Google Adwords can be expensive… if you don’t do it right. One advertiser can be paying $50 per click, while their competitor is only paying $5 per click… for the same position!
What’s the secret then? How do you lower Adwords costs?
I’ve asked experience Internet marketers to share how they do it, and here’s some of the best responses…
*** Small companies can not compete ***
“Small companies can not compete with large companies on Adwords. The key is to use specific key words that will produce fewer results.
“We are a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning company. If we just use “HVAC” or “Heating” we would be competing with all the other HVAC companies. We use longer keyword phrases, like “Benton Harbor furnace repair” or “Coloma air conditioner duct cleaning” (Benton Harbor and Coloma are cities in our service area).
“By using longer, more specific keyword phrases we target our paid ads better and we are not competing for high rankings with general keywords that may or may not drive business to us.”
Jeff Street, COO, Boss Heating and Air Conditioning Inc.
*** Handle Adwords In-house ***
“Hi John,
“How do we (GlobalEyeglasses.com) lower Adwords costs?
“1. *Conversion Tracking: * Most important to have your conversion tracking working properly. Test it!
“2. *Adding Negative Keywords*: Go through search query report daily. Some people will add a exact negative match keywords, but that leaves chance for the keywords to appear again. E.g. at globaleyeglasses.com we do not sell brands like Gucci, so if we get a search [buy gucci prescription glasses] instead of adding this directly, I would add broad match gucci to the negative keywords list.
“3. *Adding Broad/Phrase Matches*: You will find new keywords and also cheaper ones.
“4. *Testing New Ads* : Keep testing and improving your ads, the higher the click through rate = lower cost per click/spending. Check your campaign settings for Ad rotation, as a e-commerce website we use Optimize for conversions: Show ads expected to provide more conversions.
“5. *Try Different Bidding Strategy*: We use Target return on ad spend, so basically for globaleyeglasses.com, we set this to 400%. If we spend $100 on Adwords, it must generate revenue of $400. It keeps the spending under control and manages the bids for different keywords automatically.
“6. *Know the business*: Don’t handover the Adwords account to someone who hardly knows your business or understands your goals. Take a course online and try handling your Adwords account in-house.”
Arjun Sagar, Founder – GlobalEyeglasses.com
*** SKAG Strategy (Single Keyword Ad Group) ***
“Adwords is actually one of our best sources for leads at Flexjet.
“While we have a limited budget for Adwords, we have to be smart with how we setup our campaigns and targeting. That said, we reduce wasted spend on Adwords by frequently mining the search terms report for negative keywords.
“Furthermore, we instituted a SKAG strategy, which stands for single keyword Ad Group. This allows us to have more control over keyword targeting since we only use broad match modified and exact match throughout our campaigns. Another strategy that we have seen to be successful in increasing conversions is the Call Extension feature of Adwords.
“This has enabled us to get phone calls directly from Adwords and register a conversion based on the minimum duration of the call, which reduced our account’s overall CPA.”
Jonathan Levey, Flexjet
*** Landing Page Optimization ***
“One of the factors determining AdWords cost-per-click and consequently cost of conversion is landing page optimization.
“PPC managers tend to work in silos and treat their PPC campaigns as separate marketing projects. To get the most out of their campaigns they should focus their efforts on aligning ad intent with landing pages.
“Alignment means mentioning the trigger keyword in key areas of the page – page title, description, headers, and body text. This is what we call ad-scent. It creates a scent via the keyword and sets the trail for the visitor as they go down the conversion process.
“A well-aligned page also matches the offer to the ad. If the ad offers a free-trial (great for increasing CTRs), then the landing page must follow through on the offer as well.To help with ad alignment, we offer PPC Managers a free tool.
“At the end of the day, this optimization aligns landing pages with PPC ads, lowers the cost of conversion, and provides better bang for your buck.”
Zaki Usman, CEO of Pagezii Ad Grader
*** Put More Budget into Adwords than Facebook ***
“Believe it or not, I often recommend putting more budget into Adwords than Facebook, even if you are short on cash.
“Unless you’re selling feel-good products, I’ve found that Facebook users aren’t interested in engaging with businesses. Why should they? Users don’t go to Facebook because they want to see ads. You’ll get clicks, but they are very low quality and rarely convert.
“Google Adwords clicks are much higher quality because users are actively searching for what you’re trying to sell (as long as you bid on the right keywords). Here’s my advice: utilize remarketing lists for search ads (RLSA) on Google. Build a remarketing list first-this is the more expensive part-and then target only that list with search ads on Google.
“In short, you’ll only be showing ads to people who have already shown interest in your brand. Conversion rates will skyrocket, and cost per lead will diminish. Wordstream has a fantastic tutorial that I still reference to this day.”
Adam Gingery, DMi Partners
*** Most Campaigns Can Lower Adwords Costs 40% By Doing This… ***
“Hey, this is Isaac from Webb Mason marketing. I’m the senior SEM Strategist and I work directly with our biggest clients, managing campaigns of over $30k. In my experience most campaigns can easily lower Adwords costs by 40% by doing a few simple things:
“1) For each Adwords campaign you have, have a separate landing page that focuses on that topic. This will help improve your Adwords relevancy score, lowering your costs.
“2) Check the keywords you are targeting, many campaigns just go for the broadest keywords, which aside for being the most expensive are also the least likely to actually get a click. Focus on the longer tail keywords with more commercial intent.
“3) Use negative keywords. If you’re campaigns are using exact searches, you need to constantly check the keywords report to make sure your ad didn’t appear for the wrong search. If it did, make sure you add the keyword to your list of negative keywords.”
