Kyle Sulerud - February 10, 2020Today, I’m going to be giving you some tips or pointers. These have actually been pulled from a longer Google Ads step-by-step tutorial that I put on YouTube. I think they are extremely helpful.
8 Money-saving tips for Google Ads in 2020
1) Don’t include the display network in your search campaigns.
When you’re setting up a search campaign, it’s actually going to be selected for you by default to include your ads on the display network. You need to uncheck this box because search and display traffic is very different.
You don’t want ads that are going to be on the Search Network and on the Display Network. Usually, you won’t want ads on the display network at all.
But if you’re going to be running ads on the Display Network, then you want to have specific ads for the display network. And I say, you usually won’t be running them there at all just because it’s a lot harder to make it work. You need certain types of offers for display traffic, certainly not as easy as traffic from the Search Network.
2) Change your location setting to “people in or regularly in your targeted locations”.
The default setting is going to show your ad to “people in/regularly in or who show interest in your targeted locations”. This could mean someone from farther away, someone from a different state or a different country could potentially see your ad if Google thinks they are interested in the location that you are targeting.
We don’t want that to happen; we set up location targeting for a reason. Instead, we want to reach people who are in a specific location. So you need to change that setting to people in or regularly in your targeted locations.
3) Set a maximum CPC bid limit.
When you’re using any type of automated bidding option, like Maximize Clicks or Target CPA, your cost per click can really get out of hand if you’re not setting a limit.
What the limit does is: it keeps Google in line. If you have a target CPA of $100, there’s a chance (and I’ve seen it happen) where Google, they might spend almost $100 on one click! They’re betting everything that that one click is going to be a conversion for you.
Well, obviously, it doesn’t happen that way. You really don’t want to be spending that much on one click. So setting a maximum CPC bid limit is the way to ensure your cost per clicks don’t get out of hand, just based on what Google’s algorithm thinks should happen.
4) Add negative keywords.
This is probably the biggest tip here the most important. I know most people are doing this, but you really need to spend the time here. Add as many negative keywords as you can so you’re not wasting money on people who are searching for irrelevant things.
You can use the Keyword Planner to help you with this. You can use my tool, Negative Keyword Pro to help you with this, and do this before you ever start running traffic. Add as many negative keywords as you can so you’re not wasting money.
5) Exclude or adjust bids for different devices.
Your ads may perform better on the Mobile or computer or tablet, or your product may sell better on one device versus another. You want to pay attention to this and adjust these bids accordingly. If you’re getting all of your sales from desktop or from computer, and very few sales from mobile, you might just need to exclude mobile traffic or at least decrease your bidding on mobile traffic. And you would do that by making a negative bid adjustment on mobile.
6) Adjust targeting based on demographics.
These are things like age, gender, and household income, depending on who your customers are. You can modify your bids or completely exclude traffic from specific demographic groups.
So if your product is only for men, then you can exclude traffic from women. Obviously that’s going to save you money.
7) Exclude audiences that aren’t a good fit.
Google has all these predefined audiences in their system, things like: renters, homeowners, married people, single people.
This could mean that you exclude renters if you are advertising a service that’s only for homeowners. Or you could exclude single people if your product is only for people who are in a relationship.
These audience exclusions shouldn’t be overlooked. Think not just about who your customer is, thinking about who your customer isn’t, and see if there is an audience that can help you exclude people who are not your target customer.
8) Review your search terms regularly.
This is related to the tip earlier about adding negative keywords. Because once your campaign is running, you’re going to be able to see the searches that people have typed into Google that have led to them clicking on your ad. And then you can add more and more negative keywords. So if you miss some the first time when you were first doing your research, as soon as someone clicks on your ad from one of those low-quality irrelevant search terms, you can then start to add more and more negative keywords over time.
Yeah, you might have to pay for that bad click once. But if you add the negative keyword, you won’t pay for it again. Reviewing your search terms regularly is the key to that.
These are the 8 money-saving tips.
Again, this is from a longer tutorial that I put on YouTube. I encourage you, especially if you’re a beginner, if you’re someone who’s new to Google ads, subscribe to my Youtube channel: Kyle Sulerud.
You can also subscribe and listen to my podcast: Google Ads Strategy.