Pay-per-click advertising is one of the most effective ways to generate targeted traffic to your website and build leads. Though many people seem to believe that running a successful PPC campaign requires a large budget, the fact remains that excellent results can be achieved even with a small budget. It all depends upon using available resources judiciously and making a proper plan for the campaign to maximise ROI.
The benefits of PPC campaigns are great, offering nearly instant results, a limitation in many organic strategies, including content marketing. Additionally, each dollar a business spends receives an average of two dollars in return on investment. Setting up a pay-per-click campaign can be overwhelming, especially as one has to work within a budget. A guide to follow will be very crucial in helping to run a PPC campaign within your budget and maximise the results.
1. Define Your Budget And Lay Out Clear Goals
Finally, it’s time to define your budget before actually building a pay-per-click campaign. For your sake, each of the major platforms, like Google Ads, doesn’t have minimum budget requirements, meaning you can scale your budget up or down depending on your needs. Determine how much you can afford to spend daily and use that to frame your campaign.
According to this, back your budget with a concise and realistic objective. These may range from increasing brand awareness to generating leads or sales – whatever it may be – and its clear articulation ensures the PPC campaign remains focused. This will also help you allocate your budget effectively and make sure that each dollar spent is working towards yielding the desired result.
Pro Tip: Compare your day-to-day budget with the average cost per click in your industry to get a view of what you can really achieve from the campaign.
2. Target Highly Niche Keywords
One of the most important things you can do with a small budget is to prioritise only a few keywords. Do not water down your budget on thousands of keywords; rather, dial down to one or two highly niched, long-tail keywords that exactly match the search intent of your ideal audience.
For example, if your daily budget is $5, it doesn’t make any sense that you bid on eight different keywords, each at $5 per click. Instead, research medium-volume, low-competition keywords, which will be cheaper but still relevant for your audience. Tools like Google’s Keyword Planner will help you find those terms. This will give you more precise targeting in return and stretch your budget further.
Example: A generic keyword like “pizza” can drive many visitors, but it’s so vague that any conversions that may come through can’t be assured. On the contrary, a keyword like “gluten-free pizza near me” reaches an audience with higher intent. You know they will likely go out and buy gluten-free pizza soon.
3. Build Single Keyword Ad Groups SKAG
Once you have decided upon your keyword(s), create Single Keyword Ad Groups, otherwise known as SKAGs. A SKAG is a model in which an ad group can focus on just one keyword; it gives you much more control over ads and is hugely relevant to the search terms of the people using them.
SKAGs actually let you add different match types to your keywords, so that broad, phrase, and exact matches ensure the appearance of the ad only when highly relevant queries are searched for. This is great for spending less on wasted clicks in very small-budget campaigns.
Smaller ad groups anchored on a single keyword can make ad copy tailored specifically toward what the user is looking for; this usually makes click-through rates higher with better conversion potential.
4. Use The Right Bidding Strategy
Google Ads offers numerous bidding strategies, and selecting the right one becomes crucial when one is dealing with a limited budget. In this aspect, Google’s Enhanced Cost Per Click (ECPC) can often become an excellent strategy to adapt for low-budget campaigns. Applying this approach, you get the ability to automate your bid adjustments when the probability that your ad will lead to a conversion becomes greater.
Though there is no golden rule concerning bidding strategies, the ECPC will work particularly well in the case of a tight budget because the system itself makes the optimisation of the bids without a need for a manual adjustment of every keyword.
5. Use Geotargeting And Ad Scheduling
Other ways to stretch your PPC budget include geotargeting and ad scheduling. If your business is set up to serve only a particular region, make sure your ads show up only in that place. What’s the point of paying for clicks from people who live outside your service area when they can’t use your product or service?
Ad scheduling is important, too. For example, if your business is only open at certain hours of the day, it makes sense to run your ads during those times. Even for online-only businesses, give some thought to when your target audience is most likely to be searching for your product or service. Google Ads’ Hour of Day report can give you data that will help refine your ad scheduling so that you can focus your budget when your ads are most likely to convert.
6. Optimise Your Landing Page For Conversions
One of the most forgotten aspects of running a PPC campaign is the landing page-to-drive clicks to your ad. It is not all it cracks up to be. This requires a well-optimised landing page that actually converts visitors into either leads or customers. Your landing page should precisely correspond to the keywords and intent of your ad. If visitors feel that your landing page does not answer their expectations from what was clicked on, they’ll leave without converting.
For example, if someone clicks on an ad offering a “free consultation,” ensure your landing page delivers exactly that. A clear call-to-action, speed of loading, and smooth user experience may help in maximising your conversion rate.
7. Track, Analyse, And Optimise
Running a successful pay-per-click campaign, especially with a limited budget, requires constant monitoring and tweaking. Make use of Google Ads integrated tools to keep track of your campaign performance. Pay close attention to metrics like CTR, CPC, and conversion rates.
This will, in turn, allow you to know which part of your campaign is working for or against you. Be prepared to test different ad copies, landing page variations, and bidding strategies to optimise your performance over time.
It doesn’t have to mean restricted success with PPC advertising on a restricted budget. You focus on certain keywords, use SKAGs, select the right bid strategy, and optimise the landing page. In doing these things, you will be able to run an extremely effective PPC campaign that drives meaningful results. That monitoring and fine-tuning of your campaign are done to ensure that every dollar you spend truly benefits you and helps your business to really thrive, despite the smaller budget.
For more tips on PPC campaigns, please check out these related reads on Marketing.com.au below:
Hannah is an exceptional force in account management and performance media, blending data-driven strategies with a genuine, personable approach. With her strength to connect with clients, Hannah's approach is tailored, empathetic, and highly effective.
