PPC Optimization Checklist: 11 Tricks to Reduce Wasted Spend

Nobody wants to waste their money.

And yet, many advertisers throw money away regularly on Google Ads simply because they haven’t optimized their campaign. It’s easy to do, but what many people don’t realize, is that it’s also easy to fix.

Today, we’ll look at AdWords budget optimization and discuss some useful tricks to avoid wasted spend in Ads.

How to Save Wasted Spend in Google Ads

Many of the default settings in Google Ads are configured to maximize reach, but that’s not always the best thing. It can result in a lot of clicks that ultimately go nowhere.

Here are 11 Google Ads tricks to get the most out of paid advertising in 2021.

1. Get Familiar with Your Quality Score

In pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, your quality score is like the engine light of a car. Paying attention to it may just save everything from flying off the edge of a cliff.

Here are a few pointers:

• Understand the factors – when you know the variables that impact your quality score, you can start to manipulate them to your benefit.
• Reduce landing page load times – This goes for mobile and desktop, as it will make your sites faster, so people don’t abandon pages before they’ve loaded.
• Target smaller ad groups – Get specific to increase audience engagement.
• Optimize ad copy – Use relevant keywords for your target audience to boost your clickthrough-rate (CTR).

2. Outsmart the Competition

Unless you’re selling swimwear for cats, you’re going to have some competition. Don’t ignore your rivals – learn from them instead.

If their ads are ranking high, study them to see why. Compare the aspects of their ads to your own to see how you can improve, and ultimately, outsmart them.

3. Hit ‘Em Again with Remarketing

Many users need to encounter your brand several times before they make a decision. You can use remarketing (or retargeting) to expedite the process.

This involves adding some code to your landing page, which will then place a cookie in the user’s browser.

You can then retarget them with your ads after they leave your site with the view to persuading them to return and make a purchase.

4. Be Selective with Match Types

Having broad match keywords may be great for brand awareness but it will also waste a lot of AdWords budget on unqualified leads.

With some careful consideration, you can create a balance of modified broad, phrase or exact, which will minimize unqualified traffic. This will mean your ads are served to a more engaged audience at a more cost-effective rate.

5. Ad Scheduling and Locations

After you’ve been in PPC advertising for a little while, you’ll gather up plenty of actionable data about your target audience. Keep a close watch on trends and customer behaviors to determine how best to serve ads to them.

Here are a few points worth mulling over:

• Location – You can utilize geo-targeting to bid more for certain regions. If you wanted to promote your business in the local area, you can set your ads to only display to users within a 50-mile radius of your store.
• Time of search – Closed on weekends? Use day-parting to turn your ads off during less-profitable periods.
• Device – If your business gets more search traffic and ad clicks on mobile, adjust your bids accordingly to ensure the best return on each device.

6. Deploy Negative Keywords

This is one of the best tricks to avoid wasted spend in Ads.

Negative keywords act as filters in your campaign, as they ensure that anyone who uses them to search will not see your ad.

By continually adding negative keywords when you discover them, you will refine your click traffic so the users that come through are better qualified, and more likely to convert.

7. Strive for Balance Between Reach and Relevance

Building brand awareness is always a big concern for any business. If you’re a small business starting out with advertising, it can be tempting to just push for as many clicks as possible.

This is a mistake though, as you will likely incur a lot of wasted spend on irrelevant traffic. Instead, you should look for balance between reach and relevance in your match types.

With this approach, you will be able to get quality traffic and also remain open to discovering valuable new keywords and useful negative keywords for your campaign.

8. Understand Your Target Audience

Do you know your audience?

If the answer is “no”, then you stop now before investing any more in Ads. Before you go any further, you must create detailed audience personas.

Who are you trying to reach? What do they need? What are they interested in? How do they search for solutions online?

Only by knowing your ideal customer can you hope to find them and convince them to purchase from you.

9. Always Be Looking for Bidding Adjustments

Google Ads allows for a lot of tinkering. You can adjust virtually anything in your ads, such as device targeting, locations or time of day.

Another aspect worth experimenting with is your bidding.

Don’t just set your keyword bids and forget about them – continue to monitor the competition and look for ways to achieve more impressions, and a lower cost-per-click (CPC).

10. Test, Test, Test!

Testing is a core part of Google Ads success. Try something, test it, analyze the results, then test something else.

Constant testing allows you to optimize your campaigns for the best results, and over time you’ll see your CTR and conversion rates rise as you create better-quality ads.

And that’s always good for your bottom line!

11.  PPCexpo is Life Savior

PPCexpo is a leading force in Google Ads education and analysis, and the team of experts we have is ready and able to help marketers achieve their advertising goals in 2019.

You can access the extensive PPCexpo Reports Library today to learn much more about your customers, through such reports as:

• What’s Changed Report – This compares several time periods within your Ads account and details significant changes.
• Account Audit Report – This measures over 50 key factors in your account and provides insights on how to improve the overall health of your ads.

Final Thoughts

PPC is never a “set it and forget it” task.

Doing that will only result in minor, temporary wins at best. But it’s much more likely to result in a rapidly-drained AdWords budget, and a deflating sense of failure.

By trying the tips on this list, you can refine your keywords list and match types, implement negative keywords, and find a solid balance between reach and relevance.

Adopt a consistent approach to monitoring your campaigns, competitors, and your audience, and learn from them all. By testing new things, and continually optimizing based on the results, you will cut your wasted AdWords budget to a minimum, and ultimately devise winning campaigns that generate real profits.

Do you want to measure AdWords budget spend? Schedule PPCexpo wasted spend report and evaluate your budget.