How to Curb Wasted Spending on AdWords?

| July 1, 2016

How to Curb Wasted Spending on AdWords?

Image courtesy of Stramark.

Every marketer knows that Google AdWords can be a money eating black hole. While it is a very effective tool that helps your brand gain visibility and most marketers consider it a vital aspect of any marketing campaign, if you wield it carelessly, your budget could evaporate in a matter of days for very little or no return at all.

To spare yourself from this frustrating outcome, make sure to organize your AdWords campaign in such a way that your money is invested wisely. Here are some tips that can help:

Negative Keywords

Marketers often disregard the effectiveness of negative keywords and that can increase your ad spend. These keywords are essentially phrases that you don’t want to target. For example, if you’re a company that sells men’s clothing and accessories, you want to exclude words like handbags, women’s, and other such phrases that aren’t relevant to your business. Negative keywords will ensure that your ads aren’t displayed to audiences that aren’t likely to convert. You can find negative keywords by looking at the Search Query reports or using the negative keyword tool.

Modified Broad Match Keyword

Broad match keywords allow you to target a wide audience because Google will look for every combination of matches for your keyword. For example, if your keyword is ‘graphic design’, a broad match would target all related keyword including website design, t-shirt graphic, graphic design jobs, graphic design software, etc. You need to target only keywords relevant to your business. In modified board match keywords, you add a plus to the phrase like graphic+design and only that and related terms will be targeted. Phrases like website design or t-shirt graphic won’t be targeted.

Targeting

AdWords allows considerable amount of flexibility when it comes to targeting. You can target people based on location, time of search, device, and other such parameters. You should use these options to narrow down your targeting field. For example, if you only conduct business in Sydney, you can limit your targeting to the city. You can also set a geo-targeting parameter around your store so that you target only those people who are within that area.

Bid Management

Marketers will usually place high bids on keywords at the beginning of the marketing campaign. They do this to assess the quality of each keyword and see how well they perform. After the first few reports come in, you can adjust the bids according to the effectiveness of those keywords. You can big higher amounts on high performing words and lower amounts on low performing words. This would reduce the cost of the campaign and increase the return on investment.

Be sure to switch on the conversion tracking on your website and landing pages. This would help you keep track of the performance of your campaign. If you follow these suggestions, you’ll be able to save considerable amount of money on AdWords and gain good ROI. Your marketing campaign will be more successful if you plan and execute your strategy well.


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