How to Succeed with a Limited Budget in Paid Search
It happens quite often. CPCs are too high for a certain industry and you or your client cannot afford to bid on the most popular terms
and you decide to just give up. Another scenario is that you want to start with a limited budget and see your return before investing more money into PPC. How can you work with a limited budget? Here are a few tips on making the most of what you have when you first get started.
The major first thing to know is always bid on your branded terms. A lot of people ask why would you bid on your own branded terms if you were the first to come up in organic results? Or why would you bid on branded if you were the only one with your brand name that comes up in results? Well, a lot of times people will come after you when you least expect it and competitors can bid on your brand name if they want to (unless you attain and then register your trademark). The only way to combat this is by advertising on your brand. Also, the more real estate you take up when people search your brand the better and more likely you are to get a conversion. Branded bids are also cheap since they are highly relevant. Bidding on branded gives you more ad space as well as protects your brand and it is integral to having a successful and cheap PPC campaign.
Another way to get cheap clicks is to explore the Google Display Network (GDN). There are infinite ways to advertise on the GDN, whether you choose certain websites, demographics, keywords, or even just relevant topics to your product; there is a way to advertise on Display for you. The clicks are extremely cheap on this channel, but the key here is to make sure you are advertising in relevant places. The biggest culprit here is not advertising to the correct people or right markets. If you can hone your display skills there is money to be made on display.
Remarketing is another great way to push your budget to its fullest. By remarketing you can capture leads that would have slipped through the cracks. These people are known to have expressed interest in your product and are highly likely to convert, use that power and knowledge and spend your precious dollars converting these people.
Examine your ad scheduling! This is huge. Check out your time of day patterns and day of week patterns. If you are spending money at certain times of the day and making no return, while other times of day you are making a killing, shift the little budget you have for a higher return overall. If a certain day of the week never performs, lower your spend that day and shift it over to your most successful day. This is an easy way to squeeze the most out of your budget.
Make sure you are using negatives. You don’t want to show up for any irrelevant queries, especially if you are tight on budget. Go through your search query reports daily to start, then over time weekly, so that you can make sure you aren’t losing money anywhere.
Lastly, keep in mind location. Do certain areas not even need your product? Make sure you exclude geographic locations that are not interested in your service or product and make sure you advertise to the places that do want your product. You can even target more wealthy counties if you get really crafty.
These are my top tips for stretching your budget and getting as many conversions as you can out of your budget. Happy marketing!
