Google Ads: 3 Powerful Ways to Reduce Costs with Google Adwords
When it comes to the highly competitive world of Google Ads, finding ways to reduce cost-per-click (CPC) for your campaign keywords is vital, especially if your company is small.
Google Ads: How to reduce costs with Google Ads
Google Adwords work as auctions and the ideal bid is how much the company is willing to pay for each click on their ad.
In short, the company that pays a higher CPC gets featured on the search engine or Display Network, and the ad is only charged when the user clicks on the featured link.
Depending on your industry, product, and targeting, the difficulty of reducing your campaign’s CPC may vary.
If you have little capital to invest and need to lower Google Ads costs, here are some general tips that, if properly applied, can help you.
1. Change your keywords approach
Your keywords choice directly influences the cost-per-click and performance of your Google Ads campaign.
The more general keywords are (such as “online courses”, for example), they are advertisers’ favorites, which makes them more valuable.
By choosing a slightly more specific term, it is possible to have a lower value and competition.
So our suggestions are as follows:
Try keyword variations
Let’s say you are promoting the launch of your new yoga online course, but the competition is heavy.
Since you have a small business, you do not have a big budget to make Google Ads.
This is a case where you can definitely benefit from a search for additional keywords, ie variations of the general term such as online course.
A great tool to help you with this search to find lower cost alternative keywords is Google Keywords Planner.
As you can see from the screenshot below, the tip is to use your primary keyword for additional ideas.
Include long tail keywords
If you work in a highly competitive segment, your campaign’s CPC is likely to be expensive.
In this case, to avoid using high-cost keywords, you could do some research and try to find alternatives to long tail keywords.
Long tail keywords are longer, specific, and also more effective.
For example, instead of just using “online courses”, you can use “online courses of hatha yoga”, or even “online course beginner hatha yoga”.
Longer search terms tend to have Quality Scores higher, and having a Better Quality Score is the most effective way to lower the average CPC of the campaign by maintaining a good position in the results.
Keep in mind that Google calculates your ad rank by multiplying your maximum CPC bid by your Quality Score.
As a result, a long tail keyword with a High Quality Score would cost less and help lower its overall CPC.
But beware: when including long tail keywords, make sure they have enough search volume, because even if they have 10/10 Quality Scores, they will not help if they are labeled as low search volume.
Use different match types
Depending on the structure of your campaign and the competition in your industry, there may be a small or significant difference in the CPC value for the same keywords in different match types.
Match Types is how you tell Google how different ways to write your keyword and related terms may trigger your ad or not.
Each match type triggers a different way for your ads to show. The chart below illustrates how the keyword “byke shop” would be triggered for each setting:
You can set up your campaign with different ad groups to test the same keywords in different match types.
Another idea is to create separate campaigns to show on the different matching type you’d like to test.
You can send the desired words to Google Ads with the paused campaign and view the first and top-of-page bid estimates that Google recommends to get an idea of the average CPC for those specific keywords.
Now let’s say you realize that Exact Match is much more expensive than the Broad Match Modifier, here you can decide to change your Exact to Modified keywords to help lower your CPC.
If you use this approach, enter a fairly complete list of negative keywords to filter irrelevant traffic.
Always consider that the Broad Match Modifier is a much less restrictive type of match.
So if you look at your search terms, you’ll see that you’re getting clicks for search queries that include similar phrases, but not always exactly the keywords of your Google Ads campaign.
This explains why it tends to be a bit cheaper than exact match or phrase keywords.
2. Improve Quality Score
By optimizing your Quality Scores you can greatly improve the performance of your Google Ads campaign and reduce cost-per-click at the same time, since QS is directly proportional to CPCs.
Higher Quality Score means that Google considers your keywords and ads to be the best option for customers looking for that service or product, and it “rewards” you with cheaper clicks.
Make your ads more relevant
The relevance of your ads to Google is part of the formula used by the search engine to determine the Quality Score of your keywords.
The quality of an ad is related to three factors: CTR (click through rate), keyword strength, and landing page optimization.
Thus, improving any of these elements will increase the QS, low the CPC, and bring better conversions.
One good way to improve the relevance of your ad is to include keywords in the ad title and description.
This suggests greater relevance to Google, which means a higher Quality Score and a lower CPC average.
Keep in mind that the basic formula for calculating ad rank is Max CPC x Quality Score, so if you increase your Quality Score, you can technically lower your bids and stay in the same position.
Enhance your Landing Page
The landing page user experience is also taken into consideration by Google as a factor in calculating the Quality Score of your keywords.
– How to Create an Effective Landing Page
You can have an excellent and relevant ad rated as an above-average, but if the landing page experience is below average, it slows down the QS of your campaign.
In this case, the best thing to do is to test different landing pages or improve what you have to find a more relevant solution for your keywords and your ads.
For example, if you are creating an ad to promote an online course in java programming, by clicking it the user is directed to the homepage of your site, not directly to the product that was advertised, this can create a bad experience and lower your QS.
Another problem that happens is when the landing page takes a long time to load or is poorly organized and does not quickly deliver the information regarding the advertised product or service.
By directing the user to a landing page with better information, you increase their relevance and thus improve the Quality Score of the keywords in the ad group, lowering your CPC.
Create related ad groups
Based on your business and the configuration of your site, you must structure your keywords and ad groups by different categories of products and services that you provide and want to promote.
Let’s say you have a site for Languages online courses and you are selling classes in different areas, such as English, Italian, French etc. You can create separate ad groups for each type of lesson you sell on your site.
Select relevant keywords and choose the best landing page possible for each ad group.
For example, if you have an ad group to promote your Italian classes, you’ll need to create a list of related keywords and a highly relevant text ad highlighting special product features and mentioning any promotion you currently have, such as discount for new students.
Also, remember to take the prospect who has clicked on your ad to the page where they will find the specific product they are looking for.
By doing so, you will certainly get a great Quality Score for your keywords and thus a lower average CPC value.
– Know what your people are looking for and attract leads
3. Think beyond the keywords: locations, devices, and ad scheduling
Every marketing professional with Google Ads knowledge knows that bids go beyond keywords.
They take into account many other factors such as the location of the user, the device they use and the hours that generate the most traffic and leads. And they bid according to this information.
So consider:
- Which days generate more traffic and leads.
- What time of day converts more.
- Which device is most commonly used.
- Which site generates higher quality traffic.
To reduce CPC, advertisers should always consider this information.
If you find that a particular day of the week is only generating clicks and no sales, for example, you can pause or stop running ads on that date or day of the week.
On the other hand, you can raise your bid to make your ads more visible on days that generate targeted clicks and increase your conversion rate.
Google Ads to Promote Online Courses
While lowering your CPC is important for success with Google Ads and improving your campaign performance, this should not be your only goal.
The ultimate goal of running an ad campaign should be to improve the users experience and help them get to your site.
In other words, do not obsess about metrics, especially with just one. Low your CPC is just one piece of the puzzle.
Also, keep in mind that competitive keywords have high CPCs, but tend to have the best conversion rates.
In the end, you need to think of your keywords as an investment for the successful promotion of your online course in Google AdWords.
– Learn How to Sell Online Courses
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– Learning Management System: What is it?
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