Although Google Qualified Partners already try to save as much money as possible, here are a few pointers to save money on AdWords if you are managing your marketing yourself.
1. Negative Keywords
First up, negative keywords! Here at DP Online Marketing, we have so many clients coming to us who have attempted to run their AdWords campaigns and have failed, and so they come looking for a Google Premier Partner to run it for them. Most of these accounts don’t contain any negative keywords.
For those who don’t have a clue what negative keywords are, it is a word or a phrase that you wouldn’t want your ads to appear on if it was included in a search query. For example, words such as ‘free’ tend to be added as a negative keyword because you won’t be selling products or services that are free. If this word were not added as a negative keyword, it would be using up your budget when people click on your ads when searched for this word. AKA wasted budget!
Negative keywords can be added as different levels: ad group and campaign level. Campaign level negative keywords seem to be most popular.
2. Ad Scheduling
If your business can only take orders at specific times of the day or you get most of your clicks/conversion at the weekend or in the week, then ad scheduling is a perfect way for you to save money.
If you think running ads 24 hours of the day is going to bring the best business to you then you are wrong. You can use the ‘Dimensions’ tab in to allow you to see a report of what days you are getting the best performance and this will give you an idea of when to set your ads and to save money on your PPC campaigns.
Basic ad scheduling allows you to switch campaigns on and off during certain periods of any day of the week. There is also an option that allows you to increase/decrease your bids depending on the time of day or day of the week. This is a great feature if you want to get more exposure at a certain time or day and want your budget to last longer.
3. Location Targeting
Location targeting is a must have setting for any local business that wants to save money! When creating a new AdWords campaign the location will automatically be set to the United Kingdom, but if you are a small business that only wishes to target their location and maybe a certain radius around their location then why target the entire UK and waste your budget on clicks and impressions that are not in your area.
7. Match Types
Although this sounds like going back to basics, this is the first rule to saving money when building campaigns. You would be very surprised how many advertisers that don’t make good use of various keyword match types. These variations are broad match, phrase match and exact match and all offer their unique benefits.
TYPE | ADVANTAGES | DISADVANTAGES |
| Broad Match | Cheaper CPC’s. Uncovers new keywords | Synonym matches. Very broad, can bring in a lot of unwanted traffic |
| Phrase Match | Targeting keywords, more specific. | Doesn’t pick up on misspellings |
| Exact Match | Very targeting traffic. Eliminates unwanted traffic | Most expensive match types. Also requires more keywords |
Note – Using broad match does mean that Google can show your ads for synonym matches for example if you have a broad match keyword of ‘Big Tables’ if I searched for searched for ‘Large Tables’ your ad will appear.
If you require any assistance in any of these, then please get in touch with a member of DPOM’s Google qualified team.
