You’re a small budget PPC account holder
Your earnings are at low now
And you always feel that your what you have earned would have been more if you spent more.
Such insecurities of low budget PPC account holders are not something new, it pushes them to spend more in order to earn more.
The key behind incurring more from existing plan is simple and requires your power of analysis along with knowing what to keep and what to leave.
First of all, you need to know how to prevent overspend and then learn to track daily budget.
How to Prevent Overspend?
The easiest way to prevent overspending for limited budget PPC is to make campaign offline. But it really opposes the theory of business marketing.
True Business theory always tries to get the best out of the poor situation. By going offline you actually array advantages for your competitors.
You just have to prevent going over budget using budget settings.
For Google Adwords campaigns you need to decide your daily budget and multiply it by 30 days to get the value of expected monthly spending.
Google can spend around 20% more of your daily budget. You can read more on Why costs might exceed your average daily budget at AdWords help center.
Your daily spend may vary so you need to keep checking your daily spending and make budget adjustment as per spend.
Google also lets you share your total budget across all your campaigns.
For Bing ads, you can select either monthly or daily budget. When your monthly budget will be exhausted Bing will pause your campaign. The daily budget enables you to set monthly spend based on daily budget.
Use Standard Bing ads option to display your ad throughout the day depending on your budget.
For both Adwords and Bing Ads, you can also select Ad Delivery to Accelerated pacing to run your ad on all the possible auctions until the daily budget gets exhausted.
Track Daily Spending
To prevent your budget from being exhausted you need to track the daily spend. It also helps you set your daily target to spend.
It is very important to be conscious of daily spending for the adjustment of daily budget and bids.
Compare day by day spending. The average daily traffic will give a clear idea to allocate your budget accordingly.
Do not forget to calculate spending against the ROI. As per ROI target and the market situation you can drop down or expand your budget. You must track your monthly goal on the basis of the relative daily result.
[bctt tweet=”The ultimate goal for bid and budget adjustment is to get the maximum ROI. #Adwords” username=”adstriangle”]
You need to have clear idea on ROI before getting maximum ROI from a limited budget.
Understanding Revenue
Most of the campaign owners treat campaign optimization on the basis of CTR or Conversions. They value the displayed ad performance and keywords as the best metric.
You can simply treat increased conversions as a success for your campaign. But this is a part feature of success. When the improved conversions generate maximum revenue you call it an overall success. The reason behind running Adwords campaign is same as other marketing aspects and that is ‘to get maximum ROI’.
The calculation of ROI = (Profit – Spending) ÷Spending
When you are placing PPC campaign the revenue is calculated as per the total cost you bear including campaign cost and other costs.
Three Best Ways to Calculate Return
i) Return on Investment (ROI):
When you minus profit from cost and divide it with cost you get ROI.
If you are selling products using PPC campaign, the spending on PPC campaign is not the only investment. You must take into account the cost of the entire order process.
In lead generation PPC Campaign there are several costs to be included. Other than spending to run your PPC campaign you need to count costs linked to landing pages creation, banner ads creation, website maintenance and much more
It means when you are calculating the investment cost you should not calculate the advertising cost solely. You need to include other factors other than the click costs.
ii) Return On Ad Spend (ROAS):
To calculate the success of a PPC campaign you must take the ROAS into account. The calculation is as same as the calculation of ROI.
[bctt tweet=”To get the exact amount of ROAS, minus PPC revenue from PPC cost and divide it by PPC cost.” username=”adstriangle”]
Let’s take an example if your revenue from Adwords is $1000, and you paid $500 for Adwords clicks cost, then your ROAS would be
= $1000 revenue – $500 cost/ $500 cost = 100%
Most of the advertisers identify ROAS with ROI. You need to have clear idea on ROI and ROAS to calculate actual revenue.
A smart campaign manager always considers ROAS to optimize the PPC campaigns. It is also great to utilize the metric ROAS in bid optimization algorithm.
iii) Cost per Acquisition (CPA):
This is the most effective metric that should be considered above all other metrics. Some people call it in a fancy way- Cost Per Sale/Lead.
This metric shows how much you have spent to acquire a new client. Advertisers always run to get lower CPA as much as possible.
