More Cost-Effective PPC in 8 Steps

Looking to improve your ad strategy without blowing through your PPC budget in a flash? You’re in the right place.

Here, you’ll learn:

• Why your PPC campaign is costlier than it should be
• Ways to achieve a lower cost per click (CPC)
• How to take full advantage of Google Ads’ dynamic cost-cutting features
• Expert tips for keeping your budget in check

Is your PPC strategy growing costlier each time you pull a report? 

With competition constantly evolving, bidding on high-volume keywords can become more expensive — fast. As a result, while your paid search tactics may still be yielding excellent results, the ROI could be going down.

If you want to keep expenses at the same level, PPC needs regular tweaking, improving, and adjusting. These tips can help you make a more cost-effective PPC plan without having to revamp your entire strategy or lose your competitive edge.

Analyze your existing PPC campaign to find out when the biggest number of conversions occurs. (Image via Unsplash)

1. Leave a few expensive keywords to SEO

Expensive, high-volume keywords may be inflating your PPC campaign budget. However, deleting them from the equation entirely could hurt your marketing campaign. 

If you can’t afford the CPC for several of your important keywords, consider changing your tactic by leveraging them for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes.

Implementing more high-volume keywords into your website content can still get you the traffic you aim for in due time while saving precious ad dollars. Take things a step further by creating a thorough content plan that includes topic clusters with high-volume keywords to achieve even better results.

2. Focus on timing

In the race to choose the perfect PPC settings, companies often forget about the time. But if you don’t limit the time of the day your ads show up in front of the audience, you could be overpaying.

Analyze your existing PPC campaign to find out when the biggest number of conversions occurs. You can determine the times of day (and days of the week) when your PPC efforts are especially effective from there. As a result, you can stop showing your ads during low-conversion times and save money by eliminating useless clicks.

3. Choose one search network

If you’re trying to maximize your use of the Google Ads platform by leveraging all of its networks, you could be spreading yourself (and your PPC budget) thin. 

Running Search and Display network campaigns simultaneously can eat up your ad spend quickly without generating sufficient results or providing you the necessary information for further marketing efforts.

Create a more cost-effective PPC strategy by figuring out which search network can achieve the best results for your current business and marketing goals.

• Google Search Network: best for attracting high-intent, targeted visitors
• Google Display Network: best for brand awareness, remarketing

You can also switch between networks, just remember that each one warrants a separate campaign.

4. Explore YouTube Ads

While offering a wide variety of targeting possibilities, YouTube ads often have a much lower CPC than Google Ads (plus, Google owns YouTube). And with billions of monthly users, YouTube can turn into a powerful driving force behind your marketing efforts. 

Besides helping you target consumers by demographics and location, YouTube has highly personalized and advanced targeting capabilities. This allows you to choose the best formats to help achieve relevant marketing goals.

YouTube has a clear affordability advantage ($0.10 — $0.30 CPC) over Google Ads ($1 — $2 CPC for Search Network) while providing an impressive functionality and a wide reach.

Want to learn more about cutting PPC costs without losing value? Get in touch.

Clean up your A/B testing by stopping the process as soon as you get sufficient information. (Image via Unsplash)

5. Give more attention to negative keywords

Negative keywords are a crucial cost-effective PPC plan feature. If you aren’t using them carefully, you could be overpaying for useless clicks. 

Build your list by paying attention to the query reports that show which irrelevant searches are leading to clicks. Analyze these searches to beef up your negative keyword list.

Make sure to update negative keywords regularly. Each new PPC campaign report can give you new ideas for negative keywords. You can also do your own brainstorming to determine which terms you don’t want to rank for. 

Pro tip: Pay special attention to negative location keywords, as they tend to generate numerous erroneous clicks.

6. Clean up your A/B testing

While A/B testing is essential to a high-quality PPC campaign, overdoing it could be costly. Running several split testing campaigns for too long could be eating up your PPC budget quicker than producing results.

Clean up your A/B testing by stopping the process as soon as you get sufficient information. Failing to pause an A/B testing campaign on time simply turns it into A and B campaigns. Essentially, this means you’re paying for two similar campaigns, increasing your CPC in the process.

The length of the A/B testing process depends on a variety of factors, including budget, audience size, testing elements, and more. After a few weeks, see if you have enough info to confidently make a decision.

7. Consider Google’s dynamic keyword insertion feature

One of the advanced Google Ads features, dynamic keyword insertion (or DKI), could do wonders for making more cost-effective PPC campaigns.

DKI lets you create text ads which are automatically updated by Google to match the user’s search terms. This allows your ad to show up for variations of a particular keyword, giving it an opportunity to reach a wider audience with high conversion potential.

Essentially, DKI personalizes the ad for the searcher, making sure they get what they’re looking for. By boosting relevance, you can improve your chances of getting a valuable click-through while cutting costs on creating new ads.

Pro tip: You should avoid using DKI if you’re bidding on competitor brand terms. This is because their name will be in your ad, which could be viewed as deceptive (even if it’s unintentional). 

8. Beef up ad extensions

With traditional text ads, you don’t always get sufficient real estate to say everything you want to say. That’s where using ad extensions comes in handy.

These extensions allow you to increase the size and relevance of your paid ads by letting you include information that doesn’t fit into the ad itself, which can up your CTR.

You can also take advantage of Google’s dynamic ad extensions that pull information from your website and add it to your ad when it’s relevant to the searcher.

The takeaway

Your PPC campaign shouldn’t be static — it needs continuous updates to stay relevant and cost-effective. Luckily, there are a handful of cost-cutting options and strategic ways to keep your budget in check. 

By taking advantage of the available PPC options, features, and possibilities, you can keep your campaign (and your ad spend) in top shape.

This article has been updated and was originally published in October 2014.