Reducing CPCs (Cost per Click) for PPC Campaigns

Imagine you have a set monthly budget for your PPC campaigns e.g. Google AdWords or Microsoft AdCenter and everything seems to be running smoothly- how can you get more bang for your buck?

General trend for PPC Campaigns
With lower bids your ads will appear less and in lower positions thus the campaigns will spend less (and vice versa).

Bidding strategy to maximise clicks*

• If you have a set budget which you reach daily, lower the CPC bids 
• Reduce the bids cautiously and continuously over 2-3 weeks, maybe 4-6 times
• Wait at least 3-4 days until you change the bids in the same Ad Group
• Set yourself reminders in your calendar
• Monitor spend and av. ad positions
• While reducing the bids continuously you will notice that after a certain time the daily budget will not be spent anymore
• Find the “sweet spot” (see the star below) where your bid is just enough to spend your daily budget
• In the example below it is €0.25 which is just enough to spend the daily budget
• You may have to raise your bids again to hit your daily budget

PPC Bid Strategy

*Btw, for ecommerce etc this may not be applicable as there may be different bidding strategies

Real time Bidding Platform Google AdWords

Google AdWords is a real time bidding platform.
The ad auction is done within a split second right at the moment you hit the search button.
But do the stats you see in the AdWords interface reflect real time stats?

Before I joined my current employer, I was applying to a job as head of search in a very well known betting company in Ireland.
Funny enough, during the interview I learned that the role was only a Search Account manager position, not head of search (the recruitment agent messed things up).
But nonetheless I enjoyed the interview and learned more about this company.
The head of search with whom I had my interview said that he let the team work late until 11-12 o'clock on horse racing nights, where there is increased search activity.

This was very interesting-because the Google AdWords stats you see are not 100% real time. They are at least 3 hours delayed! I know it well from my times in Google but anybody can see it on the bottom of the Google AdWords interface:

What makes it even more difficult is that not everything is delayed exactly 3 hours. Part of the data is more up to date than the rest which can make the performance look really good when it is not, or really bad when in fact it is very positive. This is dangerous.

Imagine part of the costs are updated earlier and the conversions are updated later, you will see a very bad cost per conversion which doesn't reflect the truth. If you try to counter this by reducing the bids, you will ruin your well performing keywords/adgroups.

This is also the reason why you may see a clickthrough rate of 200%. Some of the clicks are updated earlier than the impressions, so that you may have 1 impression and 2 clicks for a keyword which will result in a 200% CTR. In reality there may have been 10 impressions and 3 clicks.

So, the poor Search Engine Marketing team had to work and 'optimize' until late in the night on racing nights, this activity was only good for the Head of Search to impress his boss.. it most probably harmed the AdWords account performance even..

The solution is not to intervene so quickly, give the campaigns enough budget, let them run and check back after at least 24 hours. Remember also that the Google Analytics data may be delayed even more. After big optimizations I recommend to let the optimized campaign run at least 3 days before you intervene again.

Looking up one's own Google AdWords Ads

Imagine you run Google AdWords ads, either yourself or through a Search Engine Marketing Agency and you want to check if your ads appear...

1. Scenario.
This is what happens in 99% of the cases. You want to check if your ads are showing and if they are high in the rankings so you search a keyword you know is in your keyword list. Your ad appears and you are happy...
what happens in the background though is:
Your ad gets impressions but no clicks. This lowers the CTR (Click through rate) artificially, which in turn lowers the Quality Score (QS). A lower Quality Score will result in higher av. CPCs (Cost per Click). In other words you make your own ads more expensive ! And in the worst case Google might stop showing your ad totally as the system might think "a lot of impressions but no clicks = irrelevant ad".

2. Scenario
You search your keyword, see your ad and you click the ad. This is different, you pay for the click but it may increase the Quality Score. If you do it too often it will count as click spam though..

So, the correct way is:
If you want to check if your Google AdWords ads are showing, do not perform a live search, use the Google AdWords Ad Preview Tool.


This Google tool simulates the search, you see exactly what you would see in a live search but it does not affect the Quality Score in any way. Another advantage is that you can simulate being in different countries.
Further recommendations are:
Setup IP filters in the Google Adwords system (Settings) for your office IPs and even e.g. supplier companies' IPs.

Google AdWords Ad Preview Tool