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Three Tips to Curb Runaway Campaign Spending

Jan 8, 2008 Google Adwords, PPC Basics

Yesterday’s post hinted that many businesses are now testing campaigns in Google Adwords and other cost-per-click programs with new online marketing budgets. Many marketers don’t realize that pay-per-click campaigns can quickly get out of control. Traditional marketing metrics can usually be measured over the course of several weeks and months, whereas online marketing metrics can spike on an hourly basis. In this post, I’ll discuss the safeguards you can use when running new PPC campaigns in Google Adwords.

Turn Off Campaign Settings

Starting with the basics on Google Adwords is important. Certain settings to turn off immediately in your campaigns include:

• Content Network
• Search Partners

The Content Network can be a scary place. Having campaigns with both Google Search, and Content Network enabled can confuse and contort your daily and weekly campaign performance, not to mention your spend! Stay away from the Content Network to start, or use a separate campaign with identical keywords and ad text for testing purposes.

Insider tip: Separate search network and content network campaigns. These are two very different placement types that should be measured and optimized separately. In addition, the content network can yield mixed results, even on mature campaigns.

Daily Budget Restrictions

Establishing practical daily budgets on the Adwords “Search Network” is easier said than done. On one hand, limiting your campaigns to a very low daily budget can detract from the exposure many businesses crave from online marketing. Adwords, in particular, does a good job of estimating the impressions required to generate the clicks that will fulfill your daily budget. On the other hand, if you inflate your daily budgets to get maximum exposure every day, you can easily surpass the “real” budget your campaigns should expend.

Insider tip: Set your daily budgets high enough to generate exposure through impressions all day long, but low enough to hit your real expense budgets.

If you set a real-deal daily budget for “Content Network” ads, you are likely to hit your budget every time. Google adjusts your impressions over the entirety of the content network to reach your daily budget for clicks, so inflating your daily budget isn’t necessary.

Scrutinize Adwords Reports

There are several reports within Google Adwords that are invaluable to the novice user, but none more so than the “Search Query Report”. This report illustrates the actual user search terms that caused your ads to display, and how many people clicked them. You can discover several gems from this report that will help you fine tune your keyword selections, and start a running list of campaign-negative keywords.

For instance, if you’re advertising used cars online and have specified phrase match keywords in your campaign, you may be surprised to find which search terms trigger your ad. For instance, your ad may be triggered for the following terms:

• Government seized “used cars”
• Murderer “used cars” to kill victims
• “used cars” wholesaler

It’s obvious that you may want to refine your keywords to either promote, or deny certain user queries from displaying your ad. I.e. adding “murder” and “kill” to your campaign negative keyword list might be good choices. If your business doesn’t wholesale used cars, you also might not want to pay for clicks on those keywords.

Insider tip: Regardless of the analytics suite you use to measure campaign results, Google Adwords can offer several reports that no other metrics package can offer. Make sure to leverage Adwords Reporting features with your own metrics suite for best results.

In conclusion, new marketers need not be afraid of advertising online, as long as you take the necessary time to understand the medium first. Reading this blog is a step in the right direction for PPC advertising news and tips, but talking to vendors is also important. I won’t reiterate the tips I reviewed in detail in this post, but wanted to add one important footnote: make sure your analytics and metrics are configured properly.