Whether your business focuses on PPC or SEO, Google is a marketing platform that your business needs to thrive online. With more than 1 billion average monthly searches, the online search titan is the top place where your prospective customers are going to find you.
You could hire a Google Adwords expert to manage your online search advertising, or you could go at it alone with the help of blogs, guides, and online tutorials. Either way, getting the very most out of your budget starts with creating engaging Adwords content that entices users to click through to your website. Here’s some tips on how to achieve a lower cost-per-click (CPC) from your Google Ads.
Lower Costs By Using Keyword Matching Options
Are your lists of keywords using broad match? You need to also make sure that you’re using exact match and phrase match bid types. Use Google’s Keyword Estimator Tool to create a bid stack.
This involves bidding on the same keyword with all three different match types. We understand that this might sound a little weird to do, but it works. Here’s why.
Exact match is the exact keyword you’re targeting, so it should deliver the best response. Out of the three different bids, this is the one that will have the highest amount in terms of return because you’ll know exactly what you’re bidding for.
For example, you might bid £1 for an exact match with “coffee shop Southend”. You will pay £1 for that keyword only.
Then make your phrase match bid at 75% of the exact match amount because these searches don’t deliver as well, so you don’t want to pay as much for them. So, you might bid £0.75 for a phrase match with “coffee shop”. This means you’ll pay £0.75 for any phrase that contains that exact keyword such as “local coffee shop” or “local coffee shop Essex”.
Make your broad match searches just 25% of the total exact match amount because these searches are generally the worst performers.
For example, you might bid £0.25 for a broad match keyword like “coffee shop”. This means you’ll pay £0.25 for any phrase that contains that keyword and any others that Google decides are similar enough. This might include poorly matched phrases, but this is why broad match bids should be much lower.
It seems quite complicated, but it’s much more straightforward than you probably first thought. And it ensures that your ads appear for the best keyword searches.
Always Test Your Ad Content and Landing Pages
It doesn’t matter what type of campaign you’re running, it’s still possible to improve your ad content and increase your clickthrough rate. Google Ads doesn’t charge you to test new ads so you should always be testing new ads against your best performing one.
You can also test a new landing page against your current one. To do this, send 50% of clicks to your current landing page and the other 50% to the test page. If your test page performs better than your current one, then you should start using it instead.
You can test different areas on your landing page, from the fonts you use to the colour of your CTA button. But, when testing, it’s best to start off with changing how you present your offer, its price and how you communicate why a consumer should spend money with you.
Use Location Targeting
A lot of Google Ads accounts only have one specific campaign that is targeted to a single location. If your products are location specific, you should use location targeting to target people who are in the areas that you can sell to.
For example, if you’re a coffee shop owner based in Southend and someone from Manchester sees your ad, do you really think they are going to drive 233 miles to visit you? Probably not.
The location targeting service isn’t perfect as it’s based on IP addresses, and some don’t match a user’s location.
Refine and Add to Your Keyword List
We’ll put this as sharply as possible, if 1 of your keywords has a clickthrough rate of less than 1% even after you’ve tried to optimise it, just delete it, and move on.
Remember, you’re bidding on keywords that users search for, and their popularity will billow and wave with consumer trends. This means that new keyword opportunities will pop up all the time.
You’ll be able to track changes and discover new keywords by making the most of Google Insights. You could add new keywords to any existing ad groups you may have. And, if you don’t have a relevant one, then you can look into starting a new one.
This allows your old and new groups to have ads and landing pages that are more relevant to their associated keywords. More relevance and more landing pages means that you’ll get a higher quality score, lower CPC and a higher conversion rate.
To Summarise
- Always explore new keywords to add to your ad groups.
- Use location targeting to ensure your ads only show in certain parts of the country.
- Test your landing pages to improve your clickthrough and conversion rates.
- Use a variety of match bids to create a “bid stack” of keywords.
- Split your ad group to create more targeted landing pages.
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