Isaac Hammelburger, Webbmason Marketing
*** Quality Score ***
“The key to an efficient and effective Adwords campaign is the Quality Score. High quality score means better ad positions, higher impressions and lower Adwords costs.
“There are key fundamentals as to how quality score is determined:
- Landing Page Experience
- The use of Ad Extensions (Sitelinks, Callout, Location, Call Extensions, etc.)
- The use of Negative Keywords
- CTR (Click Through Rate)
- Relevance of your Ads, Ad Groups and Keywords
“Google Adwords can certainly eat up your budget quickly, if not designed and managed properly. Hence, before launching a campaign, it’s important to carry out an extensive keyword research, analysing competition, search volume & suggested CPC (Cost-per-click).
“For small businesses with a limited budget, it’s vital to avoid bidding for the most competitive terms, as some prices may go as high as $50 per click.
“With the use of tools like Keyword Planner and SEMRush you will be able to assess how competitive and expensive certain keywords are.”
Dmytro Spilka, Solvid Digital
*** Lower Adwords Costs with Big Data ***
“Big data can help you keep your marketing costs and AdWords spend in control and efficient.
“Big data does not have to be scary a small business, it really is easier to integrate than you think . We leverage our data, combined with publicly available census data, for marketing insights.
“For example, in a recent campaign we ran in Nashville, TN , we ran pay-per-click (PPC) Adwords campaign with one ad targeting the entire metro Nashville area. The headline read ‘Local Lawn Pros in Nashville are a click away.’ and I thought the performance of the ad was good with a click through rate of over one percent and conversion rate of over 10 percent on the Nashville landing page but we needed to improve on it.
“We thought, how can we make this more contextual and relevant to the viewer? Se we researched census data, looking at the average income and home values throughout the Nashville area.
“We found that East Nashville, an up-and-coming neighborhood, was populated with more working class, and a creative class demographic and we hypothesized this customer segment would be price sensitive but still not want to cut their own lawns. So we segmented those zip codes and only ran a specific ad for them, with a headline ‘The Cheapest Lawn Mowing in Nashville. Lawn mowing from $20.’”
“We then created a matching landing page. After running the ad for one month, on-page analytics proved the guess to be true. We saw over 200 percent lift in click through rate and and 30 percent lift in on-page conversion.
“Studying the data your own business generates can tell you which of your online marketing campaigns works best. Do the ads appeal to your target market or another market altogether? The data may also point to completely new areas of customer interest.”
Bryan Clayton, CEO – GreenPal
*** The ONLY Outbound Approach That Generates Signups! ***
“For us, Adwords is THE ONLY outbound approach that generates signups. We’ve tried everything else – FB, Twitter, LI, banner ads. All of the competing approaches have horrible conversion rates.
“We keep our costs low by ALWAYS reviewing results and trimming search results/ad units whose cohort analysis shows poor downstream stickiness for our product. This is a continuous process.”
Darin Herle, Trackmeet
*** Agency Working With Some of the Highest Cost Per Clicks ***
“I own a Manhattan-based digital agency working with some of the highest cost per clicks in the world like personal injury law.
“There are two ways to answer this question.
“*The first* is to examine why people are trying to keep costs low on advertising. Advertising done right should have a positive ROI. If a business owner can trade $1000 for $3000, for example, they are hurting themselves if they are cutting it down to $500 and making $1500.
“That being said, Adwords isn’t for everyone. In my opinion the critical components to a good business for Adwords are:
1. High ticket product/service (our clients make at least $1000 per client)
2. Urgent, bleeding neck need for service
3. Short sales cycle
“We work with consumer branches of law which satisfy all 3 but there are many other examples of businesses that fit into these categories – dentists, doctors, water damage repair, roofing, etc.
“*The second* would be looking beyond Adwords to what is happening beyond the click. An overwhelming majority of businesses direct traffic to their homepage which is the kiss of death. Industry average conversion rates are around 2.5% in large part due to this. By making conversion optimized landing pages for different services we routinely see clients converting at 15-30%.
“While this doesn’t lower the overall budget, a 10x increase (like 2.5% to 25%) in conversion will result in a 10x result in leads. More bang, same buck.”
Jan Roos, Founder – Expert Engines
*** 4 Steps to Improve Your Quality Score & Lower Adwords Costs ***
“In Google Adwords, raising your quality score will decrease the minimum bid that is required. Having a lower minimum bid means that it will cost less money for each click that you receive on your ads.
“There are several factors that go into your quality score including:
1. Click Through Rate
2. Ad Grouping
3. Ad Copy Relevance
4. Landing Page Relevance
“You should aim to improve your Click Through Rate by creating ads with very targeted keywords. Try to avoid having a generic set of ad copy for multiple ads. You should also try to target branded and local keywords as you’re more likely to get clicks from people who are searching in your particular area.
“The best way to improve Ad Grouping is to segment your keywords as tightly as you can. Each ad group should be integrated, meaning the keywords, ad text and landing pages are all closely related.
“Next, to improve Ad Copy Relevance, figure out who your main competitors are for the particular keyword query and then attempt to undercut them. Try to find ways that you’re better than them and figure out the best way to convey that information. But in doing so, avoid generic ad copy. Rather, make a set of variables that can be swapped in and out to create ad variations.
“Lastly, improving Landing Page Relevance can be done a million different ways. The key is to make sure that your landing page matches your ad. If it doesn’t match up, your Quality Score can tank.
“If you are able to improve your Quality Score, you will soon benefit from lower minimum bids, lower Adwords costs, and a budget that goes much further.”
Brandon Schroth, seoWorks
How Do You Lower Adwords Costs?
Is there anything you do lower Adwords costs that hasn’t been covered here? Leave a comment below!