6 Best Ways to Lower your Google Ads CPC
What Is CPC?
CPC is the amount you pay for each click on one of your PPC ads in platforms like Google Ads or Microsoft Ads.
Several factors influence your cost per click, including your maximum bid, Quality Score, and the ad rank of other advertisers bidding for the same keyword.
Your CPC is an important metric to track because those clicks and costs add up quickly. You will not be able to achieve a return on your advertising investment (ROI) if your CPC is too high.
What Does Lower CPC Mean?
Because each click on Google search ads costs money, a lower CPC means your ad budget goes further and, hopefully, you get more conversions. By properly optimizing your ad campaigns, you can get much more traffic for your money and see your ad rank improve as well.
Ways To Lower Your CPC In Google Ads
1. Bid lower on keywords
The desire to rank first in the SERPs drives most marketers into a battle of keyword bidding. When it comes to paid search, lowering your cost per click may drop you a position or two in the listings, but will it affect your conversions or traffic?
While the first spot receives more clicks (around 50% more), does being number one in paid make a significant difference in your sales?
The verdict is still out on this one. And, like many other aspects of pay-per-click marketing, it can be affected by your industry, product, USP, ad copy, and a variety of other factors.
More clicks do not always imply more paying customers. When it comes to e-commerce or retail, it can imply that more window shoppers will be lazy and click your result because it is the first.
If you're offering a high-value service, such as legal assistance, your audience is more likely to carefully read your ad to ensure you're what they're looking for.
2. Pay attention to your quality score
The quality score of your Google Ads affects the cost per click. So, by optimizing your ads for a higher quality score, you'll benefit from a lower CPC.
This is more of a long-term strategy than a quick-fix marketing tactic. However, understanding how the quality score affects your CPC will be beneficial in the long run.
It's made a little more complicated by the fact that the QS can be applied to each keyword, ad, and campaign individually.
Whatever it is, the quality score measures how relevant your ads are to the searcher by analyzing a variety of metrics such as:
- Click through rates
- Historic impressions vs clicks
- Relevance of ad copy and keywords
- Factors related to landing pages such as bounce rate and loading speed
In short, if you want to lower your CPC in the long run, pay attention and try to build a higher-quality score.
Simply put, make your ad as relevant to your searcher as possible, and give them a compelling (the best) reason to click.
Having a well-optimized landing page that is tailored to your specific ad group can help to reduce your bounce rate and, as a result, improve your quality score.
If you do receive traffic to your landing page, you must also ensure that you are blocking invalid traffic.
3. Leverage exclusions
Because Display ads are automatically eligible to appear in every corner of the Display Network, it's critical to use exclusions to avoid spending money on expensive clicks that aren't relevant. Exclusions, such as locations, are available for all campaign types and can also be applied to Display.
Aside from the essentials, such as locations, here are a few Display-specific exclusions to be aware of:
- Topics:
Are there any pages that would have content related to topics that would not be appropriate for your Display ad?
- Audiences:
Are there any other audiences you don't want to show to? For instance, your conversions or remarketing audiences.
- Placements:
Do you want to appear on all websites and apps? For example, if you believe that placement isn't the best fit for your business, mobile app games may result in unintentional clicks. A popular strategy for lowering cost per click is to exclude mobile app and game placements.
4. Choose your keywords wisely, and don’t just jump for the cheapest one.
When it comes to Google Search, keyword research is a given, but we're not just talking about weeding out the most expensive on average keywords. In fact, rather than ignoring a keyword because of its price, choose one based on volume and the types of search queries you want to attract.
For example, if your best-converting keyword is also your most expensive, you don't want to forego all of those conversions in the name of saving money. However, you may want to reduce the size of your keyword list to save money elsewhere while bidding on that one high-converting keyword.
Alternatively, a more expensive keyword may have a higher average search volume, which could result in more clicks to your website, increasing your expected CTR. This raises your Quality Score, allowing you to get more clicks for less money in the long run.
In short, you can still select keywords based on their cost. However, keep in mind the volume and intent of those keywords. A healthy mix of low-cost and high-reward keywords will ensure that you get the best CPC without sacrificing conversion quality or quantity.
5. Try New Keyword Variations
Another great idea is to try out new keyword variations.
Finally, the more time and effort you put into keyword research, the better your PPC results are likely to be. You'll also make more money while spending less.
Assume you own a company that sells grain-free dog food and want it to be as successful as possible. Given the growing number of companies offering grain-free dog food, your competition is likely to be fierce, and some of the more desirable keywords are becoming more expensive in terms of cost per click.
If you don't have a large budget for your Google Ads campaign, you may begin to feel as if you can't compete with others' efforts. You don't want to be left behind and lose customers and sales. However, in such cases, you do not need to bankrupt yourself through your advertising campaign.
Instead, try conducting more extensive keyword research. As previously stated, long-tail keywords are frequently less expensive. However, you must remain vigilant and conduct regular research.
Other, shorter keyword phrases may appear as inexpensive.
This could be because there is little competition even though it could be useful for traffic and conversions.
Try a few low-competition keywords; you might be surprised by the results.
6. Change Your Bidding Strategy
The next step is to alter your bidding strategy. You're probably aware that Google Ads provides a variety of bidding strategies, including several automated bidding strategies.
These automated strategies include things like:
- Enhanced CPC
- Maximize clicks
- Maximize conversions
- Target CPA
- And more
Many advertisers prefer a manual bidding strategy because it gives them the most control over their cost-per-click figures. You can bid as much or as little as you want, and every amount is confirmed as you go. Just keep in mind that to appear in the top positions, you must bid a certain amount.
If you have enough conversion data in your account and want to change up your bidding strategy, you can try out a semi-automated bidding strategy, such as one of the ones listed above.
For the time being, let's concentrate on enhanced CPC, also known as "ECPC". With enhanced CPC, you essentially tell Google the maximum amount you're willing to bid on a given keyword.
Based on the parameters you've set, an algorithm will then optimize your ad delivery. This saves you time and effort in monitoring your ads and CPC regularly, allowing you to focus on other profit-generating areas of your business. Of course, you should keep a close eye on your semi-automated approach at first because the algorithms will take some time to get to work and learn.
You must ensure that your bids do not increase and your conversion volume does not decrease while the algorithm learns about your strategy.
Conclusion
As you may have guessed, lowering your CPC generally entails refining both your ads and your audience to eliminate wasteful ad spending and unnecessary clicks. The better you understand your audience and their desires, the better you can craft ads that will reach your ideal clients, increasing your CTR and lowering your CPC.