30 Oct
PPC advertising has proven to be a reliable and profitable channel for tons of B2B, B2C, nonprofits, and other companies seeking quick, quality traffic and conversions. The budget of a PPC campaign can play an important role in its performance. However, it doesn’t guarantee successful results without proper planning first.
It’s common to believe that the bigger the budget for your PPC campaign, the better the results. But small businesses, or those without a lot of resources to allocate to PPC, may not always have the option of increasing their budget.
Though getting maximum results is challenging, but not impossible. You can make the most of it with practical planning and a laser focus on your goals.
What is PPC?
PPC stands for pay-per-click, a model of internet marketing in which advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked. Essentially, it’s a way of buying visits to your site, rather than attempting to “earn” those visits organically.
Search engine advertising is one of the most popular forms of PPC. It allows advertisers to bid for ad placement in a search engine’s sponsored links when someone searches on a keyword that is related to their business offering. For example, if we bid on the keyword “PPC software,” our ad might show up in the very top spot on the Google results page.
Powerful benefits of using PPC advertising
1. PPC contributes to business goals
This is often the most compelling reason to use PPC advertising. PPC can help you achieve a vast number of business and marketing goals. These goals range from high-level brand exposure and thought leadership to a hot lead submission or ecommerce sale.
PPC is a powerful tool for aligning website traffic drivers to end-goals. It can support many parts of the sales funnel and the path that your prospects take from awareness to becoming a customer.
2. PPC is measurable & trackable
A major benefit of PPC advertising run through Google Ads is that it’s easy to measure and track. Simply use the Google Ads tool in combination with Google Analytics. You’ll see high-level performance details, including impressions, clicks, and conversions (based on the defined business goals).
When you send your PPC traffic to dedicated landing pages and track it to conversion using Google Analytics, you can see what you spent and what it drove in terms of your end goals.
No billboard or magazine ad can attribute to sales like that. Plus, you can do more with call tracking and isolate your PPC efforts more than you can in SEO, and many other marketing efforts as calls can be a big blind spot.
3. Quick entry
When compared to other channels like email and organic social, you have the advantage of targeting people outside of those who are already aware of your brand. You aren’t limited to your existing followers or customer lists.
PPC lets you quickly cast a wide net to find new prospects and customers. Plus, most of the work is done within the PPC advertising platform – from the research to campaign build-out, to writing ads. You can get up and running quickly with minimal involvement of your development teams, aside from help setting up conversion tracking and any desired landing pages.
4. You’re in control
While there are several nuances regarding default campaign settings, you ultimately have control over a wide range of options for reaching potential customers. This starts with the keywords or placements you choose to target and how restrictive you want to be.
You also have a lot of budget flexibility if you want to start small. You can set your own ad budget and bids, and choose what you’re willing to spend (though you have to pay at least close to a market rate to play in most cases).
5. PPC works well with other marketing channels
PPC and SEO work well together as the impressions and opportunities for traffic are often to the same audience – the people using Google to find information, services, or products.
The performance data of impressions, clicks, and conversions from Google Ads can provide great insight and direction on a keyword-by-keyword basis for prioritizing SEO efforts.
PPC can also be directly compared to traditional mail with costs per impression and conversion. If you can shift away from more expensive traditional marketing to methods that provide real-time data and have better tracking, it can be a big win.
6. Incredible targeting options
This ranges from targeting keywords through text ads, to running ads through remarketing based on their past behaviors or focusing on specific audience demographics on the display network.
By testing and trying out a mix, you can ensure the full scope of Google Ads is leveraged and that you’re getting as many impressions as possible while staying targeted to the personas in your prospective audience.
Ultimately, the biggest benefit of the PPC targeting options available is that you are able to reach people who aren’t already in your audience as well as those that have been exposed to your brand.
7. A wealth of marketing data
While there’s a lot of data and performance information directly available in Google Ads, the value of information gained goes beyond just PPC performance.
Impression, click, and conversion data for each keyword can be used to advise SEO strategy and content marketing efforts.Beyond that, you can use the built-in keyword planner and display planner tools to find where your audience is.
Tips on how to work with a small PPC budget
1. Set the stage for the account
With a smaller budget, managing expectations for the size and scope of the account will allow you to keep focus.First, determine your daily budget.
For example, if the monthly budget is $2,000 per month, the daily budget would be set at $66 per day for the entire account. The daily budget will also determine how many campaigns you can run at the same time in the account because that $66 will be divided up amongst all of the campaigns.
