PPC: 8 Ways to Avoid Busting Your Advertising Budget

[caption id="attachment_12813" align="alignright" width="205"] PPC spending can get awfully fat if you don't reign it in.[/caption] AdWords is a powerful search engine marketing platform that instantly connects businesses with an ocean of potential customers. But oceans are wild and unpredictable — turn your back, and you might get swept away. The same thing can happen to your AdWords PPC budgets if you're not careful. If you just started using Google AdWords, then you might be overwhelmed by how quickly you blow through your advertising budgets. You might also be frustrated if this tsunami of traffic isn't bringing you any actual customers. Sure, launching an AdWords campaign is significantly easier (and faster) than getting organic visitors through traditional SEO strategies, but what's the point if you're just throwing money away? Worry not. Here, we'll review eight ways to avoid busting your advertising budget with AdWords and other pay-per-click (PPC) platforms. Follow these tips, and suddenly the rough waters of online advertising become far less treacherous. 1. Bid High, Budget Low The first step toward not blowing through your budget is to keep your budgets low. Yes, you might still spend money inefficiently at first. But just because you can afford to spend $100 per day doesn't mean you should. Start with a small daily budget until you know what you're doing. On the other hand, don't hesitate to bid high on keywords. Your fledgling campaigns will gain traction more quickly, and you'll get better click-through rates (and higher quality scores) by driving traffic from your best keywords. With your budgets turned down low, this is a great strategy for launching campaigns on the right note. 2. Avoid Accelerated Delivery When setting the daily budgets for new campaigns, you'll have the option to choose Standard or Accelerated ad delivery. Standard is the default option; stick with that. The Standard delivery option is designed to stagger your ads and expend your budget throughout the entire day. Meanwhile, Accelerated delivery will show your ads until your budget runs dry. By staggering your ad delivery throughout the day, you'll eventually learn which times are most worthwhile to be advertising. You're also less likely to burn through your entire budget in the early morning hours when few people actually buy. 3. Use Phrase- and Exact-Match Keywords Only use phrase- and exact-match keywords when building your primary campaigns. Exact-match keywords will only display your ad when people search for that exact keyword. Phrase-match keywords offer slightly more flexibility — they'll display your ads when people search for phrases containing your keyword. Now, I’m not saying you should never use broad-match, but you need to be extremely careful. ... 4. Create Separate Broad-Match Campaigns We just talked about the importance of phrase- and exact-match keywords, but that doesn't mean you should avoid broad-match keywords entirely. Broad-match keywords result in ads being shown whenever your keywords appear in any order within a search term. For example, if your broad-match keyword is "boys shirts," and someone searches for "boys uniform shirts," that person might see your ad. And unless your business happens to specialize in uniforms, that person's click would be a waste of money. However, what you can do is start a campaign with a small daily budget and only broad-match keywords. Eventually, you can review your search terms report to see all kinds of search phrases people used to trigger your ads. Some of those keyword terms will likely be irrelevant to your needs — but some might actually be unique or long-tailed keyword terms you hadn't previously considered. This is how you can “fish” for more keywords, but limit your exposure by using a separate low daily budget campaign. 5. Grow a Negative Keyword List Let's go back to that "boys shirts" example. If your business doesn't sell uniforms, why risk wasting money on that "boys uniform shirts" click? Add the words "uniform" and "uniforms" to your negative keyword list, and your ads will never be shown in response to searches for uniforms. You should always build out negative keyword lists when launching new campaigns. Then, as you collect data about the exact search terms people use to trigger your ads, you can add to those lists with poorly converting keywords. You can also add terms such as "how to," "what is" or "reviews" — terms people might use when they're looking to do research, not make purchases. 6. Bid at the Keyword Level Adjust your bids on individual keywords, not entire ad groups. Every keyword will have it’s own unique performance and will require it’s own unique bid. You'll need higher bids on your most competitive keywords, but you can often get cheaper traffic as you find more unique keyword terms. Adjust your bids accordingly and you can attract more visitors without spending more money. 7. Write Accurate PPC Ads It's tempting to say whatever it takes to get clicks on your ad, but a say-anything approach is problematic. For starters, Google can suspend ads (and even lock down campaigns) for dishonest advertising. In addition, people who click on your ads are more likely to bounce from your website if your landing pages don't meet their expectations. In other words, it pays for your PPC ads to accurately (and honestly) represent what you're actually offering. Don't even try to toe the line between reality and exaggeration. Keep it real and enjoy the stronger conversion rates. 8. Use Remarketing The Remarketing feature of AdWords displays your ads to people who've already visited your website. That means you can limit your ads to only display if the person searching has already visited your website. If you knew the prospect had already visited your website, then wouldn’t you want to increase your bids to ensure she saw and clicked on your ad versus your competitors? What if you knew that person had already added a product to their shopping cart or viewed a key page in your sales funnel? Chances are you could show a more compelling ad to get that person back to your website to complete the sale. Conclusion In the time needed to start a campaign — just a few minutes, if you already have an active account — AdWords can bring waves of visitors to your website. It's up to you though to not get overwhelmed. Make every dollar you spend on advertising count by following the tips above. Any form of PPC marketing will quickly turn into a colossal waste of money if not properly done. Take the right steps, though, and reaching new customers will have never been easier. Want more tips to improve your Google AdWords performance? Click here to grab your copy of our Ultimate Google AdWords Checklist.

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PPC: 8 Ways to Avoid Busting Your Advertising Budget

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