5 essential quick tips to save money in Google Ads

There is no doubt that Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising is an immensely powerful form of marketing.

At the click of a few buttons, you can drive masses of traffic to your website and–if it’s the right type of traffic, it can result in leads or sales.

But…

Is it worth spending money on Google Ads?

Absolutely. 100 times over.

If you are trying to drive sales or get leads from your website, there is no reason why you shouldn’t be advertising right now.

A common misconception surrounding PPC is that you need huge budgets to compete, which is wrong.

Regardless of whether you have £100,000 or £100 to spend per month, you should be spending it in the most efficient way possible and looking for ways to save money.

By saving money, you can use that budget and invest it in areas which would benefit from it.

With that in mind, let’s go over our 5 essential tips to help you save money in Google Ads.

1. Campaign settings

Often overlooked, getting your settings right is essential as they lay the foundations for your campaigns.

• Opt-out of the Display Network for Search campaigns. Search and Display are both powerful networks, but please, do not use them in one campaign. This is done by default whenever a new Search campaign is created in Google Ads, so beware.
• Get your locations right. Do you only sell your products to customers in the United Kingdom? Well, why are your adverts showing in India?! Set your location settings to target the correct location and choose ‘People in or regularly in your targeted locations’.
• Start small with budgets. It’s easy to increase your budget to spend more, but impossible to get back wasted ad spend.

2. Increase your Quality Score

This can seem like a time-intensive, difficult task, but it’s really not.

• Add your keyword to Headline 1 (and Description 1). Doing this will instantly get the ‘ad relevance’ part of your Quality Score up and usually improves CTR.
• Write more compelling ad copy. Write ads, test, review and update. Improving your CTR will give you another boost.
• Keep keywords in ad groups tight and relevant. Doing this allows you to give users the most relevant headlines and more importantly, landing pages.

How to implement: Start with your highest volume keywords as they will have the biggest impact. After that, work your way through the rest of your keywords.

3. Add negative keywords

It shocks us to this day how many advertisers do not utilise negative keywords.

By adding one or two carefully selected negatives, you can free up wasted ad spend which can be used elsewhere.

Example: If you sell only sell new bicycles, you most likely don’t want to show when a user searches for ‘used bicycles’.

By adding the word ‘used’ as a negative keyword, you won’t show whenever that word is used in a search, meaning you will save money and improve on conversion rate, bounce rate and more.

Other variations such as ‘second hand’, ‘pre-owned’ and ‘part-worn’ could also be added.

How to implement: Select campaign > Keywords > Search terms > Select relevant date range.

Now you have all of the search terms that you have appeared for over your selected timeframe.

Review the data and select any search terms which are irrelevant, or underperforming. Once selected, click ‘Add as negative keyword’ and then add your chosen words.

4. Know your match types

Understanding the different match types that are available to you and using them in the right places is key.

If we were to give you one tip for match types, it would be: avoid Broad match. Following this rule alone will save money in Google Ads.

We go over match types in full detail in this article, but essentially:

• Exact match will give you the most relevant and targeted results, only showing when a user searches for your exact(ish) keyword. Bear in mind, the search volume will be low as there is no way you can account for every variation a user may search for.
• Phrase match still gives you highly relevant results but will increase the search volume by allowing users to put words before or after your keywords.
• Broad match is a loose cannon. This can match to searches which may not even include your keywords, or even be relevant in the slightest. We recommend avoiding this match type 99% of the time.
• Broad match modified (BMM) will give you a high search volume, as your keywords can be searched for in any order. Traffic will still be relevant, but also serves as a research tool–just stay on top of your negative keywords.

5. Exclude mobile app placements

Are you running Display campaigns?

If yes, you’re about to save yourself some money.

By default, all Display campaigns are set to target mobile apps–thanks, Google!

This means that kids everywhere will see your adverts whilst they play Fornite and Candy Crush (if that is still a thing), resulting in a huge number of impressions and irrelevant clicks.

How to exclude mobile app placements:

1. Open Google Ads Editor
2. Select Display campaign
3. Keywords and targeting
4. Mobile app categories, Negative
5. Add campaign level
6. Add mobile app category
7. All apps
8. Save

Conclusion

Before investing more budget into your advertising efforts, it’s important to ensure that what you are currently doing is working well.

By actioning the points in our list, you will save money in Google Ads which you can spend in areas that are performing and/or for testing ideas.

Also, by cutting costs in underperforming areas, ROI will naturally increase.