It’s no surprise that novice digital advertisers often experience their first bumps in the road when it comes to PPC budgeting. Every company will have unique goals for their PPC campaigns. They will also have unique budgeting needs or constraints. As a result, there is no one-size-fits-all strategy for developing a perfect budgeting strategy.
However, there are some best practices to help you determine if you are approaching PPC budgeting appropriately.This article explores some of the best practices for thinking about ad budgets and how they relate to building campaigns. By considering these tactics in the context of your own campaign needs, you will be able to assess your budget and make adjustments as needed.
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Start with a Test Budget
If you’re completely new to PPC, there’s no need to overplan your budget and deciding exactly how much to spend on each of your campaigns from day one. It can be difficult to gauge what a reasonable, sustainable PPC budget looks like before you get started. You may want to set a smaller “test budget” to get started. This test budget should be that’s big enough to help you gather data on what campaigns will convert, but not so large that it will sap your resources.
There are many different approaches for determining what your budget should look like. Working with an experienced PPC manager can be extremely useful at the starting stages of your PPC endeavors for just this reason. PPC experts like those on our team here at Webrageous can help you understand what to expect from your campaigns and assist in setting a budget that fits your requirements.
Go Deep or Go Wide?
There are two major paths you can take when developing your high-level PPC strategy. You can a develop “deep” campaign strategy by identifying the campaigns that perform best and investing the majority of your budget in those campaigns. Alternatively, you can opt for “wide” campaign strategy by diversifying your campaigns. Your campaign building strategy will likely reflect how mature your PPC campaigns are. For example, wide campaigns are often well-suited for very young campaigns, for which advertisers are not yet entirely sure what will resonate with their audience best.
Both campaign building approaches have their benefits and drawbacks. Deep campaign strategies tend to focus ad spend in on specific target audiences or product offerings that perform well, at the expense of other campaigns. Wide campaign strategies spread budget across a wider spectrum of your target audience, but each individual campaign might bring in less traffic as a result. Consider your PPC goals carefully to make sure that your campaign strategy and its budget will best serve those goals.
Beware of Budget Creep
Ad spend can easily creep up as campaigns progress and evolve. No one wants to find that they’re spending more than they expected to spend. It’s critical that advertisers spot problem areas and address them before they waste valuable advertising dollars.
Search Engine Land recently cited three common culprits for AdWords budget creep including incorrect location targeting, poorly calibrated ad scheduling, and inaccurate average position metrics. It’s important to regularly assess who is seeing your ads and whether your campaign settings are reaching their full potential. Doing so will help you hone in on your target audience more effectively to keep your budget on track.
Keep an Eye on “Limited by Budget” Campaigns
Keeping your PPC budgets low may seem like a good way to run cost-effective PPC campaigns. However, this strategy can backfire if your budget is too low and your ads don’t reach their audience effectively. Campaigns may be marked as “limited by budget” in AdWords if your budget is too low to serve your ads. If you’re seeing “limited by budget” notifications frequently, you might not be allocating your resources in a way that will yield great results.
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Check out our article on optimizing “limited by budget” campaigns to learn how you can improve the performance of these campaigns.
Know What Matters to Measure Success
PPC campaigns may require a significant investment, but that investment can yield excellent returns. To truly measure whether your budget is on track with your goals, make sure you’re measuring success correctly. Try to think of the value of your keywords as objectively as possible — CPC alone is not enough to measure the success of a campaign. Certain industries have notoriously expensive CPC for competitive keywords. The legal industry’s most competitive keywords easily fetch over $100 per click on a regular basis.
To get a better measure of ROI, think about your revenue per click (how much revenue each click translates to), rather than the raw cost per click. Once you have that data, you’ll be able to better assess whether your campaign is on track or not. For instance, if your cost per click for certain keywords spikes up but your conversion rate for those clicks also rises, those keywords may still be worth investing your ad spend in.
Get Expert Advice on PPC Budgeting from Webrageous
Setting and maintaining an effective PPC budget takes effort and experience. If you find managing a healthy budget challenging, working with Webrageous can help you find the right balance between getting great returns and staying within your budget.
Our team of expert PPC managers has experience working with a wide variety of budgets and know how to create the most effective campaigns possible. Don’t waste money on campaigns. Let us work with you to manage your campaigns and allow you get the most out of your budget. Learn more about our PPC management services and see the different that Webrageous can make for your campaigns.
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