Google’s advertising products are great, but only if you know how to properly use them to your advantage. In this post, we’ll go over some ways you can maximize your Google Ads budget to get the most out of every campaign.

1) How to Set Up a Budget Friendly Campaign

When setting the stage for a budget conscious Google Ads campaign, you have to start by considering your overall objective. Your strategy will differ greatly depending on whether or not you are trying to raise awareness, generate leads, or increase sales.

Keeping your objective in mind, you’ll want to pinpoint specific goals along the way that can help you achieve it. Before you overestimate what you can accomplish within a given time frame, you have to factor in your budget.

If you are smart and strategic with your budget, you can usually make just as big of an impact as a competitor who has more to spend. Advertisers often fall into the trap of thinking that the larger their budget is, the more of an automatic advantage they will have over competing companies. 

When you want to raise awareness about your brand, a larger budget definitely makes the most sense to make the broadest possible impact. However, if your goal is to drive a specific action, a smaller budget could still achieve that goal. Even if you’re against a competitor with a larger budget, you still have a chance.

Another trap advertisers fall into is relying too much on Google’s automation tools (such as Smart Campaigns) which require monitoring to be truly effective. Don’t think that you’re at a disadvantage because you have less to spend. If you take the time to understand PPC strategy, you can outsmart your competition.

2) How to Decide Your Optimal Budget

Regardless of your prospective budget, considering a few different calculations can make a big difference. For example, when you consider how many clicks you expect to receive per day, you can estimate how quickly you’ll go through your pay-per-click (PPC) budget. You also have to have an idea of the average cost-per-click (CPC) for your selected keywords and account for potential increases in cost.

Let’s say you have a client with a lean budget of $1000 per month for PPC. If the average CPC is $2.00, you’re counting on customers only clicking your ad 500 times a month to stay within your budget. 500 times a month is only about 16 clicks a day (costing you roughly $32 a day).

In this case, unless those 16 individuals clicking your ad are seriously interested or returning customers, the chances of those clicks converting into sales are very slim. Therefore, you’ll want to be very precise with your ad targeting to make sure you get your money’s worth for those $32. We’ll talk more about how to specifically target to make the most of your ad spend later in this post.

Google is clear that once your average daily budget is reached, your ads will usually stop showing for the day. However, be cognizant of the fact that if your ad is performing well, Google may automatically allow your budget to be exceeded to maximize the number of clicks it receives. This is supposed to work in your favor, but be sure to monitor it so that your spending does not get out of hand.

3) How to Decrease Your CPC

If you could lower the dollar amount your spending per click on your ad, wouldn’t you take that opportunity?

Here are 3 ways that you can decrease your CPC:

1) Avoid paying double for optimal ad placement.

If you’re not careful, you could end up pay double the normal amount for your CPC when you bid for prime ad placement. Google Ads gives you the chance to pay more per click to appear in search results at the best possible time of day or device for better performance. Some businesses get carried away with this feature for certain campaigns.

2) Improve underperforming ads and landing pages.

Simply put, a better Quality Score can go a long way.

3) Add negative keywords when necessary.

When you have a highly targeted campaign, you need to specify what not to target. Negative keywords allow you to “…exclude search terms from your campaigns and help you focus on only the keywords that matter to your customers”. This means spending less money on keywords that are not a good fit for your campaign, and in turn increasing your return on investment (ROI).

4) How to Align Your Budget With Your Goals

Google has an entire mini course about how to align your Google Ads budget with your goals. We’ll give you the concise overview you need to succeed.

Here are 3 points to keep in mind:

1) Start with a budget that’s on the smaller side.

After a couple of weeks of a conservative budgeting strategy, put more money towards areas that are driving business. Advertisers lose the most money when they are unrealistic or overly ambitious. Remember, CPC x Clicks Per Day = Daily Budget.

2) Follow Google’s recommendations (when they make sense for your situation).

A great feature of Google Ads is that the tool will show you an optimal recommended budget.

Google Ads only does this for campaigns that “…repeatedly meet their daily budget but have the potential to earn more clicks and impressions”.

Therefore, if your campaign has limited data, Google Ads won’t have recommendations for you. It gives you an advantage when you can improve the visibility of your campaign’s ads based on factors that Google tracks such as recent campaign performance, current campaign budget, keywords, and campaign targeting settings.

3) Adjust your campaign’s ad delivery method.

The ad delivery method controls how quickly ads are displayed. Depending on your delivery method, your budget could be used up in a couple of hours, or spread out during the day. The Google Ads standard delivery method spreads out budget spend over the course of the day. There is also the option for an “accelerated” delivery method. Accelerated delivery is the right choice for advertisers who want results more quickly. Depending on your goals, you’ll want to make sure your delivery method matches what you plan to achieve.

5) How to Make the Best Decisions for Your Business

If you want the absolute most cost-effective and results-driven Google Ads campaign, you have to do what makes the most sense for your business. Although this might seem self-evident, a common error that businesses make is focusing too much on the online advertising tactics of their competitors.

With tools such as SEMrush, it’s easy to keep tabs on activity, progress and successes of your rivals, but too much of a focus on them detracts from your own goals. It’s necessary to keep track of what other companies are doing to a certain extent, but the reality is that your business has differentiating aspects to it that will inevitably create differences in strategy.

Wrapping It Up…

We hope we proved to you that even if you have a small budget, you’re not hopelessly limited in what you can do. In fact, smaller budgets tend to push companies to strategize their budgets in a smarter, more creative way. There’s no room for giving in to the automation settings

If you need to hire outside help to accomplish this, it’s worth it. At Chainlink, we’re all about finding ways to maximize your budget. Regardless of how much you plan to spend, there is a way to get value.

Reach out to us, and we’ll set up a time for us to talk. We can discuss how we laser-focus in on your campaign goals to make the most of your PPC budget. Don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter for more exclusive tips and strategies, too.