If you’re in the competitive digital marketing business, then you have come across the name of Google Ads. But what happens when competition increases and businesses have to deal with their common issue, that is, rising cost per click (CPC) that increases their marketing budget. The good news? There is no need to compromise on quality lead generation and make your decision for the cheapest ad network.
In this guide, I will teach you proven ways to lower your Google Ads CPCs and still keep your leads’ quality and quantity at the same or better level than before.
Understanding the Google Ads CPC Challenge
Google Ads campaigns tend to cost small to medium sized businesses around $1,000 to $10,000 per month. That is equal to at least $12,000 in annual costs, and costs could run much higher though, especially if you're targeting a more competitive industry and keywords.
Google Ads isn’t the issue if it’s too expensive—its core issue is that inefficient campaigns waste money on clicks that never convert. I would like to solve that problem with actionable strategies you can implement as well today.
7 Proven Strategies to Lower Your Google Ads CPCs
1. Harness the Power of Negative Keywords
Negative keywords are one of the best ways to lower your CPCs. The problem comes from the fact that your ads will appear for irrelevant searches and these users will click on them, assuming they are interested, and then you will pay for clicks.
If you offer selling luxury watches then you do not want your ads to show up for those who search for 'free watch giveaways' or 'cheap watches less than $50'. With these phrases, you can add them as negative keywords and that verifies that your ads will not start if there were to be irrelevant searches with higher conversion potential.
Review your search terms report weekly and add the irrelevant terms to your negative keyword list as an action step. Negative keyword lists at a campaign level help to create terms that should never generate an ad no matter what ad groups they are based in.
2. Optimize Your Quality Score
Quality Score is the score that Google assigns to your ad for the relevance and quality of your ad and your keywords. This metric heavily ‑ impacts how much you pay per click and your ad position, and is rated on a scale of 1 to 10.
The factor which can drastically lower your CPCs is a high quality score. In reality, your CPC can be reduced by as much as 50% if you raise your Quality Score from 5 to 8, where you might indeed retain or improve the position of your ad.
Quality Score is mostly dependent on:
- Click-through rate (CTR)
- Ad relevance to the search query
- Landing page experience
- Historical account performance
Action: Add Quality Score as a column in your Google Ads dashboard to check your Quality Score. Now focus on ads with a score below 7 and improve them by making ads more relevant and landing page valuable.
3. Craft Compelling, Relevant Ad Copy
CTR and Quality Score depend on your ad copy. A CTR that is higher than the industry average will result in better Quality Scores, which in turn means lower CPC’s.
When crafting your ad copy:
- Specific benefits and unique value propositons
- Headlines and descriptions can have your target keyword included.
- Here are all the power words that generate urgency (“limited time,” “exclusive offer”).
- If it is possible, incorporate numbers and statistics when possible.
- Find out different calls to action that attracts the audience.
Solution: Action step: Make at least 3 different ad variations and let them run for at least 2 weeks and evaluate the performance of each ad group. Let the poorest performers pause and then create variations on the things that are working.
4. Implement Smart Bidding Strategies
From the conversion or conversion value perspective, automated bidding strategies on Google use machine learning to find the best bid to optimize conversions. Manual bidding is your way to control but automated strategies usually perform better at less cost when they’ve gathered enough data.
Consider using:
- Bid Minimizer: Finds bids that maximize conversions within your bid floor.
- Most conversions at a minimum budget.
- Set bids based on your target return on ad spend, Target ROAS (Return On Ad Spend).
Action step: For at least 30 days of at least 30 conversions, test an automated bidding strategy. When setting up your first campaigns, start a little higher on assuming the target CPA than you have been achieving.
5. Target Long-Tail Keywords
The search volume of long tail keywords (keywords with 3-8 words) is relatively low, but their competition and CPCs are also low. Additionally, higher purchase intent is more often associated with them.
An example is someone who is searching "men's running shoes" is in the early stage of researching but searching "Nike Air Zoom Pegasus 38 men's size 10" is probably ready to buy.
Action step: You can simply find out the long tail variation of your main keyword using tools such as Google’s Keyword Planner or Ahrefs or SEMrush for example. These longer phrases paired up with their highly specific ad copy should go in dedicated ad groups.
6. Refine Your Audience Targeting
On the surface, broad targeting sounds like an ideal method of reaching as many potential customers as possible, however, this method very often results in wasted spend and higher CPC’s. The more you narrow down your audience, the easier it will be to pick your budget and bet on users that are more likely to convert.
The ways to refine your targeting could be:
- South knows this as geographic targeting: focus on areas where they convert best.
