Are your google ads campaigns burning a hole in your marketing budget? Are you frustrated with the performance of your PPC ads? It’s common for business owners to feel like they are spending large sums of money for less than desirable returns when it comes to google ads. However, the following 2 strategies can not only help save you money, but also increase the efficiency and effectiveness of your pay-per-click google ads.
Keyword Research
The first steps in optimizing a google ads campaign is to understand who your customers are, where they are located, and what they are thinking when they search for your services. By conducting thorough keyword research, you can determine which keyword phrases have the highest likelihood of bringing you legitimate, qualified leads. In the interest of keeping this short and simple, we won’t dive deep into all the steps needed for effective keyword analysis. We just want you to understand that it’s not as simple as guessing which keywords to target. Typical ad campaigns are set to target as many keywords as possible based on the product or service you provide. We actually suggest the opposite, which is to target fewer keywords based on pre-existing data that shows a trend of successful click-through rates.These keywords should also be based on the “search intent” of your customer. For example, let’s say you are selling BBQ grills. There is a major difference in the search intent for the keyword “BBQ grills” versus “BBQ grills for sale.” It’s likely that the individual looking for the former could simply wish to find general information regarding BBQ grills. Whereas, the latter keyword phrase implies that the person searching is potentially ready to make a purchase. Proper research will also give you an idea of the volume of searches for the phrase you want to target, as well as the projected cost-per-click you can expect. This can also be defined down to a specific location you are trying to target. By targeting fewer keyword phrases and understanding the search intent behind them, your dollars will stretch much farther rather than being spent on a blanket covering of keywords that do not convert to actual sales.
Exact Match Phrase Targeting
The second method to help control the cost of google ads is to target “exact phrase match” keywords. By default, when you are setting up a campaign, the keyword phrases you choose will be set to “broad match”. This means that google will serve up your ads to people who are searching for phrases that are similar to your targets but not exact. For example, let’s say you are targeting “BBQ grills” again. As a broad match, google will target searches for variations like “BBQ grill covers”, “BBQ grill recipes”, “grilled salmon BBQ”, so on and so forth. The list can be endless for what your ads will target in this case, and if you are simply trying to sell bbq grills, your ad can potentially cost you money for keyword phrases you do not wish to target. Yes, you are able to manage this problem by going into your campaign and removing these negative keywords as they populate within the campaign platform. However, you can avoid the issue all together by simply setting your campaign to exact match. How do you do this? It’s actually quite simple. When entering the keyword “BBQ grills for sale” for example, you can place the phrase between a set of square brackets like this; [bbq grills for sale]. This identifies to google ads that you wish to target only exact match searches to this phrase, so your ad will only show when someone searches for it in that exact manner.