Be aware that Google Ads and other channels may exceed the daily budget from time to time to maximize results. The overall monthly, however, should not exceed the Daily x Number of Days in the month. Now start focusing on your goals.
2. Prioritize goals
Often, advertisers will have multiple goals per account. A small budget limits the number of campaigns and the number of goals you can pursue. Some common goals include:
- Brand awareness
- Product and brand consideration
- Leads
- Sales
- Repeat sales
3. Geotargeting
Geotargeting is not only a critical part of your marketing strategy, it also plays a part in managing a small ad budget.
A good way to maximize a limited budget is to focus on only the essential target locations. Should you target states, cities, ZIP codes, or combinations? The smaller the geographic area, the less traffic you will get, so balance relevance with budget.
Consider adding negative locations where you do not do business to prevent stragglers from seeing ads.
4. Ad scheduling
Ad scheduling also helps to control budget by only running ads on certain days and at certain times of the day. If your business is open during specific hours, it might make sense to set ads to run only while you are open. If you sell online, you are always open, but it may be smart to review reporting to determine if there are any times of the day when there is a negative ROI.
If the reporting reveals hours of the day where campaigns are less effective, consider removing targeting to those areas or use a location bid modifier to reduce ad serving in those areas.
5. Match types
Match types are essential to controlling budget, especially if funds are tight. Study up on the match types and how each triggers ads.
Combined with ad scheduling and geotargeting, you may have to test different match types to get the right balance. Working with a limited budget means you will have to get creative to get the most benefit from the budget.
6. Call only
Some businesses with smaller budgets will also have challenges with creating landing pages and testing different versions. If phone calls are important to your business, consider running a call-only campaign.
7. Try the display network
Make your company appear to be “everywhere” by using remarketing to website visitors and several different audiences in your target market. If you pay per click, the impressions do not cost you anything.These campaigns can provide broader reach and increase brand awareness.
8. Aim for competition
Use the portfolio bid strategies settings to gain an edge over competitors with the Target outranking share option. You create a rule by adding the domain to outrank, percentage of the time to outrank, and the max bid. Choose top competitors in your area. The auction insights report will show which competitors are also competing for the same search keywords.
9. Set up tracking
Make sure that tracking is set up through the PPC platform and website analytics to measure performance. The data collected will be critical for informing your decisions on where to optimize the account.
10. Target longer tail keywords
The cost-per-click for general, high-volume keywords can be very high. Look for unique and longer keywords to compete effectively on a smaller budget. Find effective long-tail keywords using your analytics account to see organic searches leading to your website, Google autocomplete, and tools like Google’s Keyword Planner.
11. Manage high volume keywords
High volume and competitive keywords can get expensive and put a real dent into the budget. If the keyword is a high volume/high cost, consider organizing these keywords into its own campaign and using exact match for the keywords. This will enable you to more closely watch the spend on this group. Consider putting a cap (max bid) on what you’re willing to pay.
12. Reconsider dynamic search ads
Consider avoiding Dynamic Search Ads. These ads aren’t triggered by specific keywords chosen by you. Instead, they are displayed based on keywords in the content of your landing page. While this seems convenient, it often results in irrelevant impressions and clicks, which could drive up daily spend.
13. Use ad extensions
Ad extensions can call attention to the ad as well as provide additional information that can’t fit into the ad body copy. These details could include:
- Local address
- Sitelinks
- Call-outs
- Phone number
- Structured snippets
- Customer reviews
- Images
Google also provides dynamic ad extensions, which are automated extensions that show details from your website added to your main ad text.
14. Set negative keywords
Just like match types, an extensive negative keywords list is critical for controlling budgets.
- Generate negative keywords proactively by brainstorming keyword concepts that may trigger ads erroneously
- Review query reports to find irrelevant searches that have already led to click
- Create lists and apply
- Repeat
15. Perfect your landing pages
Targeted and conversion-optimized landing pages can be essential. Google judges the quality of the landing page based on the parameters of relevance, content originality, transparency, and navigability. It’s difficult to convert from poorly structured or outdated landing pages.
This can be an issue for some smaller businesses that do not have access to web development staff. If developing landing pages is a hurdle for you, consider the call-only campaign tip.
Conclusion
Low budget accounts can be effective if they are managed correctly. When you’re operating on a limited budget, your goal should be conversions. This means you should put extra care into crafting your ads, geographically limit your reach, place your ads in the Search Network, and promote your star products.
Also, keep in mind it’s not the budget that determines the success of your campaign, but your strategy. Your PPC budget strategy is all about focusing on the best-performing ads while constantly reviewing performance to make sure you are allocating resources in the most effective ways.