In PPC Campaign you run an ad in expectation to get lots of potential customers.
When you divide total Campaign cost with a total number of conversions you get CPA. The Campaign cost should include the setup cost also.
Tracking CPA is very much essential because it reflects the actual figure of ROI.
[bctt tweet=”Calculating CPA will help you to judge how much you should spend for your campaign. ” username=”adstriangle”]
It is very simple. When you can find out how much you spent to get a new customer, you will know how much you should spend for the entire campaign.
There is no single way:
You cannot calculate your total revenue just using a single method and can never guess which metric is best for you. You can use the metrics for different campaigns altogether.
However, you must not use different metrics for a single campaign. You need to implement only one method for an individual campaign to calculate revenue.
Stop Counting Extra Expenses- Follow These 15 Tips
1- Try to Use Exact Match Keywords
Maintain your focus on exact match keywords as it lets you have control over query matching and keyword.
It reduces CPA and use of modified broad match variation keywords provide support to the performance of main top-performing keywords.
Match type is very important to determine the visibility of your ad. I found that for limited budget campaigns exact match and phrase match bring the best result. As match type eliminate unqualified clicks you can have control over your spend.
It also prevents your ad visibility on irrelevant terms. Exact match is really helpful to generate revenue from your low budget.
You should avoid using generic keywords. Highly relevant keywords can show good results for your smaller budget.
2– Don’t Create Too Many Campaigns
You are a small account holder and smaller numbers of campaigns would work for you. You need to research well before jumping on various campaigns.
[bctt tweet=”Running too many campaigns dries out your budget without giving significant results.” username=”adstriangle”]
Deeper ad groups, 1-3-structured campaigns suit best and try to explore shared ad budgets from AdWords.
It is a popular practice to run different campaigns to target different services and locations. However, my advice is not to go with this practice for your limited budget.
You can concentrate on certain terms and bid higher to get maximum business.
3- Keep Poor Performing Keywords Away
Poor performing keywords should be left with their own ad groups or campaigns. It will make your high performing keywords remain untouched.
You need to find out which keywords are eating most of your costs and not giving conversions. They are only exhausting your budget without reflecting result.
Rest of the keywords can have very few clicks due to these keywords.
When you find out those fatty keywords that are eating your budget you must pause them immediately.
This move will ensure savings of your bucks.
You must focus on ROI metrics at the keyword level.
[bctt tweet=”High traffic keywords cannot always bring great conversions” username=”adstriangle”]
It is not smarter thinking to be happy by observing some keywords are bringing huge clicks. You should consider if they are really able to bring conversions.
This is the time to work with other keywords in the ad group. You will come to know that other keywords may bring better conversions. You must get out of spending on those costly keywords.
Analyze your data and find which keywords can bring more conversions.
If you think that keywords are relevant to your term then reduce the maximum CPC. You can also set a bid limit to maximize clicks within your low budget.
My experience suggests that the generic keywords drive unqualified clicks the most. So, you need to eliminate those nonperforming keywords to optimize your revenue.
Limit your keywords as much as possible. A lot of keywords may not be healthy for your low budget campaign.
4- Segment Ad Groups by Their Performance
Time is money; so don’t spend it on managing low performing ad groups. You need to spend your maximum time to ad groups/keywords which are giving you conversions.
Grouping low and high performing ad groups let you channelize your efforts, money and time on the right direction. Also, it generates opportunity of embedded negatives.
There are some ad groups and keywords that are not showing good performance.
[bctt tweet=”You need to segment poor performing keywords in a new ad group and vice versa.” username=”adstriangle”]
You may run a new campaign with those poor performing ad groups and must be sure of the fact that the new campaign should be affordable within your set budget.
Do not compare the high traffic campaign with the low traffic campaign generally. Try to find out the performance of a campaign on the basis of associated budget.
It is meaningless to take out those nonperforming ad groups to save your spending. You need to think alternatively to make them perform. Try to find out why they are not performing and eliminate the reasons.
Segmentation on performance helps you achieve a good quality score, which actually leads to handsome revenue.
