7 Pro Tips for Saving Money (and Competing!) in Google Ads

so OK The news is that Google Ads work. You can expect high returns when your business shows up on specific, high-intent searches your prospects are performing.

This bad The news is that everyone is using it, and since the Google Ads platform operates as an auction, the more businesses that advertise on it, the higher its price.

This great information? You can handle many small details in order to find profitable customers in a cost-effective manner. You just have to be smarter than the average bear to do this.

That’s what I’m here for. In this article, I’ll show you how to save money in Google Ads by:

• Spend only on the right users
• stand out from the competition
• Improve your landing page

Spend only on the right users

The first area we need to focus on is making sure we don’t exceed our capabilities. That is, we only spend our budget on the audiences most likely to convert.

1. Use location targeting

When you create a new campaign in Google Ads, geo-targeting almost always defaults to your country, but every once in a while it actually defaults to “all locations” which means – you You guessed it – all over the world.

There is zero point in advertising to people you cannot serve or are not profitable for you. Google Ads offers highly customizable Geo-targeting The options you can use include the location that works best for you and exclude those that would be wasted budget.

Professional Type: While many people like the idea of ​​zip codes, ad platforms can be hard to really pin down. If possible, try using city or neighborhood targeting instead of zip code targeting for better coverage.

Also, make sure you select the advanced targeting setting to only ‘People in my area’ and not ‘Interested in my area’. It probably won’t have a huge impact, but any incremental win won’t be lost, or anything like that.

2. Bid on high (ER) intent keywords

A lot of times when I log into a new account, people don’t see the results they want and the keywords are very broad. (I don’t mean match types in the broadest sense. We’ll get to that in a minute.)

For example: shoes. God bless if your business is trying to sell shoes to people. But seriously, the shoe space is crowded, so making sure you’re advertising the right stuff is critical.

Let’s say you’re a professional shoe store and you choose to only sell women’s golf shoes (interesting option, but ok). Below is a list of keywords that technically match your criteria, but… it’s not as specific as it might be.

This list is more qualified. For these, you’ll get search traffic and clicks from people who are looking for what you’re selling.

The search volume for these specific keywords will of course be much lower than the broader list above, but we do not search for the number of terms in this range. We are for sales.

If you’re on a limited budget, focus only on those things you’re actually selling, and stay away from high-traffic keywords that will increase your spend and potentially generate less qualified traffic.You can learn more in our The Big and Simple Guide to Keyword Research.

3. Use only phrase and exact match keywords

Keyword match type It’s gotten less specific over the past five years, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t strive to make the user queries you match as specific as possible. For the purposes of this article, I encourage you to focus only on phrase-match and exact-match keywords for your campaigns.

Although many Google claims broad match is more effective Today, higher quality, better matched queries will come from using a more limited match type.This will help you limit your reach to low-quality searches from unqualified users that may result in broad match and burn your budget.

Are you wasting money on Google Ads? Find out with the free Google Ads performance scorer.

stand out from the competition

When you want to be frugal in Google Ads, Especially when you are competing with big brands, it’s important to make sure you stand out from the competition. There are some easy ways to do this.

4. Use all ad extensions

If I do a quick search for “small business CRM”, almost all ads look the same if I just look at the text. But the one that stands out and grabs your attention?This is an ad for monday.com Image extension.

Image extensions clearly help the monday.com ad stand out from the rest. In this little block of color, all other ads are really just text. While that doesn’t mean that these companies aren’t using image extensions, it does mean that, for whatever reason, monday.com has a focus advantage in this search.

Therefore, I encourage you to always use Each iteration of ad extensions You are eligible to use.

1. sitelinks
2. call out
3. structured snippets
4. picture(How to set image extension here)
5. call
6. lead form
7. Place
8. Subsidiaries
9. Price
10. application
11. promotion

When you enter the Google Ads interface, click advertise in the left nav, then Ad extensions.

Once on that page, click the blue plus button to add any of the extension types listed. By having as many extensions as possible, you give yourself the best chance of grabbing users’ attention on the SERPs and standing out from the competition.

