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 Google Ads clicks. So, how can you lower your Google Ads cost per click (CPC)? Is there a special cheat code you can type in Google to lower your cost per click? Are there click vouchers or something?
Unfortunately, there is no specific “How To Lower Google Ads CPC” handbook with cheat codes and vouchers. However, there are things you can do to pay less for more Google Ads clicks and simultaneously put money back into your wallet. By having a properly organized Google Ads 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 Google Ads CPC.
Proper Google Ads 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.
3. In Each Ad Group, Focus on One Type of Product/Service: 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 Google Ads 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. Cut 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.
The more relevant your ads are to a user’s search query, the higher your Google Ads CTR will be. And the higher your Google Ads CTR, the less you’ll pay for your ads. Therefore, improving your Google Ads 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 Google Ads CTR include:
The organization of your Google Ads 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 Google Ads 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 Google Ads accounts.
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