How To Lower AdWords Cost Per Click (CPC): Pay Less For More AdWords Clicks By Improving These Two Areas

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Published on
February 1, 2024

[rt_reading_time label="Reading Time:" postfix="minutes" postfix_singular="minute"]Companies thrive on improvements and positive increases. Whether you’re a start-up company, well-established organization, or somewhere in between, everyone can benefit by setting goals or creating SMART objectives to achieve. A great attainable goal to set for your company this year is to pay less for your AdWords clicks. How can you do this? How can you lower your Adwords CPC? Is there a special cheat code you can type in Google to lower your cost per click? Are there click vouchers or something?

How To Lower Your AdWords Cost Per Click

Unfortunately, there is no specific “How To Lower Adwords CPC” handbook with cheat codes and vouchers. However, there are things you can do to pay less for more AdWords clicks and simultaneously put money back into your wallet. By having a properly organized AdWords account structure and the most relative ads possible, your click-through-rate and cost-per-click will reflect how relevant your ads are. Continue reading to gain professional insight on how to lower your AdWords cost per click (CPC).

First: Organize Your Adwords Account Structure Correctly

Proper AdWords account structure and campaign organization is essential if you want to optimize your ads and each keyword you bid on. Google states,

Organizing your account allows you to better serve the right ads to the right customers, and it allows you to better track the effectiveness of your advertising efforts."

Not only is the organization within your ad groups important, but it all starts at the campaign level. Here are some expert tips to help optimize your accounts:1. Define Your Campaign: Within your account, it is best to organize your campaigns based on names delegated to different targeted locations or different ad formats (Search, Display, or Shopping). For example, you may want to target the countries of China and the United States and want to use both Search and Display ad formats. You would then organize the account into 4 campaigns: “China - Search”, “China - Display”, “US - Search”, and “US - Display”.2. Define Each Ad Group: Think of this as a funnel. Each campaign is relevant to location and ad display. Then, within each campaign, there are ad groups that pertain to similar keywords. Your ad group needs to be named something relevant to the group of key words it defines. For example, at Summit, we usually have an ad group delegated just to the Brand of a company. Within this ad group, there are only keywords that are recognized to directly correlate to the brand, a slogan, or their industry. Next, we usually have ad groups delegated to a product or service owned by the company. You can also have ad groups for words your competitors bid on.

Best AdWords Account Structure

3. In Each Ad Group, Focus on One Type of Product/Service: Like I mentioned earlier, having the names of each ad group relevant to a product or service helps make sure clicks to the respective ads go to the right webpage. You don’t want to have an ad group delegated to only car break service, but send them to the homepage where there are options for an oil change, engine repair, and other services. Within each ad group, make sure the focus is the landing page for the ad. You want to make it to where your client only has to click one or two times to get to their desired action. The longer they have to maneuver through your site, the more likely they will be to abandon your ad/website.4. Eliminate Negative Keywords: There are certain keywords you know you don’t want your audience correlating with your brand. For example, if you’re a modern furniture store, you know you will not have any qualified leads looking for rustic wooden furniture. If this is the case, eliminate paying for those unqualified clicks and use these as Negative Keywords. Once “rustic” is seen as a negative keyword, if someone types in “rustic furniture”, your ad will not appear, saving you money on a click that would be abandoned. This is how you can lower your AdWords CPC by not bidding on irrelevant or misleading words. Google also states that,

When selecting negative keywords for search campaigns, look for search terms that are similar to your keywords, but might cater to customers searching for a different product. For example, let's say you're an optometrist who sells eyeglasses. In this case, you may want to add negative keywords for search terms like “wine glasses” and "drinking glasses."

5. Chop Out Irrelevant Keywords: After your campaign has been running, you will be able to decide which keywords invoked clicks and conversions to your ads and which ones seem irrelevant. Also, you can run a Search Terms Report to determine other keywords you aren’t bidding on to add to your campaign or on the other side, add as a negative keyword. My advice is to run a Search Terms Report the first of every month to determine what keywords brought traffic and cost you money with no ROI the previous month. From the Search Terms Report, you can add keywords to existing ad groups, create new keywords for a new ad group, and dictate words that should be deemed as negative.6. Split-Test Your Ads: Also after your campaign has been running a month or so, look at the data for your ads and determine which ads are your converting ads and which ads seem to cost you money. After doing so, you can pause the ads that saw no conversions or had a super low CTR, then copy the ad that performed well (according to your marketing objectives). With the copied ad, change only one thing about it: switch the headlines, make the landing page different, or highlight one thing differently in the copy. After doing this, monitor those ads for a month or two and decide which one performed the best for that month. Then, it is kind of a “rinse-and-repeat” deal where this can be in your monthly optimization workflow and you will always be showing the most effective ad.

Second: Improve Your AdWords Click-Through Rate (CTR)

The more relevant your ads are to a user’s search query, the higher your AdWords CTR will be. And the higher your AdWords CTR, the less you’ll pay for your ads. Therefore, improving your AdWords ad quality is essential.

“Higher quality ads can often lead to lower CPCs. That means you pay less per click when your ads are higher quality.”- Google

Some ways to improve the quality of your ads and Adwords CTR include:

  • When creating an ad, include a keyword or string of keywords from the ad group in the first headline. The second headline should include the brand name or another relevant keyword within the ad group.
  • Create at least 3 ads per ad group. Each ad should be similar, with only one variable (Ex- switched headlines, different call to actions, different landing pages, etc).
  • Use a strong, yet simple call-to-action within your ad copy. (Ex- “Get your free quote today!”)
  • Finally, regularly monitor and view your AdWords account. Make sure you are optimizing your ads or keywords at least every other week. It is also a good idea to make sure each campaign is active and running at the beginning of every week. This way, no billing or account issues prevent your AdWords campaigns from running.

Conclusion

The organization of your AdWords account and campaign are crucial. If you organize your campaign where each ad takes a user directly where they want to go, you will see more traffic, higher click-through rates, and a higher conversion rate. This high relevancy will help you acquire more traffic than your competitors at a lower overall cost per click. This is how you lower your AdWords CPC: no magic spell, just precise account organization and management. The way you organize your campaign can literally make the difference of paying $0.30 more per click. Be smart and optimize your clicks by optimizing your AdWords accounts.

Need help improving your Google AdWords ROI?

Summit Digital Marketing offers AdWords management services, search engine optimization, and White Label SEM services, and we can help you see exponential ROI growth. Read our SEM success stories to learn more about who we have worked with and what we do. Contact us today to learn more!

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