Google AdWords is a great platform for running profitable search advertising campaigns.

As you know that search engine optimization (SEO) can take months — and, sometimes, even more than a year — to fully mature and start generating traffic to your website, buying top search engine positions via Google AdWords campaigns is a great way to start your businesses up and running right away.

However, there is a catch.

With Google AdWords (or PPC marketing), you pay for every click that you receive on your ads. That’s literally what PPC is — pay-per-click.

The problem is that when you are getting clicks that are not converting in sales and revenue, you lose money. That is why it is crucial to get the target audience and messaging just right — so you don’t get clicks that don’t translate into more sales.

In this blog post, we will share a few proven Google AdWords tips and tricks that will help you generate more revenue and increase profits for your business.

Every business is unique

Before we start, however, it is important to understand that every business is unique.

From its product/service to messaging to the target audience, each business differs from other businesses. While the tips we share in this blog post should work across the board — regardless of your niche and business type — it is important to see everything in the context of your specific business.

Moreover, you may also have to adjust a few things here and there to utilize these tips with maximum efficiency.

Tip #1: Utilize negative keywords

The use of negative keywords is one of the important tools at a search advertiser’s disposal.

In simple terms, negative keywords allow you to specify the keywords that you do not want your ads to show for. There are multiple reasons to use negative keywords. Here are a few ideas:

  • You can use negative keywords to specify the keywords for products and services you do not have.
  • You can also use negative keywords to prevent your ads from appearing on keyword searches that you feel do not match your customer’s intent.
  • You can use negative keywords to weed out unqualified customers that use, for example, terms like ‘free’ and ‘cheap’.
  • In some instances, you can also select and deselect your target audience with the help of negative keywords, e.g., students who are just looking for informative content.

Here is an important tip to remember:

Google AdWords campaigns aren’t entirely about telling Google about the products you have. It is equally important to tell Google about the products and services that you do not have.

After all, you don’t want people to click on your ads for something that you don’t even sell. It will only add to the cost and won’t help you increase your profits.

Tip #2: Keyword match types

Using the right keyword match types is an important aspect of successful Google AdWords campaigns.

For your search engine marketing campaigns, you have the option of using certain keywords as well as the type of modifiers for those keywords. It gives you a granular level of control over your ads and the keywords they appear for.

There are four different types of keyword match types that you can use:

  • Broad
  • Broad match modified
  • Phrase match
  • Exact match

Broad match type keywords reach the widest audience. Your ad appears for a user’s search query that includes any word in the keyword phrase in any order.

Broad match modified gives you more control than broad keywords but less control than phrase or exact match types (which we will discuss next). In broad match modified, you lock certain keywords with a + sign before them. It means that a user’s search query must include that word for your ad to appear. The other keywords behave like they do in the broad match type.

Phrase match type gives you even more control. With phrase match type keywords, your ad only appears when a user’s search query has the keyword phrase in the exact order. However, there may be more keywords before or after that keyword phrase.

The exact match keyword is the most restrictive of all. The ad appears only for exact keywords and very minor variations. There can’t be more keywords before or after the keyword phrase. The order of the keyword phrase also needs to be exactly the same for the ad to trigger.

The tip is to identify the best keyword match type to use for your business, specific target audience, and products. You should test different keyword types and see what is working best for your business.

Tip #3: Optimize keyword match types

The specific strategy you use depends on your advertising style and your business type. However, it is important to optimize keyword match types after a few weeks.

A good, proven strategy is to have several ad groups with similar keywords. Using broad modified keywords at this stage might be beneficial.

However, as you start getting more data in the next few weeks, you should identify search terms and more keywords that people are actually using to get to your website.

Then you can use more phrase match types and exact match types (defined in the previous point) to reduce the advertising cost and increase profits.

Tip #4: Optimize landing pages

Why do businesses run ads?

Their objective is never to get a click; it serves no purpose.

The ultimate goal of running online ads and PPC marketing campaigns is to get the audience to your website and get them to take your desired action. It could be signing up for your email newsletter, downloading a free whitepaper, joining a webinar, or purchasing a product.

A successful Google AdWords campaign (or ad) drives qualified leads to your site’s landing page. After that, it is up to the landing page to close the sale. For this reason alone, optimizing landing pages is extremely important. Furthermore, landing page optimization also directly affects and decreases the cost of your PPC campaigns.

There are two disadvantages of not optimizing landing pages that eventually increase the cost per conversion:

  • If you don’t optimize your landing pages, users are less likely to take the action you want them to. As a result, you will get a lot of clicks to your ad (you will pay for each click you get) and not many conversions to show for it (less revenue, but increased cost per click).
  • Not optimizing landing pages also negatively affect your Google AdWords ad quality score. As a result, you have to pay more for your ads to show up. On the other hand, a higher ad quality score decreases your cost of running an AdWords campaign.

If you want to learn more about improving ad quality score, read the following article:

How to improve your ad quality score?

Conclusion

So these are the four proven tips to significantly reduce the cost of your Google AdWords campaigns and increase your profits. Moreover, here are a few more tips that can also be effective:

  • Google ads have multiple text-fields you have to fill, e.g., URL, headline 1, headline 2, description, etc. Make sure to utilize all of them. From your brand name to a supporting value proposition to a powerful CTA, use everything.
  • Ad extensions can dramatically improve your Google AdWords results. Test with different ad extensions. The following four are believed to be the most effective for most businesses: sitelink extensions, structured snippets, review extensions, callout extensions.
  • Even if you are selling digital products and/or services across the globe, geotargeting and bid adjustment based on geographical locations can prove fruitful. Based on the understanding of the business, you can start with geographical-based bids adjustment right away. You can also tweak your bids after a few weeks when more data comes in.

If you want to learn more PPC marketing and Google AdWords campaigns, here are a few more useful articles: