Reduce Maximum CPC if you regularly reach your daily budget

Adwords Hints and Tips #4

Let’s say that you have a ‘real’ daily budget of £10 for your Google Adwords Campaign. You tell Google that this is the amount that you want to spend, and off it goes. Google will calculate your average cost per click, average daily impressions, and average click-thru-rate, and will then work out how often it needs to show your adverts in order to achieve your £10 daily spend limit. Once it has delivered clicks to the value of £10 it will stop showing your ads for that day – actually this is not strictly the case, as mentioned in our Hints & Tips #1 article, but the effect is the same!

But, what if you regularly achieve your daily budget, and you reach it relatively early each day? This suggests that you could achieve many more clicks if only you were prepared to spend more, right? Well, yes, but…

…if you really cannot increase your daily budget to deliver more of these clicks, then you should consider reducing your maximum CPC (or cost per click). This will have the effect of reducing your advert position and is likely to reduce your click-thru-rate (CTR), but what it will do is deliver you more clicks (overall) for your same budget, as Google will display your adverts for a larger part of the day than it did before.

Of course, all of this assumes that the quality of visitors you get at a lower cost-per-click is the same as those that you got at a higher click cost. This strategy has different results for different types of campaigns, so please check that it works for you before committing to it long-term, but it is a useful technique to be aware of!

The Author of this series of articles is Martin Jarvis, who creates and manages Pay-per-Click campaigns for a number of clients. To find out more, please visit us at DMJ Computer Services Ltd.