How To Optimize Google Ads- 5 Tips To Keep Ad Spend Low
Tired of blowing your advertising budget by paying skyrocketing prices with Google Ads?
Discover the secret to taking control of your ad spend costs and never pay what Google wants you to pay again…
How To Optimize Google Ads: Why This One Secret Can Make Or Break Your Advertising Campaigns Forever
It was a hot summer day in August when the realization hit me like a ton of bricks…
For a moment I was speechless. I felt like I had been slapped in the face.
I was new to Google Ads and spent the morning setting up ad campaigns excited to collect data and spend some money on the platform.
Except this time I felt all but excitement as I stared at the screen in horror…
“I had just spent 90 dollars for one click on google ads. ”
To make matters worse that click did not convert… Meaning I had just flushed a benny right down the toilet.
The mystery prospect simply visited my brand and left. Without giving me any contact information or way to follow up.
I had nothing to show for it. I felt cheated and defrauded.
How on earth was I supposed to profit from spending amounts of money like this?
After all, I was just a small business trying to sell digital products online.
I couldn’t afford to compete with large companies spending 6 figures or more in advertising per month. I was just one person. A small business and I just spend 90 bucks for one click.
I felt sick to my stomach…
Soon running ads felt like I was gambling trying to keep up with sales. Every click was costly putting me in the red and at the price of 90 bucks, I couldn’t afford many before my budget was totally blown for the day.
Eventually, I had to pause my advertising campaigns because I simply couldn’t afford to compete at those prices. I knew there must be a better way…
Then one day I discovered a powerful secret loophole that allowed me to have more control over my business by paying what I’m willing to spend. Not what I’m told to spend by google.
Looking back at it now knowing that secret earlier would have saved me tens of thousands in advertising dollars.
In today’s article, we will be discussing one of my biggest secrets on how to optimize Google Ads to keep your ad spend low and how this one secret alone can save you thousands on your first or next advertising campaign.
Let’s get right to it then shall we?
Secret #1. In The Long Run Automated Bidding Is Not Your Friend
If you want to know how to optimize Google Ads it starts with taking control of your ad account with manual bidding.
Google Ads is one of the biggest most profitable advertising platforms in the world. With millions of advertisers bidding every day in the auction and billions of customers googles goal is to make things as easy as possible for you. While spending the most money possible with them.
What better way to make you spend as much money as possible than to take full control of your ad spend with automated bidding. When using automated bidding you’re essentially allowing google to make changes to your bid strategy and raise the budget where they see fit. This could mean raising your target CPA or CPCS to keep up with larger advertisers who are willing to bid sky-high prices on high-quality keywords.
If you’re new to google you may think this is the perfect hands-off approach. But the truth is you want to have as much control as possible when dealing with paid advertising. Trusting Google with your budget could have you blowing the budget faster than you ever thought possible.
Google’s goal is to get you to spend more money with them in advertising not make the highest profit possible.
It starts with taking full control of your bidding and allowing their hands-off approach.
Secret #2. Take Control Of Your Bidding By Setting Your Max CPC
Instead of allowing Google to make adjustments, you will have to fight back and take things into your own hands.
You can do this by changing your bid strategy with manual bidding. Although manual bidding can sound complicated it can easily be incorporated into your campaigns with the right steps.
You can do this by going into your campaign settings and changing your bid strategy from automated to manual bidding.
A good thing to keep in mind is that if your using an automated bid strategy selecting a max CPC will not be an option available. You must change it to manual bidding first. From here you can set your cost per click at a range you’re comfortable spending.
Secret #3. Decide What Your Willing To Pay With Google Keyword Planner
Now we can set the max amount that we’re willing to pay per click to avoid overpaying on keywords.
After all not everyone has a million-dollar budget they’re working with. There are many different ways you can generate this number but for now, we are gonna focus on paying the least amount possible for any keyword.
To do so well go to keyword planner to get an idea of what the market is paying.
In this example let’s say we’re a fitness company and some of the keywords we’re targeting are best gym memberships.
In google keyword planner we can see that at a high range this keyword is costing $17.93 per click but at a low range its $2.91 to still rank on the first page.
Google’s prices fluctuate according to how many people are bidding in the auction and at what price. So in order to have a chance at competing in this action you would need to in most cases have a min threshold bid of the min first-page bid.
I don’t know about you but $2.90 sounds way better to me than spending $17 so setting the maximum that you’re willing to pay to $2.90 per click instead of $17 dollars is an excellent start.
This means that on high competition days when advertisers are willing to pay $17 per click you can avoid paying that high cost and opt-out of the auction altogether if necessary. Only spending the maximum amount you specified and are comfortable with. Which means no more surprises when it comes to your spending.
Secret #4.
How To Optimize Google Ads: Adjusting Your Max CPCs In Google Ads
Now that you know the number you want to spend for your keywords you can set the cost per click a few different ways.
1. By the default settings targeting the ad group: From google ads select the campaign ad group you want to adjust in your campaign. In the max CPC column change this number to the min threshold in keyword planner. (Or the amount you are comfortable paying.)
2. You can override this and target single specific keywords under the keywords tab: In keywords. Here you see how all your keywords are performing. Under Max, CPC Change the metric for the individual keyword and click save.
Setting a total cost for an ad group is a great way to avoid paying more than you want per click for an entire ad groups keywords or since different keywords have different values in the auction you can manually edit the max CPC in the keyword section to raise your bid for individual keywords. So you can optimize accordingly.
You will have to test these metrics for yourself to see what performs best. At times, you may get great numbers from a low bid range and at other times, you may have to raise your bid a little more or you may be able to pay even less than what google keyword planner says. By using this technique you will have a good idea of what you will be paying overall for a good starting point.
Secret #5 Bidding On High Price Keywords Can Be Very Profitable
Although you may not want to spend the highest price on keywords in google bidding on high-cost keywords can be very important to your business. When businesses are willing to pay high prices on keywords it is usually a sign that the keyword is high converting and if other advertisers are willing to spend their money on it chances are there making money from it. These are keywords further down the buying funnel.
Changing your manual bids to the lowest price on the first page will still allow you to hijack some of that traffic while paying the least amount possible per click than your competition.
How To Optimize Google Ads: Conclusion
At the end of the day as marketers, advertisers, and business owners, It up to us to identify opportunities to optimize our ad accounts for the highest ROI possible to scale.
If you want to know how to optimize Google Ads adjusting your cps can be one of the biggest tips that give you a massive advantage over controlling what you pay in the auction…
Because why pay more money in ad spend when you can pay less or even half?
Rather than handing your money over to google and paying any price they request, take back control and peace of mind for your business once and for all!
What are some of the biggest challenges you face with budgeting in Google Ads? Feel free to leave your thoughts below as comments are always welcome in the discussion.
See you in the next article! 🙂
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