As a business owner, it’s your job to grow your business without spending a fortune. That’s why, if you’re running a PPC ad campaign, you would ideally like to increase your clicks while you decrease your ad spend. You probably already know that a successful ad campaign consists of two things:
- The amount of clicks your ad gets
- And, the cost you get back from those clicks
However, the quality score of your ads can actually be a drain on your PPC campaign budget. I’ve been working in paid advertising for a few years, and I found the following three tactics to be useful tips in helping reduce my clients’ AdWords spend and stay within their budget—eventually lowering that ad spend drastically. Here’s how I did it:
By improving the Quality Score of ads
Many newbie’s to the AdWords world make the very misguided assumption that offering the max bid will get them the best ad rank. It’s not as simple as that and treating your ad bids like an eBay auction is not going to do you any favors. In the world of AdWords the maximum bid doesn’t always win—it’s just half of the equation! Even if you make a maximum bid the fact that your ad has a low quality score can decrease your overall ad rank. Instead, concentrate on increasing your quality score by making the ad copy more relevant. This is what will help bolster your ad rank without costing you a bundle of cash.
Target less competitive keywords in your niche
Does your ad campaign only concentrate on highly competitive keywords? This can really drain your budget—and quickly! I understand the strategy of concentrating on the more competitive the keywords due to the higher cost-per-click (CPC). However, if your strategy is only on highly competitive keywords you will drain your budget before you know it. Instead, take the time to do the research. Employ a keyword tool to figure out the number of searches associated with each keyword and add some less competitive keywords to your arsenal. Not only do they cost less costly—you can focus on running them 100% of the time instead of just 30% of the time when you can afford it.
Run your ads at peak times
Do you know what time of day your ad gets the most clicks? Did you know that you can choose to run your ad during these peak times only? Not only will this save you a great deal of money, but if you do a quick analysis of your ad campaign to find out when your ads are converting, you can concentrate on running your ads whenever they receive the bulk of their clicks. Trust the research to tell you how and when to run your ad campaign most successfully. Research is free after all, and if you put in the effort you can develop a more concentrated AdWords campaign with the best return on investment (ROI).
- Effective Advertisement, Cheaper Ads - April 24, 2012
