Google Ads is one of the highly-competitive PPC platforms. More than 50% of companies use display ads, while 65% of small to mid-sized businesses run PPC campaigns.
There are around 22 different types of Google Ad formats and the CPC is usually determined by the bidding competition in all of them. However, there are a few things that you can do to lower it.
Here are the top five ways you can use to optimize your Adwords campaign for a lower CPC.
1 – Improve Your Quality Score
The quality score is indirectly proportional to your ads CPC. The higher the quality score, the lower the CPC.
The three things that can have a great impact on your quality score are:
- Your click-through rate.
- The past performance of your Google Ad campaigns.
- Landing page and keyword relevancy.
Here are a few ways to improve your quality score.
- Use highly-relevant keywords: Incorporating highly-relevant keywords in your campaigns will ensure that your ads show up only for related search phrases. This will increase the chances of people clicking on your ad.
- Craft a compelling ad copy: Write a persuasive ad copy that is more useful to your target audience. More effective ads get high CTR, thereby boosting your quality score. Master the art of copywriting to prepare great ads.
- Add negative keywords: Negative keywords help you prevent your ads from appearing for irrelevant similar search terms that are wasting your budget. Continuously research and add negative keywords to your ad campaigns.
- Group ads by themes: Grouping ads by the keyword and target audience can improve the relevancy of your ad. Google views relevancy as the connection between the search query and the resulting ad. This means your ads are more likely to appear on top of the SERPs.
- Create ad-specific landing pages: Google wants its users to have a great experience. Therefore, it is crucial to create pages that connect directly with your ads. Make sure the offer you provide on ads reflects on the landing pages.
- Boost landing page speed: You might be thinking how web page ranking affects the ad quality score. As Google considers landing page relevance in quality score, loading time might affect it. Therefore, make sure the landing pages load as quickly as possible.
2 – Adjust Campaigns With Low CTR
Ads with low CTR usually have a high CPC. If there are too many campaigns with a low CTR, then chances the CPC of all your new ad campaigns will be high.
Therefore, it is essential to stop ads with low CTR and focus on the ones that bring results.
One of the best ways to find PPC campaigns that are not performing well is by using analytics tools like Finteza. It can also help you improve your ads ROI.
All you need to do is mark campaigns with UTM tags, and it will show you the conversion rate by stages, along with audience loss points. If there aren’t enough people on the first stage, then it means the CTR of the campaign is low. You would want to either optimize or stop those ads.
3 – Adjust Bids Beyond Keywords
Bids are not only about keywords. There are various factors you should be considering, including locations, devices, and ad schedules.
For instance, you would want to consider:
- Which days maximum conversions happen.
- Which time of the day converts higher?
- What devices are used?
Instead of running ads 24/7, consider running it only at times that have proven ROI and a higher CTR. This will significantly reduce the CPC.
Also, divide each of the questions mentioned above as per locations. For example, people from the U.S might buy mostly on weekends through mobile devices while consumers from the U.K may purchase on weekdays from desktops. You can find these answers on your ad analytics.
Once you’ve decided when and where to run each ad, start placing your bids.
4 – Leverage Automated Bidding
Automated bidding uses machine learning technology and considers your Google Ads account past performance to automatically adjust bids to meet your performance goals.
There are different types of automated bid strategies, but since your goal is to lower the CPC, it is best to use the ECPC (enhanced CPC).
ECPC automatically adjusts your bids based on the likelihood of conversion on your website. It keeps the average CPC below the max CPC (that you set).
Since Google handles everything (from bid monitoring to adjustment) in automated bidding, you get time to optimize the ad copy for conversion.
5 – Change Your Approach on Keywords
At times, you might feel that the CPC of your primary keywords is overpriced, obviously due to high competition. In those cases, it’s best to spend some more time researching similar keywords and pick terms with a low CPC. You can do it on Google Keyword Planner.
Enter your seed term in the tool and use the filter “top of bid page (low range)”. It will show related keywords with low CPC.
For example, I entered the keyword “meal delivery” in the tool. It returned with 1,043 keyword ideas. I used the filter “top of bid page” to sort the keywords with a low estimated CPC. Here’s the result.
Another thing you can do is use long-tail keywords. They tend to have a high conversion rate, low competition, and low CPC.
Make sure that the long-tail keywords you choose have enough search volume. If not, you’ll struggle to get enough clicks on your ads, which will affect your CPC.
Wrapping Up
You might already be wanting to jump to your Google Ads account and start optimizing your campaigns for lower CPC. Use all the five tips mentioned above, and you’ll see a significant impact on your CPC. Happy Ad Running!
