Google Ads is a powerful platform that can help businesses of all sizes reach their target audience and drive more traffic to their website. However, if you’re not careful, it’s easy to waste your advertising budget on ineffective PPC campaigns that don’t generate results. In this blog post, we’ll look at five ways to stop wasting your Google Ads budget. Let’s ensure you’re getting the most out of your ad spend.
Table of Contents:
1.Utilise Location Targeting
One of the most effective ways to make sure you’re not wasting your advertising budget is to use location targeting. This feature allows you to target your ads to specific geographic areas where your target audience is located. By doing this, you can ensure that your ads are being seen by people who are more likely to be interested in what you have to offer. Location targeting is a vital tool to use on all of your PPC campaigns if you are a local business. However, even as a national or international business, you can increase your budget allocation for areas that are of high value to your business.
If you run a local business, such as a restaurant, you can use location targeting to show your ads only to people in your local area. This guarantees you’re not wasting your advertising budget on people who are unlikely to visit your establishment. It works equally as well if you have an area you cover for work, such as a handful of counties, and only want to target people in these areas.
Alternatively, if you cover the whole UK, but enquiries from larger cities are more valuable to your business, you can add a bid adjustment for these cities or areas. By having a bid adjustment of +25% in London, you’re telling Google that you are willing to pay more per click for a user from London. It will prioritise that location where possible, whilst maintaining your targeting of the whole UK.
2.Make Use of Dayparting
Dayparting is another feature that can help you make the most of your Google Ads budget. This feature allows you to only show the ads in your PPC campaigns during specific times of the day or week. By doing this, you can ensure that your ads are being seen by people when they’re most likely to take action.
If you only want to receive sales or enquiries during business hours, you can set your ads to only show in these times when people are more likely to convert. On the other hand, if your customers tend to browse in the evening after work, you can target them and stop wasting clicks during the day. By doing this, you can avoid wasting your advertising budget on people who are unlikely to take action at certain times of the day.
Similar to location targeting, a more subtle way would be to add bid adjustments for certain times of day and days of the week. For example, you can tell Google you’re willing to pay 20% more for a click Monday-Friday 9-5pm if users in this timeframe are more likely to convert. All other times may have a -20% bid adjustment, so you can still show ads during these times but with a lower bid and priority.
3.Target Specific Long Tail Keywords
Another way to stop wasted clicks from your PPC campaign is to target specific long tail keywords. Long tail keywords are longer and more specific phrases people use when they’re searching online. By targeting these specific phrases, you can ensure your ads are being shown to people who are more likely to be interested in what you have to offer. This reduces the number of people clicking on your ads who are in the research phase of their buying journey and focuses on those ready to convert.
Instead of targeting a broad keyword, such as “shoes,” you might want to target a long tail keyword, such as “women’s running shoes with arch support.” This is a more specific phrase that’s likely to be used by people who are actively looking for a specific type of shoe rather than just browsing. By targeting these high intent keywords, your ads are being seen and clicked on by people who are more likely to convert into paying customers.
4.Optimise Your Landing Pages
To get as many leads or sales out of your PPC campaign as possible, it is important to consider the quality of your landing pages. Your landing page is the page on your website people land on after they click on your ad: it’s important this page is designed to convert. If people land from your ad to either a sparsely filled or irrelevant page, they are much more likely to bounce off of your website. This is a wasted click.
To optimise your landing pages, make sure they’re clear, easy to navigate, and provide all the information needed to make a decision. Your landing pages should be optimised for mobile devices, as more people are accessing the Internet on their phones and tablets. Once the user has looked through the page, there needs to be engaging and easy to see calls to action (CTAs) such as “Call our experts” or “Browse our range”.
5.Ensure You Split Test (A/B Test) Your Ads
Finally, so you’re not wasting your Google Ads budget, you should always split test your ads (also known as A/B testing). Split testing involves creating two or more versions of your ads. It tests them against each other to see which one performs better. When done on a continuous basis, you should see improvements to your click-through rate (CTR). Your average cost per click (CPC) should go down as the ad relevance will be higher.
By split-testing your ads, you can identify which ad copy, headlines, images, or calls to action are most effective at generating clicks and conversions. Once you’ve identified the most effective elements of your ads, you can use this information to refine and improve your PPC campaigns. That way, you’re not wasting your advertising budget on ineffective ads.
Summary
To conclude, there is a range of things you could do today to help eliminate wasted spend from your PPC campaigns and get the most out of your budget. Ensure you’re getting a strong return from your pay per click marketing efforts. Reduce spend where it is not needed and get the most out of the clicks you are spending money on.
If you are thinking that you could use some help managing your PPC campaigns, we can help here at Pod Digital. We have a focus on creating and managing relevant and high-performing PPC ad campaigns. These will get the best results for your business within your budget. Book your FREE consultation with our team and take your digital marketing to the next level.