Five tips for small AdWords budgets
- Added:
- Aug 15, 2008
How can small companies use Google AdWords to get noticed amonsgt larger competitors with bigger budgets? Jamie Carruthers, Head of SEO, PPC and Web Analytics at digital agency Head London, offers five tips to get the most out of your AdWords budget.
1. Use the highest quality traffic
If the search volume for your product or service outstrips your daily budget, use the highest quality traffic available to you to get the best possible conversion rate. On the ‘Edit campaign settings’ page, you can choose to have your ads show on Google Search, Search partners and the content network.
Deselect search partners and the content network. There is a good chance ‘Google Search’ alone can send enough traffic to burn through your daily budget and it is more often than not the highest quality source of traffic.
If you are finding budget left over at the end of the day, re-enable Search partners. Generally, I would recommend not to use the content network.
2. Use ad scheduling
Ad scheduling allows you to schedule when your ads are shown, and to reduce the bids at certain times of the day. If your business is in the B2B sector, it may make sense for you to stop your ads from running at the weekend.
Recently for a client, I took a look at Google Analytics to see what time of the day generates the most conversions. I scheduled the ads to run at 10% overnight, 70% before and after the peak, and 100% at the peak.
Now, my clients budget lasts through the day and generates approximately 10% more conversions.
Ad scheduling is found on the ‘edit campaign settings’ page.
3. Check your negatives
Broad match keywords can be invaluable for providing high volumes of traffic and only as a last resort would I recommend pausing them. The trouble is, your broad match keywords might be triggered for irrelevant queries. Clicks on your ads might arise from confusion costing you money, or your CTR plummets, lowering your Quality Score and increasing your CPCs.
Thoroughly research your keywords and make sure your campaigns or ad groups contain the necessary negatives to ensure your ads are only shown to real prospects.
4. Analyse your analytics
Too many people don’t venture outside of AdWords to determine the performance of their PPC campaigns. If you are using Google Analytics (you should have a good reason not to be!), there is a wealth of information to help you improve your PPC efforts.
For example, with goals configured, you can easily see which of your organic keywords are driving the most conversions. Take this knowledge and incorporate it in to your PPC campaigns for a higher conversion rate.
5. Don’t go after the first ad spot
The number one ad position for a competitive keyword is expensive, and receives a high CTR ensuring your daily budget gets burnt through before your prospects have had their lunch. The most important tip for lasting the day and getting more clicks for your budget is to aim for positions 3-5, which have a much lower CPC, a slightly lower CTR without a compromise on conversion rates.
By Jamie Carruthers
Head of SEO, PPC and Web Analytics
Head London