.
Check back on Wednesday June 22 to find out how your click cost and daily budget setting will set you up for success or failure.
Changing settings in AdWords when you really don’t understand the ramifications will impact performance.
Do-It-Yourself AdWords account managers, meaning business owners that manage AdWords themselves, frequently change the recommended settings for targeting thinking that they will get better performance.
Here’s what to know about targeting settings in the campaign tab.
You’ll find the settings that I am talking about by accessing the Campaign tab, then Settings and then looking for Locations, and Location Options.
Open up the Location Options settings by clicking the -. Inside you will see two settings, Target and Exclude.
Google does mark two as recommended, but for a diy AdWords managed account I will typically see that a business owner has changed one or both of these.
Target
I have found that many diy account owners feel that by clicking Target and selecting “people in my targeted area” or “people searching for or showing interest in my targeted area” that they will get better performance than using the recommended setting which is “people in, searching for, or showing interest”.
I have found that this is not the case. In many cases Internet Service providers will show a different location for a user than the area you are targeting. Or your prospective customer may be working outside, yet living in, the area that you are targeting. I have found that you will drop traffic using this setting and negatively impact performance.
Exclude
The recommended setting here is “people in, searching for or showing interesting in my excluded locations”. I will however see many diy AdWords account managers select to exclude “people in my excluded location” instead. This change from recommended may also in many cases limit your AdWords account or allow ads to show when you really would not want them to show.
Changing both settings for an AdWords account may impact impressions, clicks, click through, and lower the quality of lead conversions.
If you are a diy AdWords manager, you may be missing opportunities to boost AdWords performance. Find out how McCord Web Services, a Google Partner and certified by Google in AdWords Management, can make a significant difference in your AdWords’ account performance by visiting our website today.
If you are a do-it-yourself AdWords account manager for your own business, and have never hired a professional manager, here are some things that you may be missing out on using that will boost performance.
Extensions
I frequently see that a diy (do it yourself) AdWords manager does not understand the power of using extensions. Most frequently callouts and location extensions are not being used. Sitelinks may not be tailored to the ad group, and phone extensions are set up to not use Google Forwarding and recording calls as conversions.
Bidding Strategies
More frequently than not, I see manual bidding used in self-managed AdWords account. Using automated bidding you may see up to a 30% boost in traffic. Using CPA bidding or cost per acquisition bidding you may see a drop in clicks but as much as a 20% increase in conversions.
Ad Text
Most frequently I see that account owners who are managing their own AdWords accounts are not using dynamic keyword insertion in ad text. Using dynamic keyword insertion increases conversions. When ads are A/B tested with and without dynamic keyword insertion, those that insert the keywords always out perform the other ads.
If you have been managing your own AdWords account and frequently think that AdWords is not performing or is simply too expensive, it is time to get professional help.
With over 10 year of professional AdWords account management experience, McCord Web Services is the resource you need to whip your AdWords account into shape and have it start performing for you.