5. Messaging with Auction Insights

Not every search results in an ad with a lot of extensions.In this case you will be left with your google ad copy and messaging to help you stand out from the competition.

The first step is to determine who your competitors are. If you already have campaigns running, you can use the Auction Insights report to identify other companies that appear next to your ads. (Side note: If you look at this list and say to yourself, “These are not my competitors”, you may need to revisit your keyword list!)

In the Google Ads interface, click Key words In the left navigation, then select Auction Insights at the bottom.

Once you’re there, you’ll see a report that looks like this. It lists the companies that appear next to your ad, then gives you some statistics to help you understand how you stack up to their reach. (You can Learn more about the Auction Insights report in this video.)

Once you know who you are competing with, you can use Competitive Keyword Research Tools Find them in their Advertising proposal and how to separate yourself.

If you don’t have access to the software, the easiest way to find out what people are using in their ads is to do a search on your keywords.

Professional Type: This advice comes with a huge caveat. If you do this regularly and don’t click on your ad or any other ad, you’re showing Google that you’re not actually in the market for your product. This means that over time you will not see ads for yourself or others. So if you do search to gain insight, I recommend doing as little as possible and try to use a different device for each subsequent search to prevent Google from inferring patterns from your behavior.

Once you have a good grasp of what other competitors are doing, whether through tools or SERP spying, make sure your ads stand out.

• If every ad uses the keyword in Headline 1 (or a similar keyword), you’d better not do it. (Google Ads headline example here!)
• If all businesses offer discounts, it may be worthwhile for you to talk about your higher quality level and explain why you don’t have a discount.
• If your competitors list prices higher than yours, list your prices and emphasize how you are “cheaper than others.”

The key to SERPs is to stand out. So, based on your findings, make sure you can craft new messages and become a brand that stands out.

Pay special attention to your landing page

You spend time and hard-earned money developing Google Ads campaigns take users to your website, But take a serious, honest look at your landing page. Will you convert them? to be frank. It doesn’t hurt me if you’re lying to me. will only hurt you!

6. Have a high-quality landing page

A higher quality landing page means a higher Quality Score, which means Lower CPC. While landing pages used to be a big pain, they no longer have to be.platforms such as Bounce and instapage Makes it easy for anyone to create landing pages, including people who are not coders or developers (i.e. the author of this article).

Here are some details to keep in mind High Converting Landing Pages:

• Always have a clear call to action that is being tracked Conversion tracking.
• Make sure the content on the page showcases your product or service well and convinces users to work with you.
• Make sure pages load quickly on both desktop and mobile devices.If you are not sure how to improve page speed, please pass Google PageSpeed ​​Insights tool.

Attractive, organized, clear CTA – beautiful landing pages.

Remember, the closer the landing page is to a conversion transaction. If you don’t prepare yourself, it doesn’t matter that you do well in the campaign setup and strategy part of the process.

7. Be strategic about switching goals

Ideally, you’ve targeted the right people, stood out from the competition, and brought someone to the Impressive landing page Loading speed is amazing. But is your conversion action a customer-ready one? Have you thought through your conversion actions? Do you offer them any other options other than the final sale?

If the answer to these questions is no, you may want to consider adding a secondary, gentler call to action on your landing page.

• Do you ask others to buy things? perhaps also provide a Email to sign up for your newsletter Learn about sales and promotions.
• Ask someone for info to put together a custom quote? Maybe also create a simple calculator to help them make their own estimates.

Each of these actions, while not necessarily a conversion goal you might ultimately want, will help attract other users who aren’t ready to convert on your key actions.

It’s a small consolation prize, but if you can capture some information about that user, you can use it as part of your first party data Set up to retarget them and re-engage with them on any ad platform and hopefully convince them to take the action you want.

Start saving money in Google Ads today

Way Google Ads Work Enables advertisers of any budget to generate strong ROI – making it a Best Digital Advertising Platform there. But you have to know how to use it to enjoy it. These seven strategies will help you save money and make the most of your budget: