How to Increase Google Ads View ability and Lower Cost Per Click
So, you’re happy because your AdWords campaigns have been delivering and you’ve been converting around 2% of your visitors. What if I told you you’re leaving money on the table?
Most of our clients, when they start working with us for the first time, don’t have a clue how to optimize their AdWords campaigns to increase the ad’s “Viewability” and lower cost per click (CPC). Here are a few simple ways to lower your AdWords CPC, increase your ad’s impressions, and earn more for each dollar that you pay to Google.
Switch to CPM Bidding
Although pay per click (PPC) is still the best route for most of advertisers, there can be situations where vCPM Bidding may give you more visibility and clicks per dollar. If you care more about your ad impressions than clicks, you can bid the maximum amount you’re willing to pay for each 1000 “viewable” impressions. Google will only charge you when at least 50% of your add appears on the screen for at least one second. Google will only charge you the amount required to place your ad above the next highest bidder.
You can set vCPM bids at Ad Group level or for each placement. Bidding for impressions can increase the viewability of your ad and also increase the CTR, because when vCPM ads win a placement, they are given the entire ad space, without any competing ads. The downside is that vCPM bidding is not available for the “Search Network only” campaign types.
Switch to Manual Bidding
Most of the clients use automatic bidding, but you can significantly reduce CPC if you switch to manual bidding. Before doing that, you must have sufficient traffic and keyword data based on which you’ll adjust your bid. Do it for one campaign at a time.
Start by lowering your bids for the keywords that are driving you more impressions but fewer sales/conversions. Reducing your bid for a particular keyword would place your ad at lower positions for that keyword.
Next, increase your bids for better performing keywords that are converting more visitors. This will increase the position of your ads for those keywords. The overall effect will be that you’ll be getting more of high converting traffic and less of non-converting visitors. Your CPA (cost per action/conversion) will go down and ROI will increase.
Remarket to Segmented Lists
Most of the clients use automatic bidding, but you can significantly reduce CPC if you switch to manual bidding. Before doing that, you must have sufficient traffic and keyword data based on which you’ll adjust your bid. Do it for one campaign at a time.
Start by lowering your bids for the keywords that are driving you more impressions but fewer sales/conversions. Reducing your bid for a particular keyword would place your ad at lower positions for that keyword.
Next, increase your bids for better performing keywords that are converting more visitors. This will increase the position of your ads for those keywords. The overall effect will be that you’ll be getting more of high converting traffic and less of non-converting visitors. Your CPA (cost per action/conversion) will go down and ROI will increase.
Remarket to Segmented Lists
Most of your visitors go away without buying anything, but you can bring them back, and you should. The ROI of a remarketing campaign can be ridiculously higher than the original campaign. Before using remarketing, you need to create a Google Remarketing Tag for your website. After that, you can navigate to Audience tab in your AdWords account, retrieve the Remarketing Tag, and add it to all pages on your website.
Make sure you define your membership duration by going to Library>Audiences>Membership Duration. This would prevent your remarketing ads from running when the visitor has probably lost interest in your product. For example, someone who wanted to buy a gift for Valentine’s Day is not going to buy it in March or April, so your membership duration should end in February.
You should find out what your visitors need from the keywords that initially brought them to your landing page and their behavior on your website. Google AdWords allows you to create custom combination lists from the Remarketing Lists you define in your Google Analytics. Make use of these lists to target your prospect customers with relevant ads.
Run “Search Only” Type Campaigns
Unless you’re looking to drive traffic from across multiple Google properties, targeting only search users usually works best. It’s because if you advertise for Google’s Display Network, your ad will be given more visibility on some Google sites. If your audience primarily consists of search users, your ad may receive irrelevant clicks that don’t translate into sales.
This will increase the overall cost of your campaign and your CPC, because your AdWords Quality Score will go down. You should consider your advertising goals and target audience and figure out if you really want your ad to be displayed across search and display networks. If not, you should go for a search only campaign.
Fine Tune Bids for Location, Devices, and Timings
A simple way to increase visibility is to advertise on the days, times, locations, and devices that deliver more visits. A review of your Google Analytics will tell you where most of your visitors come from and when. You can also see which particular keywords are driving the most number of clicks and conversions, and on what days and times.
Manually increasing your bids on those keywords for those devices, locations, and timings will make your ad more viewable when most of your prospect customers are looking. Conversely, if a particular day or location is generating more visits but no conversions, you can pause your ad for that day or location to avoid wasting money on useless clicks.
Include Long-Tail Keywords in Your AdWords Campaign
Long tail keywords may not generate a high CTR, but the visits they generate can convert significantly better. Scroll down to the bottom of your keyword list and look for rarely searched keywords that delivered higher than average conversions. Include some of them in your Ad Group.
The most important benefit of using long tail keywords is that you don’t need to worry about unwanted clicks. You may not get a lot of traffic from long-tail keywords, but it will be quality traffic. This will bring down your average CPC.
Final Thoughts
Google AdWords gives you a lot of flexibility to control CPC and increase visibility of your ads. You should go deeper into your Analytics and AdWords account and take the above steps to save money on every click. Taking the above steps will lower your CPC and increase CTR and conversions.
