3 Simple Ways to Reduce Wasted Ad Spend in Your PPC Campaigns
Tired of investing money into PPC (Pay-Per-Click) campaigns that fail to deliver results? PPC campaigns that waste ad spend can be frustrating, but there are simple strategies you can use to optimize them. Let's explore three ways to improve your PPC efficiency and reduce wasted ad spend.
1. Create an Ad Schedule
Creating an ad schedule is one of the easiest ways to reduce wasted ad spend. The goal of this strategy is to display your ads during the times and days of the week when your target audience is most active and likely to convert. Identify peak hours and days and focus your budget on these high-impact times, and avoid displaying ads when they're less likely to work.
Start by reviewing your campaign data and identify trends in user activity and conversions. Use this information to strategically schedule your ads. Most PPC platforms offer scheduling options that allow you to set specific times and days for your ads to run. By customizing your ad schedule to your audience's behavior, you can improve your budget’s efficiency and effectiveness.
2. Bid Down or Remove Less Important Demographics and Audiences
Another effective strategy to reduce wasted ad spend is to refine your targeting by bidding down on or removing demographics and audiences that do not match your ideal customer. PPC platforms provide many targeting options, allowing you to narrow down your audience based on factors like age, gender, location, interests, and more. While broad targeting may initially seem like a good idea to reach a wide audience, it often leads to wasted ad spend when your ads are displayed to people who are unlikely to convert.
To optimize your targeting, review your campaign data to identify demographics and audiences that consistently underperform, have a higher cost per conversion, or simply don’t make sense for your product or business. You can then adjust your bids for these segments or exclude them altogether. By focusing your budget on the most relevant and high-converting audiences, you'll improve your ROI (Return On Investment).
3. Avoid Broad Match Keywords
Broad match keywords can be a major source of wasted ad spend in PPC campaigns. These keywords allow your ads to appear for a wide range of search queries which can lead to irrelevant traffic. While broad match keywords may generate more impressions, they often result in lower click-through rates and conversion rates, ultimately wasting your advertising budget. A better strategy is to use more specific keyword match types like phrase match or exact match.
As you can see, reducing wasted ad spend in your PPC campaigns is achievable by implementing these three simple strategies. By optimizing your campaign settings and focusing your budget on the most promising opportunities, you can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your PPC advertising efforts, ultimately achieving better results while saving money.
Have questions or need guidance on your digital marketing strategy? We're here to help. Reach out to Phelps Digital for a no-pressure chat with one of our experienced digital marketing strategists and consultants. We’re different because we don’t sell ads–we oversee them and so much more. Consider us as your digital marketing insurance team. Learn more today!
