5 proven techniques for decreasing your CPCs on Google Ads

As competition increases in the rapidly growing PPC industry, negative effects are being felt, particularly regarding costs per click (CPC).

With overall costs per click increasing on Google Ads, it’s advisable to investigate ways of reducing your CPCs whilst remaining competitive in your market.

Our 5 recommended techniques can be utilised to help lower your CPCs and increase the profitability of your PPC campaigns.

1. Improve the quality score of your account 

A key focus should be on the quality score of your campaign. Quality score is Google’s estimate of the quality of your adverts, keywords and landing pages. Improving your quality score will lead to  lower CPCs and increased ad positions – 2 substantial benefits in an effective campaign. 

A fundamental factor in improving your quality score is your campaign’s advert relevance. You can improve the relevance of your campaign by giving each individual keyword in your campaign its own ad group. Too often, similar keywords are grouped together into a single ad group and then given 2 or 3 advert variations for all keywords. This is not best practice and could result in your CPCs increasing.

By giving each keyword its own ad group, tailoring the search ads to that keyword and ensuring the advert directs to a relevant landing page, your quality score should increase, leading your CPCs to decrease as a result.

2. Expand your PPC strategy to other ad platforms

Google Ads owns over 70% of the search market share, meaning Google currently dominate the search market and are likely to continue to do so. However, that does not mean the other search marketing platforms should be ignored.

Bing Ads is becoming much more viable in the PPC industry and in 2018 should always be considered in your PPC strategy. Bing is now responsible for around 20% of searches in the UK, attributed to the fact that historically, CPCs are lower than average due to diminished competition on the platform.

In essence, using Bing Ads could prove to be a quick and easy win for your PPC activity.

3. Review your keywords and carry out new keyword research

Review and analyse your campaign keywords from the last 12 months. If a keyword has a historically high CPC and a low conversion rate then pause it. You will immediately see a decrease in the average CPC of the account and the keyword can always be re-enabled in the future.

The next step is to use this paused keyword to find alternative keywords to target. Use a keyword planner tool to research new search terms that have appeared in Google results in the last 12 months.

Even if you think the keywords are too long and have less search volume than the more generic keywords available, do not discount them. These keywords still have search volume and will have a much lower average CPC. A longer keyword search term also means the user has done their research, knows what they are looking for and are therefore more likely to convert should they click on your advert.

4. Ensure search query reports are carried out regularly

The search query report is a weekly – sometimes daily – task that should be carried out on your PPC campaigns. Reviewing and then negating keywords that are of no relevance to your campaigns is a task that should not be overlooked.

To keep CPCs as low as possible you do not want your adverts to appear in search results that are not relevant to your business or business goals, as this will waste your budget and increase your CPCs. Develop your negative keyword list and include the different keyword match types to further refine this list. Your CPC costs will then decrease.

5. Adjust keyword bids based on location, device, day and time

Take the time to analyse your PPC campaigns.

Find out the following:

1. The best performing device (whether mobile, desktop or tablet)
2. The locations of the highest quality traffic (by country, city or area)
3. Which days of the week see the best performance
4. Which days of the week see the worst performance
5. Which times of the day result in the most conversions
6. Which times of the day result in the least conversions

By analysing these factors over an appropriate amount of time, adjustments can be made to ensure your campaign remains highly competitive while reducing your overall CPC costs.