Today, every professional services business is looking for efficient and effective ways to advertise in the digital marketing world, especially amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. And one of the most efficient ways to do it is through Google Ads. Since Google is where most online searches begin, ranking on Google is a goal. But for many businesses, especially those that have a tight marketing budget, they are striving to improve conversion rates while minimizing costs. Fortunately, Google has offered a fair deal for marketing optimization, measured by the Google Ads cost per click.
What is cost per click?
Google Ads cost-per-click (CPC) is a result metric of sorts for pay-per-click (PPC) marketing initiatives deployed via Google Ads. It means that the more ad clicks you get from your audience, the higher amount you'll pay to Google for delivering your messages. In other words, no clicks, no leads, or sales means you don't pay.
Also, CPC is based on a bidding competition that occurs between the universe of Google Ads users. The bidding process decides the amount you will pay for particular keywords that you want to use in your Google Ads campaign. Prices of Google Ads rely on the type of business, industry, and campaign, as well as the competitive desire for certain keywords. For example, industries that often fall into the more expensive keyword categories are law firms, business services, and financial services – as there is often more competition for keywords amongst competitors and the dollar value of prospects for these industries tends to be higher.
How to reduce CPC in Google Ads?
The reality is that keywords relevant to professionals services business tend to be expensive when it comes to CPC. While your ultimate goal is to increase conversion rate by generating more traffic, it is important to keep your CPC rate affordable enough to bring results while still offering value to your business. That's why we, the Vimagery team, have listed a few ways to reduce your Google Ad spend while at the same time improving your conversion rate. Let us know which of the following tips you find most useful:
1. Improve Keywords
Most businesses in the United States are small businesses and often cannot afford to spend a large amount on their Google Ads campaigns. So, a great way to reduce CPC is by searching for a lower cost keyword through Keyword Planner. With this tool, you can type in your primary keyword and see additional keyword suggestions with its corresponding average monthly searches, keyword bid budget, and competition. In this way, you can now determine what keywords have massive monthly searches, with medium to low competition results, and offer a better value.
For example: If you're running a new campaign for a law firm that has expensive keywords with fierce competition, the best way to solve this is by finding an alternative keyword that has affordable keyword cost.
As an alternative, you can use long-tail keywords. After all, many searches occurring today are occurring in the form of sentences or phrases being entered into the Google Search box as opposed to just single words. As such, long-tail keywords are proven to have high-quality scores. According to Google, Ad Rank is calculated using your bid amount and your auction-time ad quality, which means that a better quality score means your campaign will be more effective while maintaining a low CPC rate.
Tip: Don’t underestimate long-tail keywords, they may not have high monthly searches, but they have an average conversion rate of 36%.
2. Aim for excellent Quality Score
Quality score can help you develop your business campaign's performance up to 3x when done correctly. It also reduces CPC and cost-per-conversion (CPCon) rates. But, aside from using long-tail keywords, there are tons of ways to increase quality score. Here are just a few:
● Create Relevant Ads - Google said that Ad relevance measures how closely related your keyword is to your ads. Your Ad relevance will be scored as above average, average, and below average. If you have average or above average, it means that your keywords are excellent and that they will likely perform well.
● Landing Page - One thing that Google takes into consideration when calculating your quality score is your landing page. Your landing page is the online portal designed to convert leads into prospects or paying clients. That is why it should also be relevant to your ads and keywords used. Because an irrelevant landing page will only increase the bounce rate, and it will negatively impact your Google ranking.
● Ad Group - To achieve an excellent quality score, it is recommended that when you create a campaign, you should also create a tightly themed ad group. To do this, you structure a campaign first, then use keywords based on the ad groups you've created. For example, if you have a website about dental products you use, a reasonable layout could be:
● Campaign 1: Dental products
● Ad group 1- Oral Hygiene products
● Ad group 2- Dental tools & equipment
Tip: Make sure to take the interested prospect who clicked on your ad to the landing page where he can find the specific product or service that drove him to your landing page in the first place. If the process is successful, Google will reward you with a High-Quality Score and, at the same time, lowering your average CPC.
3. Ad Scheduling
Displaying your ads 24/7 is costly and will most likely affect your CPCon rate and ROI. That's why Ad Scheduling is essential because it will allow you to specify the days and times to run your ad.
Other marketers often forget this method, so it is vital to apply this technique because this will help you reduce ad campaign CPC. Take note that before setting up your ad schedule, you need to identify when you will most likely get responses from your target audience. By identifying the best times to get a response, you'll be able to avoid getting clicks outside of your target market. And as a result, you'll reduce CPC and get clicks that'll convert.
Tip: Be mindful that you need to carefully create your ad schedule without losing impressions, traffic, clicks, and conversions by using the bid modifier technique. To learn more about this technique, be sure to reach out to us directly.
4. Geo-targeting
Geo-targeting is a marketing-ads technique where you focus your ads only on the specified areas or locations where the majority of your clients and potential clients reside. With Google Ads, you can target a country or just choose a particular city, state, or region. As a result, you'll increase conversion rate, improve your Quality Score, and click-through-rate, all while reducing CPC. This strategy also helps to land you at the top of the local Google rankings.
Tip: Market your business according to the type of audience you want to target.
For example: In foreign countries, make sure to spread your message based on local language so that there will be engagement between you and your foreign audiences. Another example is, in certain areas, you can attach photos to your landing page of a site that is recognizable by people living in that area.
Conclusion
This article is all about the ways to help your professional services business increase conversion rates while reducing CPC. As you can see, reducing costs depends heavily on ensuring that your campaign ads, keywords, and landing pages are of high quality. This means that not all campaigns require entreprofessionals to invest a lot of money. After all, Google favors the most relevant results, with the most accurate information … not necessarily the most expensive campaign.
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If you're feeling a bit overwhelmed about the steps you can implement to Convert More while actually Spending Less, allow us to help. Click here to see if you qualify for a Vimagery Strategy Session. Together, we can help you to gain an unfair advantage regarding your efforts to cultivate, convert, and close new clients in the weeks and months ahead.
