Does Google Ads Work for Small Business: 11 Tips for Limited Budget Google Ads Campaigns

Are your advertising campaigns held back by a restrictive budget? Quite often, marketers feel that their pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns just need a little more money to succeed.

However, there are advantages to doing PPC on a small budget. For a start, you’re forced to set more defined expectations, and consider your budget more while making your projections.

Getting better at campaign budget optimization is crucial for marketers to get the best bang for their buck. We’ll give you some great tips to lower your PPC budget here.

It all starts with defining your goals.

Define Your PPC Goals

The objectives of your campaign are a major factor in how your budget will be used. As such, you should ensure that your goals are clear from the very outset.

Typically, most campaigns will have one of the following goals, or some combination of the three:

1. Brand Awareness

A brand awareness campaign is one that aims to increase consumer awareness about your brand, so that your brand and its cause are more visible and recognizable among your target demographic.

2. Lead Generation

The definition of lead generation is the strategic actions or processes to identify prospective customers and to cultivate relationships with them so they may purchase from your business.

For PPC managers, using ads to drive relevant traffic to our website to encourage them to join our mailing list is one example of lead generation.

3. Conversion

A conversion is when somebody takes the desired action on your ad, such as watching a video or clicking a text link.

11 Tips for Google Ads Success on Small Budgets

Okay, so let’s say you’re struggling with Google Ads on limited budget campaigns. What can you do to get the best return on advertising spend (ROAS)?

Here are eleven aspects to experiment with to make the most out of your PPC limited budget.

1. Refine Keyword List

Ideally, you should use keywords that have high search volume and low competition. It’s even better if you can target specific geo-location and time on these keywords.

By adding negative keywords to your campaign, you retain more control on impressions, effectively filtering out irrelevant search queries so your click traffic is better qualified.

2. Look for Balance with Keyword Match Types

With clever manipulation of your match types, you can optimize your budget. Moving through the funnel from broad match to exact match, you can reduce wasted spend, whereas moving the opposite direction will cost more, but encourage more impressions.

Starting with more exact and modified broad types offers tighter impression control. With manual bidding, you can track your spending and adjust as needed. Try to find a balance between reach and relevance so you attract qualified leads without going bust.

3. Use Geo Targeting

Is your audience in specific cities or ZIP codes? By targeting defined geographic areas, you ensure less traffic, but more relevance. You can also add negative locations so your ads don’t attract people from areas that your business doesn’t serve.

4. Schedule Ads for Maximum Engagement

Only open 9-to-5? Try setting ads to run during opening hours so you maximize exposure when it matters. Online store managers should review reports to see if there are certain times that generate a negative ROI.

5. Manage Mobile Bids

In a mobile-mad world, it’s impossible to ignore the value of targeting by device. Your business may get more sales (or less) from smartphone users, so you should consider that when bidding on each device.

6. Use Google Display Network for Brand Awareness

Opt for Google Display Network and a CPM (Cost per Mille – 1000 impressions) strategy if your goal is brand awareness. This saves your budget, as you can achieve a broader reach without paying for so many clicks.

7. Monitor with Google Analytics

Data is one of the most powerful tools in a PPC manager’s toolkit, as it allows us to make smarter decisions about how to optimize accounts. Make sure your Ads account is connected with Google Analytics, and also enable conversion tracking so you can monitor traffic and conversion rates.

8. Beware of Dynamic Search Ads

Dynamic search ads are largely controlled by Google, as the platform automatically triggers them rather than relying on your chosen keywords. This can make your ad copy irrelevant, which will incur wasted spend on invalid clicks.

9. Boost CTR with Ad Extensions

If you want to include additional information in your ads, extensions allow you to do that. Whether it is a local address, phone number, or sitelinks, using extensions will provide extra leverage to call people to action.

10. Optimize Your Landing Pages

PPC on a small budget requires excellent landing pages that are optimized for conversions. With original content that is transparent, relevant, and easy to navigate, you can craft landing pages that make the customer journey smoother.

Some businesses struggle with these, especially when working with a limited budget. You can opt for call only campaigns if you’d prefer to sidestep landing pages.

11. Follow Up With Remarketing

Somebody may have clicked your ad, and then left your site without following through. But that doesn’t mean the sale is lost. You can use remarketing to re-engage these warm leads. As they’ve already had some brand exposure, they’re more open to your offers.

Staying Active is Essential to Get Anywhere with PPC Advertising

The road to PPC expertise is a long one, and you’ll make plenty of mistakes along the way. A common one is to set up your campaign and then forget to look at it again for weeks.

To ensure success, you must constantly monitor your ads, gauge performance, and make tweaks to the settings. Getting into the habit of working with your campaign for 30 minutes per week can make a huge impact on the ROI.

When you’re running PPC campaigns on a limited budget, you need to get creative so that your money goes further.

How PPCexpo Can Help Marketers with Limited Budgets

PPCexpo has created an account audit report that helps marketers in several ways:

• Determine whether your Ads account is correctly configured
• Discover mistakes in your campaign that have increased wasted spend
• Identify new opportunities to save money
• Measure over 60 key factors that contribute to campaign performance

Explore the PPCexpo reports library to start optimizing your campaigns today.