When cuts are to be made within a business, it’s usually the marketing department which gets hit the hardest. And with the ability to turn ads off with just two clicks, whoever is in control of the purse strings will have Google Ads firmly in their crosshairs.
Whilst you can pause Google Ads campaigns on a whim, you are just as able to reduce spend to any point between what you originally had budgeted and effectively zero. We all love big click budgets and the volume of leads/sales they bring in, but being forced to slash your spend usually means you can improve your budget efficiency. This means either reducing your cost per lead, or increasing your return on ad spend, whichever you find yourself working towards.
Over the years, Google has added more and more dimensions which you can focus your ads on, or choose to ignore entirely, and it’s this second option which is extremely useful when your budgets are being slashed.
Ad Scheduling
You would usually use ad scheduling to implement minor bid adjustments throughout the day, or week, depending on your strategy or historical performance in order to optimise your CPA (cost per acquisition) or ROAS (return on ad spend).
In a scenario where cost-saving trumps overall lead volume, you can use bid adjustments of -100% to prevent your ads from appearing during those periods. Your first step would be to decide which periods you want to cut. You could do this to fit your business needs, for example if your campaigns drive inbound calls to a call centre which is open Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm, it would be logical to set a bid adjustment of -100% for evenings and weekends.
Focusing On Previous Visitors
Inevitably, a user who has visited your website before will have a higher chance of conversion than a newly introduced user.
If you’re on a mission to save money, you can set your Google Ads campaigns to display to only those who have visited your website previously through another channel. To do this, simply add your desired audience to your campaign using the ‘target’ option, rather than ‘observation’. This will narrow the reach of your campaign to just those in your selected audience(s).
Ignore Certain Devices
Mobile is by far the fastest growing device category, but not necessarily the best performing device category for every business.
You can review performance by device for each campaign by using the ‘Segment > Device’ option within Google Ads. This will help you decide which, if any, device to exclude with your campaigns, but also how much money ignoring these devices will save you.
If you decide to exclude a device, you can do so by clicking into the campaign, selecting devices and setting a -100% bid modifier for the device you wish to exclude.
At Return, our paid search team are experts in getting the best results out of any budget, regardless of size. Get in touch with Return to discuss how they can help with your paid advertising strategies.