5- Don’t Miss to Use Branded Campaign
Branded campaign has much higher conversion than others and it is proven the fact.
So, sometimes, if possible, opting for branded campaigns would fetch your dollars when you are tight with cash.
Users notice them much easier and once recognized, users are likely to hit your brand whenever they see it.
In B2B Brand Campaign reflects multidimensional benefits. Brand Campaign is likely to fetch more conversions. It will also help you fight against your competitors.
[bctt tweet=”Branded Campaigns will gain high CTR along with good quality score ” username=”adstriangle”]
Brand campaign is a good idea for the popular brand. If you are new you can also start building your company brand name. As you are using your own brand name as keywords, you don’t have to pay much for bid.
6- Give Priority on Search Network
You have two networks, where your ad will be shown- Display Network and Search Network.
As a beginner, you cannot understand which one will serve better. However, focusing on a single network at a time will let you understand the possibilities. It will also save your money from being drained.
You may like to use both of them but as my experience suggests you should concentrate only one network. Search Network will give the best result.
Some PPC manager may argue that Display Network always work well. But you should not rush into it until you get proper knowledge.
You have to know first how to manage your ad in Display Network in order to generate revenue. Otherwise, you will soon run out of the budget.
Search Network is perfect for the first timer and for a smaller budget. This network is much easier to set up. For lower budget PPC campaign Search Network brings out a better result.
7- Geo-Location Data is Important for You
The geo-location data helps in targeting your ad campaigns to potential customers.
It is highly useful for your local business clients, who want to advertise to potential customers of a specific geographic location.
Geo-targeting is very much feasible for tight budget PPC campaign.
Most of the advertisers like to use geo-targeting because it arrays detailed targeting. As your budget is smaller and you need the maximum number of conversions your success lies on targeting the right people.
Analyzing geo-location lets you allocate your budget as per expected conversions from a particular location
At Dimension Tab Geographic will tell you particular which location is generating a greater number of conversions. You can easily maximum bid on better performing locations.
8- Lower Ad Positions are Always not Bad
Lower ad positions, 3-4, 4-5, have proven their effectiveness in both branded and non-branded campaigns.
You must not be always at the top position to acquire clicks. Displaying at the top position may give your ad maximum exposure. But you need to pay maximum CPC bid at the same time.
To reduce CPA you should have a look at your average ad position; firstly, trace out average ad position and then set your bids.
[bctt tweet=”Always opt for 4-5 average ad positions for good exposure at low CPC bid” username=”adstriangle”]
I suggest you not to fight for top position because it’s not always cost-effective. You will find that further down position will be more affordable and can give good visibility as well.
Opt for a suitable position that can give you good conversions.
9- Use Google Analytics For Data Analysis
Google Analytics helps you find why your ad is not getting good conversions even after having good numbers of clicks and visits.
I suggest you implement Google analytic to point out if there is any problem with your website. There must be some issues which are preventing some clicks from becoming potential customers. As soon as you sort it out your revenue will jump up.
Alongside you must set up conversion tracking. It will help you calculate the CPA for last conversions.
CPA tells you how much you had to pay for your last conversions. You can be able to identify if you are actually paying more for the ad or not.
Google Analytics tells you how are your landing pages are performing and where to bring changes in your website. You can check your web page’s bounce rate, average time on web pages by paid campaigns visitors.
When you are in tight budget, tracking Cost per Acquisition is effective for you.
10- Quality Score Has Grave Implications
The quality score works as a variable in your Ad Rank formula. Highly quality score results in less pocket pinch for you.
A good quality score can increase Ad ranking even if the CPC bid is low.
Ad Quality Score depends on several variables- CTR, Landing Page and Ad Relevance. You need to score good CTR along with improving landing page experience. Ad copy must have relevance to your products, services, and contents.
As a smaller budget campaign owner, you should always work to improve quality score. Quality Score will improve your ad ranking and decrease the cost.
You must optimize quality scores on all levels- Keywords Level, Ad level, Account Level and Device Level.
QS on Keywords with high CPCs must be analyzed to reduce the cost.
11- Keep Re-Evaluating Your Campaign Budget
You must keep a close eye on your budget because your budget is limited. Investment should target the campaigns that have a high return value.
