Competition between advertisers has caused the cost of Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns to rise dramatically over recent years. For many campaign managers, that means the unenviable task of increasing sales and lowering costs at the same time. However, doing this is not impossible and in this post, we’ll explain how to lower your PPC costs while still generating significant traffic.
- Bid smartly
Google Ads Smart Bidding is a clever way to reduce the costs of your bids. It works by utilising machine learning to create automated bidding strategies that are optimised for your campaign. It does this by basing your bids on a number of set targets, for example, cost per action and return on ad spending. As part of the process, Google Ads aims to achieve your targets within your desired budget. - Bespoke landing pages
The price businesses pay for their ads and how well they rank can depend on website quality. This means that if you have a website of a high standard, your ads can work out less expensive and be better placed to attract more traffic. To achieve this, however, the landing page which an ad links to must be highly relevant to the keywords used in the ad’s text. Ensuring that this is the case requires landing pages to be purposely created for specific ads instead of sending users directly to existing product pages. These landing pages should cater for the needs of the users who clicked on the ad, rather than generic users who might be interested in the product. - Ramp up your Quality Score
Aside from landing pages, Google takes into consideration a range of other quality factors in order to score your campaign. The higher your score, the less you are likely to be charged for advertising. The areas you will need to focus on are:
the relevance of your ad’s textual content
the relevance of your keyword to its ad group
your click-through rate (CTR)
the previous performance of your Google Ads accountImproving each of these can have a beneficial effect on the cost of your advertising.
- Getting the right balance with your match types
Google Ads offer a number of options about how near a match your keyword should be to a user’s search query before you want it displayed. The broad match option shows your ad to users who have a broadly relevant query to your keyword; the exact match option requires the user to include the exact keyword in the search.
There are advantages and disadvantages to both these options. Using the broad match, your ad will display to more people and likely be clicked on more frequently. While this will improve your CTR, it will also mean you are paying for more clicks. However, as it is a broad match, there’s an increased likelihood that fewer people who click through will actually buy the product.
On the other hand, exact matches will result in a lower CTR but with the probability that more of those that do click through will buy. This means less spending overall but with the possibility of fewer overall purchases. - Improve your Click-Through Rate
The Click-Through Rate (CTR) – the percentage of impressions which get a click – is a key metric for measuring an ad’s success. The higher the CTR, the more traffic your website is getting. You’ll also benefit from an improved quality score and, consequently, lower costs per click.
Split testing can be a great way to find small changes which have a big impact on your CTR. Consider making tweaks to the ad’s text or the Call to Action and track how these perform. This can help you find out which versions of your ads attract customers the best. - Device bid optimisation
You can now optimise your bids to target different devices which, with the increase in mobile browsing, could be a very shrewd move. If you know the devices your target market uses to make purchases, you can focus your advertising budget far more effectively. - Don’t forget organic traffic
While PPC ads will bring customers to your site, every visitor comes with a price tag. Putting in the effort to make your website rank higher means you can get more visitors without having to pay for them, which reduces your advertising budget and increases your sales.
Simple factors like high-quality, relevant and engaging content can have a dramatic impact on how well your site performs on search engines. Great SEO and mobile-friendly themes also play a part. And don’t forget the importance of great hosting: faster page loading, website reliability and security features, such as SSL certificates, can all help you rank higher and drive more traffic to your site.
Conclusion
The growing expense of PPC advertising together with the need to reduce spending makes this a challenging time for online businesses. Hopefully, this post will have shown you a number of ways that you can strive to reduce your PPC spend without accepting lower traffic.
If you are looking for hosting to help you improve the performance and security of your website, check out our homepage to see our range of hosting solutions.