Search engine marketing (SEM) is a powerful way to reach your target audience online, but it can also be expensive and competitive. If you want to optimize your SEM budget and performance, you need to apply some smart strategies and tactics. In this article, we will share six tips on how to reduce SEM costs without sacrificing results.
One of the first steps to lower your SEM costs is to audit your keywords and make sure they are relevant, specific, and profitable. You can use tools like Google Ads Keyword Planner or SEMrush to analyze your keyword performance, search volume, competition, and cost-per-click (CPC). You should eliminate or pause any keywords that are too broad, low-performing, or too costly. You should also focus on long-tail keywords that match your audience's intent and have lower CPCs.
Another way to reduce your SEM costs is to optimize your bids and adjust them according to your goals, budget, and campaign performance. You can use different bidding strategies depending on your objectives, such as maximizing clicks, conversions, or return on ad spend (ROAS). You can also use automated bidding tools like Google Ads Smart Bidding or Microsoft Advertising Automated Bidding to leverage machine learning and data insights to optimize your bids in real time.
Your quality score is a metric that measures how relevant and useful your ads, keywords, and landing pages are to your users. It affects your ad rank, CPC, and impression share. To improve your quality score, you need to ensure that your ads are relevant to your keywords and landing pages, that your landing pages are fast, user-friendly, and provide value, and that your ads have a high click-through rate (CTR) and a low bounce rate.
Negative keywords are keywords that you don't want your ads to show up for. They help you avoid wasting money on irrelevant or unqualified clicks that don't lead to conversions. You can use negative keywords to exclude terms that are similar to your keywords but have different meanings, intents, or audiences. For example, if you sell shoes online, you might want to exclude keywords like "free", "repair", or "news".
CEO of Construction Marketing Online. Growing businesses through online marketing!
When using negative keyword lists it's, also, helpful to consider the point in the buy cycle someone is at based on the way they are searching. For example, if someone is using very broad high level terms they may be just starting their buyer journey and in an information gathering mode. That click could be something you want to exclude from certain campaigns that are targeting buyers lower in the buyer funnel. A common mistake I see is brands bidding on any term that could be a buyer eventually instead of selectively bidding on the most likely to convert users in low funnel campaigns and targeting those higher in the funnel with other tactics that may have a lower CPC and higher frequency.
Testing and refining your ads is essential to improve your SEM performance and lower your costs. You should experiment with different ad formats, headlines, descriptions, calls to action, and extensions to see what works best for your audience and goals. You should also monitor your ad performance metrics, such as CTR, conversion rate, cost-per-conversion, and ROAS, and compare them against your benchmarks and industry averages. You should keep the ads that perform well and optimize or discard the ones that don't.
Testing and refining Responsive Search Ads (RSAs) in your SEM campaigns can significantly reduce costs while maintaining performance. RSAs allow you to provide multiple headlines and descriptions, and Google's algorithm automatically tests and combines them to create ads that are most likely to perform well. By continuously testing different combinations, you can identify which messages resonate best with your audience. Regularly review the performance data of your RSAs, retire underperforming content, and introduce new variations for ongoing testing. This process of refinement ensures that your ads remain relevant and engaging, maximizing efficiency and effectiveness without increasing costs.
Monitoring your competitors is a smart way to reduce your SEM costs and gain a competitive edge. You can use tools like SpyFu, iSpionage, or Adbeat to analyze your competitors' keywords, ads, landing pages, and strategies. You can learn from their strengths and weaknesses, identify gaps and opportunities in the market, and adjust your SEM campaigns accordingly. You can also use competitive intelligence to bid smarter, create more compelling ads, and offer more value to your customers.
Monitoring competitors in SEM, using tools like Google Ads' Auction Insights, can reduce costs while maintaining performance. This tool provides valuable data on how your campaigns stack up against competitors, revealing insights into impression share, average position, and overlap rate. By analyzing these metrics, you can adjust your bidding strategy, uncover new keyword opportunities, and identify areas where competitors may be outperforming you. This approach allows for strategic reallocation of your SEM budget, focusing on less competitive keywords and optimizing ad copy and landing pages, ultimately leading to cost-effective campaigns without compromising on results.