Is There a Way to Get Cheaper Clicks from Google?
The Digital Marketing Salesman’s “I Can’t Get You Cheaper Clicks on Google” Myth Busted!
Bottom line: Google doesn’t give out discounted ad clicks to agencies. Ever. But not every salesperson will tell you that. I mean why would they? They’ve got advertising to sell!
So can you get your Google cost per click to be less than your competition? YES. But only if your campaigns are set up correctly. Here are 3 pay-per-click strategies to help you reduce your cost-per-click and increase the return on investment for your trade business.
If you’re planning to run a tradie Google Ads campaign it’s natural you want to keep your costs down.
Since you’ll be paying every time someone clicks on one of your ads, the thought of having strangers burn through your daily budget (or possibly your competition to try and undercut your results) isn’t a very nice thought.
You might have heard that certain companies can keep your costs down – possibly with direct links to Google.
Those companies are lying.
No company gets cheaper clicks from Google. For a start, Google receives 100% of the cost per click. So if your ads are popping up at $1 per click, and you have a $20 daily budget, Google gets all $20. For that reason alone, Google isn’t in the business of handing out discounts to ‘preferred partners’.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t bring the price of your Google Ads down on your own.
In this article, we’ll explain how to reduce your cost-per-click (CPC), and what steps to take next if you’re considering running a Google Ads campaign for your own trades business.
Breaking down your Google cost per click
There are plenty of technical terms and buzzwords when it comes to a Google Ad campaign, most of which your account manager uses to sound smart.
On your end, all you need to focus on is how much you’re spending on your ad campaign, and how much money is coming back the other way. This is your return on investment (ROI) and if your ROI is higher than your ad spend, you’ll be making money.
The next important term here is your cost-per-click, or CPC.
“What is my CPC?”
Your “CPC” – costs per click is exactly what it sounds like – how much it costs you every time someone clicks on one of your ads.
One of the great features of running a paid ads campaign is that you only pay when someone is interested in your ad. Your ad might appear for 1,000 people who punched in one of your pre-assigned keywords, but if only 1 person actually clicks on your ad, you only pay for that one click.
This helps avoid wasting money on unqualified leads, which is something you can’t avoid in traditional marketing. If you’re putting an ad in the local Yellow Pages or plastering your mug on the side of a bus, you’re paying for that ad whether someone looks at it or not – and that’s why digital marketing your tradesperson business is so powerful and cost effective).
“Is it true some agencies have deals with Google for cheaper ad clicks?”
No. Nope. Wrong. False. No one gets cheaper clicks from Google.
However you want to describe it, no agency has a deal with Google and no one has access to cheaper clicks. If you’re being told by an agency that they have special discounts, it should be a red flag that they don’t understand how paid ads work and that your money would be safer in a bag under your mattress than with them.
Google’s ad revenue in 2019 was over $134 billion dollars. Do you think they’re the type of company who’s keen to cut discounts to a select few agencies around the world when they’re making a bank like that?
No chance.
Those figures don’t just show that Google’s ad revenue is booming, they also show Google Ads work. Google’s ad revenue has spiked by 500% since 2009. In a single decade their revenue grew from $22 billion to $134 billion.
That consistent increase has come on the back of more home improvement businesses using Google Ads to attract new customers each year. The more businesses that launch paid ad campaigns, the higher Google’s ad revenue. Money talks, and if paid ads were a lemon those year-on-year figures wouldn’t keep climbing.
“I still want to pay less for my ads, are there any ways I can keep costs down without losing leads to my competition?”
We’d think you were crazy if you DIDN’T want to pay less for your ads.
It’s true that higher monthly budgets give you more options and more flexibility to target a range of people. Google Ads is a numbers game, and the more you have to spend, the more opportunities you have to deliver positive ROI.
How to reduce your cost per click on Google
But you can reduce your cost per click on Google with proven strategies that don’t rely on Google. Your industry, target keywords, and competition will influence how successful these strategies are, but the following tips can help keep your costs low:
#1 – Lower your bid
Why complicate things?
If you want to pay less for each ad click, lower your bid.
Remember, you’re in control of how much you bid for each keyword. You’re also in control of where you’d like your ad to be seen – and sitting in spot #1 isn’t always necessary.
Higher Google Ad rankings can burn up your daily spend, because the CPC is higher. It’s possible for you to drop your bid and still rank, even if it’s not in the top spot. With a lower position you can afford to keep your ads up longer and attract more clicks (which means more chances to generate a quality lead).
Think about it this way – would you prefer to spend $5 on one top-ranked click? Or, spend the same amount and be seen by 15 different people?
In short, you can lower your bid, lower your position, and still generate clicks.
#2 – Use negative keywords
OK, this is going to get technical for a second but stay with us…
Your click-through-rate, or CTR, is the percentage of people who click on your ads, out of the total number of people who saw your ads but kept searching without clicking. Your CTR is important because you want people to click on your ads and end up on your contractor website. But your CTR is also important because it affects your Quality Score.
Your Quality Score is a metric used by Google to determine how much you pay for each click. When your Quality Score goes UP, your cost-per-click goes DOWN.
So if your CTR is low, your Quality Score suffers, and your cost-per-click goes up.
Keen to learn more about your Quality Score? Get the simple breakdown.
You can help improve your Quality Score by using negative keywords. Negative keywords are the opposite of your target keywords You can choose up to 5,000 of these negative keywords that WON’T trigger your Google Ads. So if someone searches for your business name, but their search includes one of your designated negative keywords, your ads won’t show.
Let’s say you install backyard pergolas. You might want your ads to show up when someone searches for your services, but what if their full search is “how to DIY my own backyard pergolas”?
Without the negative keyword ‘DIY’ your ad might have appeared. You wouldn’t have paid any money (because a DIY’er isn’t interested in your services) but the fact your ad was seen but not clicked on hurts your CTR, that hurts your Quality Score, and that drives your CPC up.
In other words, use negative keywords to keep your CTR up and your CPC down.
#3 – Improve your Quality Score
Like we mentioned, your Quality Score is directly related to your cost-per-click.
The better your Quality Score, the less you pay for each ad click. We’re not saying you’ll start bringing each ad click down to a handful of cents, but even shaving off 10% to 20% of the cost of each ad can add up. In the long run you might be able to stretch your budget across more keywords and generate new business all because you improved your Quality Score!
How do you improve your Quality Score? Well Google is tight-lipped but we know for a fact it’s a combination of the following factors:
- The relevance of your ads
- The relevance and quality of your landing pages
- The relevance of your keywords to your ad groups
If these are starting to become frustratingly technical, well, we agree.
Working with Tradie Digital means you’ll have your own Google Ads account manager to decode every step of your campaign, but here’s what matters for you right now…
A high Quality Score is just Google’s way of telling you that your ads, keywords and landing pages all meet your customer’s needs. And the better you are at helping people find solutions to their problems, the less you’ll pay for each click.