Suppose, your branded ad campaign has high conversion rate and also fetching good money. This is a time when you should redirect your budget from low performing campaign to comparatively well-performing campaign.
This is how you can stay on your budget and gain more. You have to set your bid manually for more control on keywords and bid.
If by any means a certain campaign is consuming a maximum of your daily budget limit, you should lower the bid. It will not affect campaign performance and your ad will be visible for a longer period.
Track your spending on monthly basis and analyze the daily report of costs. Rearrange your budget as per the performance.
If a campaign is generating higher conversions then you should set more budgets for that campaign.
This extra budget can be taken from the campaigns that are not performing well.
12- Curtail Waste Clicks With Negative Keywords
Your valuable clicks may get wasted by unqualified clicks. Avoid this situation by launching negative keywords in ad campaigns.
These negative keywords actually block your ad from being displayed on unqualified search queries.
[bctt tweet=”Negative keywords reduce clicks on unwanted search queries and increase CTR as well.” username=”adstriangle”]
Be careful while blocking anything and do keep testing if you find yourself in doubt.
If you are using broad match or phrase match then you must introduce campaign with negative keywords.
You might have experienced a good number of unqualified clicks that were eating a good portion of your budget. Negative keywords eliminate the possibilities of displaying your ad on irrelevant search queries.
You must be careful while introducing negative keywords because any wrong introduction can block the potential traffic.
You need to make an extensive list of negative keywords. A good list of negative keywords ensure quality paid traffic to the website.
13- Don’t Forget to Use AdWords Extensions
As a campaign owner, you may have gone through some of the features that Google AdWords offers. You have a limited budget, so, you always look for some extra options that can offer possibilities of generating revenue.
AdWords Extensions can optimize your ad. Extension makes your ads bigger and provides extra information about your products and services. When you are getting these additional features, you must make them work for you.
There are several extensions available. You can select the relevant ones. Some of the valuable extensions are- SiteLinks, Call Extensions, Location, Ratings, Callout, and Reviews Extension.
Site link extension is obvious choice irrespective of budget. It lets you redirect the traffics to some other pages of your site. This is a chance, which you can use as telling some more options about your products or services.
[bctt tweet=”Study has shown Ad Extensions can increase CTR of ads by 20-30%” username=”adstriangle”]
Use site links extension cleverly to make people become your potential customers.
Skillful implementation of relevant extensions improves CTR.
14- Take Advantages from Day Parting
You can save lots of your budget by adjusting ad scheduling metrics broken up in the day, time and days of the week.
This customization will save your CPA in the long run.
It enables you to show your campaign on specific days or time as per your business needs. You can turn off your ad from showing on nonbusiness days or time.
I usually turn on ads on peak hours and stop on slow times for the low budget clients. It saves a lot of money from being wasted and gives a considerable return.
Enabling ads on peak hours is likely to generate more conversions.
15- Too Much Testing is Not Good
Being a small account holder prepare your testing strategy carefully.
Numerous testing should not be taken place, rather keep it limited and conservative.
Continue testing if you have enough CPA to ensure failed test results.
Testing should include match types, new networks, devices, campaigns etc.
Testing is good but for the limited budget, you should limit your testing.
16- Give Importance to Landing Page
In maximizing revenue in low budget PPC campaign, quality score has a crucial role. Landing page plays an important part to improve quality score.
Your landing page must be relevant to your displayed ad and products or services.
You must convey relevancy, transparency, content clearness and easy navigation through the landing page.
[bctt tweet=”The more your landing page gives user satisfaction the more likely it can gain conversions.” username=”adstriangle”]
The landing page should contain something that makes it stand out from others.
Landing page should be priorities because
- it generates leads
- lets you understand about the engaging prospects
- tells effectiveness of your marketing strategy
- lets the visitors understand your products or services at one go
Summary
Here, 16 secrets out of numerous money saving ideas have been discussed. These tips make you get the best out of your limited budget PPC.
Your curiosity and desire to excel can drive you to collect more such tips to increase ROI to your campaigns.
There are several ways to get maximum revenue from a smaller budget. As you get experienced, the new doors will open themselves.