- Competitive ads bidding: Bidding in an aggressive way to encourage competition to buy ads for paid keywords.
- Dynamic bidding: Establish bid caps based on times and locations where the customer performs a search to reduce your bids
- Demographics targeting – supporters of age categories, genders or income groups that coincide with your perfect buyer profile.
Action step: Analyze your conversion data by location, device, time of day, and demographics. Raise bids for high performers, lower or even exclude poor performers.
7. Optimize Landing Pages for Conversion
The quality of your landing page is equally important—not only to you, but also to AdWords, and will to a great extent determine your CPCs. A good Quality Score can also be achieved by providing a relevant, fast loading landing page that fulfills the promise of your ad.
Key landing page optimization factors:
- Fast load times (under 3 seconds)
- Mobile responsiveness
- News that is clear and compelling; that match the search intent.
- Strong, visible calls-to-action
- If using lead forms, minimal form fields
- Related but less obviously relevant: testimonials, reviews, security or trust badges (etc.)
Action: Successfully test your landing page load speed using Google’s PageSpeed Insights and implement the recommendations. If it is for a similar product (and therefore same size of ad), a close match of the ad subject line with the landing headline will be the most relevant.
The Benefits of Lower CPCs (Beyond Cost Savings)
Besides saving money, Reducing your Google Ads CPC also improves your whole marketing ecosystem:
Better Lead Quality
If you’ve done this right when optimizing your campaigns using relevant keywords, compelling ad copy and targeted audiences, then this will lead to attracting higher quantity in general from the leads you do attract. It is easier for these prospects to convert into customers and have higher lifetime values.
Extended Campaign Runway
Lower CPCs mean your budget goes further, which means you will always stay up and visible throughout the month and won’t run broke after a few weeks. This helps in knowing where you stand with your readers, helps you keep them updates and helps in building brand recognition as well as internet presence which may help you capture leads you would otherwise miss.
Competitive Advantage
With high CPC, even 20% saving could prevent you from losing a competitive edge in your industry. Compared to competitors, you can underbid you can save and reallocate some part of the saved money to another marketing channel or maintain profitability.
Enhanced Marketing ROI
More specifically, every dollar saved on CPCs means that you can spend that money in expanding your keyword coverage, testing out new ad formats or trying new marketing channels. Since this diversifies you on Google Ads and makes your footprint on marketing stronger, it outshines any other marketing strategy.
Implementation Plan: Your Next 30 Days
A 30 day plan to lower your Google Ads CPC to get you to action now includes:
Days 1-7: Audit and Clean-Up
- Add negative keywords in review search terms.
- Compare Quality Scores by keyword.
- Low conversion rate and higher CPC keywords are the pause keywords you should use.
Days 8-14: Optimization
- Alternatively, you can try to rewrite the ads for ad groups having low CTRs.
- High value keywords have different conversion behavior.
- To achieve geographic and device bid adjustments.
Days 15-21: Expansion
- Add long tail keyword variations into research.
- Add new ads (responsive search ads images extensions).
- Implement audience targeting overlays
Days 22-30: Measurement and Adjustment
- Compare pre-optimization and post-optimization metrics
- Calculate new CPCs and cost-per-acquisition
- Refine strategy based on results
Common Pitfalls to Avoid
To implement these, pay attention to these traps:
- CPCs only: This is a reminder that the end goal is profitable conversions, not just low priced clicks. Don't sacrifice quality for cost.
- Skipping out on Facebook messenger: Theeralsnd Instagram likely attract the most traffic from the younger generation and these are the same channels where you can receive the most traffic. Interpret precision within the scale.
- Testing neglected: It works not only in one industry but in another. Therefore, test continuously different approaches to your business, and find what work for your particular business.
- They ignore trends: CPCs change all year long on the basis of competition and search volume. The strategies need to be adjusted according to the peak seasons.
Conclusion
Strategically optimized, it is entirely possible to lower your Google Ad CPCs without losing your lead quality. If implemented, the seven strategies outlined in this article—the negatives keywords, the Quality score, the copywriting, the smart bidding, the long tail keywords, the audience targeting, and the landing pages—are going to bring you your advert spending down while keeping or even improving your results.
Also, the Google Ads optimization is not a one-time task which is rather a continuous process. The market situation changes, the competition develops and consumer behavior changes. Those businesses that are always watching over their campaigns and tweaking them will win time and time again over those that just set them and forget them over.
From there on, start applying these strategies and you’re going to witness a drop on the CPC in the same time that leads to the increase in the lead quality, conversion rates, the overall marketing ROI.
