Guest post by Shawn Livengood
There are plenty of guides on high-level PPC strategies to achieve success for big companies. And to be frank, running a Google Ads account for a large company is much easier than running one for a small business. With a large account and a high budget, you can afford to collect a lot of data rapidly – data that you can then use to make informed decisions about your PPC strategy. Small businesses don’t get that advantage. When you have a small budget, you have to be a little more creative, a little more scrappy, and a little more in-the-know about how to maximize your PPC results within your means. Here are some winning strategies that can help small businesses succeed with Google Ads.
Set Up Accurate Conversion Tracking
You may not get a lot of conversion data with a small budget, but it’s crucial that you get some conversion data. Even a limited amount of conversion data will help you make good decisions about your ad strategy. Good measurement is foundational to a good marketing strategy. Don’t use your low budget as an excuse to skip this step.
Turn Off Auto Recommendations And Don’t Listen To Google Reps
One of the first steps you should take in a new account is to navigate to your Auto-Apply settings and turn them all off. Google makes it a little hard to find these settings (because they don’t want you to turn them off), so type in “auto apply” into the search box to find the page:
Auto-apply suggestions may sound nice, but they take away crucial control from advertisers and can lead to wasted spend. Uncheck all of the boxes on pages except for “Upgrade Your Conversion Tracking” – there’s nothing wrong with using data-driven attribution.
On a related note, you’ll probably be bombarded with recommendations from “helpful” Google reps that want to improve your results. Understand that these reps just want you to increase your spend – they don’t actually care about getting you better results. Most times, their recommendations will lead to more expense with nothing to show for it. If you’re going to get advice from someone, make sure that it’s an independent consultant instead of someone who works for the advertiser and stands to benefit from you spending more.
Opt Out Of Using Search Partners And The Display Network
Search partners are a pool of websites (and some Google properties) that partner with Google to show search ads on their own sites. Google has always been very secretive about what sites are in the Search Partners network, and the quality can be very questionable.
The Display Network is another network of third-party sites and some Google properties that show image, video, and text ads in webpage content. Display network quality can also be questionable. But more importantly, the strategies for success in display differ greatly from strategies that work in search. If you want to run display ads, you should run them independently from search ads, using different creative.
Google pushes advertisers to opt all campaigns into Search Partners and the Display Network. Make sure that your campaigns are opted out by going to your campaign settings and opening the “Networks” options. Make sure both the Search Partners and the Display Network boxes are unchecked:
Avoid Using Broad Match
Google claims that using broad match keywords will help you reach more customers. However, this looser match type often leads to your ads matching to irrelevant search queries that will increase your costs without leading to more sales. When you have a small budget, it’s very important to get in front of the most qualified customers. Exact match keywords are the best for this because it gives you a very precise control of what customer queries you want to get in front of. Phrase match can work too, but Google is making phrase match work more like broad match every day. An exact match only campaign structure is great for very limited budgets. If you have a little extra to spend, pepper in a few phrase match keywords for your most effective keywords to expand your reach a little.
Negative Keywords Are Your Friend
Negative keywords can prevent your ad from showing on search queries that indicate a prospect will never become a customer. For example, if you run a business that provides remodeling services, negative keywords like “how to,” “diy,” or “guide” can filter out people who want to do the work themselves instead of becoming a paying customer.
Check your search terms report regularly and look for new opportunities to add in negatives. This can help you focus your ads on the right kinds of customers and prevent wasted ad spend.
Use A Manual CPC Bid Model
Automated bid models like Maximize Conversions or Maximize Conversion Value are great for advertisers that get a lot of clicks, conversions, and data. But if you’re getting less than 30 conversions per month in a campaign, it can be hard for the algorithm to determine how it should distribute your ads. A Manual CPC bid model requires a lot more attention, but it can often lead to better results for advertisers who can’t afford getting the high volume of traffic that feeds the bid algorithms.
Keep Your Ad Scheduling Tight
An easy trick to maximize a limited budget is to focus your ad serving during peak hours. Ads run 24/7 by default, but you can use the “Ad Schedule” options to run your campaigns during limited hours. You can get more out of your budget by limiting your ads to run only during the day – 6am to 10pm, or some slight variation on that. If your offices are closed on the weekend, you might also consider only running your ads on weekdays to further concentrate your ad serving.
Conclusion
Running a PPC campaign on a small budget is tough, but it’s not impossible. By using these winning strategies to focus your ad dollars, you can spend smarter and get the most out of your Google Ads account. Don’t worry about what the big corporations can do with their million-dollar budgets, and just focus on the factors you can control. That’s the plan that will get the best results for your small business.
Shawn Livengood is a digital marketing consultant who specializes in helping small businesses succeed with Google Ads, Google Analytics and digital strategy. He lives on the Oregon Coast and helps clients around the world.