Setting a budget for your Google Ads campaigns is a vital step to optimise your advertising efforts. Proper allocation of your budget can significantly impact your campaigns' reach, visibility, and overall success.
In this article, we'll explore crucial aspects of budgeting in Google Ads and provide insights to help you achieve the best results.
Here’s what we’ll cover in this post…
- How does Google Ads budgeting work?
- Can you set a daily budget on Google Ads?
- How do you set a budget for a campaign?
- How do I set a budget per ad group in Google Ads?
- What to do if my Google Ads campaign is 'limited by budget'?
- A word on shared budgets
- The verdict
- TL;DR
How does Google Ads budgeting work?
Google Ads budgeting operates on the principle of setting spending limits for your campaigns.
You can set a daily budget, which represents the maximum amount you're willing to spend in a day. Google Ads ensures that your spending doesn't exceed this limit, offering you control over your expenses.
This feature is especially useful for businesses with budget constraints.
Can you set a daily budget on Google Ads?
Certainly, you can set a daily budget on Google Ads.
Not only that, but you have to when you set up your campaign!
Your daily budget sets the maximum amount you're willing to spend each day on your campaigns. Google Ads manages your spending to ensure it doesn't exceed this limit.
This feature is particularly useful for businesses aiming to control their expenses and distribute their budget evenly over time.
How do you set a budget for a campaign?
When setting a budget for a campaign, it's essential to consider your objectives, target audience, and market.
Here's a comprehensive approach to help you set a campaign budget effectively:
- Define Your Goals: Clearly outline your campaign's objectives. Whether it's driving website traffic, generating leads, or boosting sales, your goals will guide your budget decisions.
- Keyword Research: Conduct thorough keyword research to identify relevant search terms. This research provides insights into potential traffic and estimated costs associated with your campaign.
- Utilise Google Keyword Planner: This tool offers valuable data on keyword trends, competition, and estimated bid amounts. It helps you make informed decisions about your budget based on your desired ad placements.
- Estimate Costs: Calculate your campaign's expected cost by multiplying the average cost per click (CPC) for your targeted keywords by the anticipated number of clicks. This calculation provides an initial budget estimate.
- Start Conservatively: Begin with a conservative budget to test the performance of your ads. Monitor the results and make necessary adjustments to your budget.
How do I set a budget per ad group in Google Ads?
Google Ads does not offer the option to set specific budgets per ad group. However, we’d recommend you strategically manage your budget allocation across ad groups using the following approach:
- Monitor Performance: Regularly assess the performance of each ad group within a campaign. Identify high-performing ad groups that contribute to your campaign goals.
- Adjust Bids: Modify keyword bids within ad groups to influence ad display frequency. Higher bids can lead to increased visibility for specific keywords, so think about pulling back on your low performers to preserve budget for your top search terms.
- Utilise Negative Keywords: Employ negative keywords to prevent ads from appearing in irrelevant searches. This ensures your budget is used for relevant clicks in your top performing ad groups.
- Continuous Optimisation: Consistently optimise your campaigns by refining keywords, ad copy, and landing pages. These actions enhance your ad quality score which can reduce the requirement for higher cost per click bids.
What to do if my Google Ads campaign is 'limited by budget'
If your Google Ads campaign is marked as 'limited by budget,' it means that your current budget is preventing your ads from appearing as often as they could. To address this issue:
- Increase Budget: As you might expect, the most direct solution is to increase your campaign's budget. This allows Google Ads to show your ads more frequently and reach a larger audience. It also means your ads will continue to show throughout the day, taking away the risk of your ads not showing in the evening, which might be a key period for your business.
- Test bid strategies: Google’s bid strategy options require their very own blog post to allow us to really go through the ins and outs. In short, depending on how much time you have to manage your campaigns, we’d recommend those with smaller budgets and time to work on their campaigns stick to a manual CPC model. Doing so will allow you more control over your campaign and a group keyword bids. Whilst automated strategies can prove useful in some contexts, no machine learning will ever understand your business as well as you do!
- Focus on High-Impact Keywords: If you are using a manual CPC strategy, we’d recommend you run your campaign for a while and then concentrate your budget on keywords that are driving the best results. Pause or reduce spending on keywords with low performance.
- Use Bid Adjustments: Are your campaigns performing better on certain days of the week, at certain times of the day or on particular devices? If so, use negative bid adjustments to pull back on day, time and device combinations that aren’t performing well. Doing so preserves your budget for the top performing combinations and should elevate overall campaign performance.
- Utilise Shared Budgets: If you're running multiple campaigns, consider using shared budgets to distribute funds more effectively across campaigns.
A word on shared budgets
Shared budgets are a beneficial tool in Google Ads that allows you to allocate a single budget to multiple campaigns.
Rather than setting individual budgets for each campaign, you set a shared budget that Google Ads automatically allocates based on performance.
This helps balance spending across campaigns, ensuring that well-performing ones receive more budget while maintaining your overall spending limit.
The verdict
In conclusion, Google Ads budgeting empowers businesses and brands to manage their spending effectively.
Strategic monitoring, bid adjustments, and prioritisation of top performing campaigns, ad groups and keywords can optimise budget allocation within your Google Ads account.
By setting clear goals, researching keywords, and utilising the available tools and data, you can make informed decisions to maximise the impact of your PPC budget.
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TL;DR
- Google Ads budgeting allows you to set a daily budget for your campaigns, which helps you control your spending.
- When setting a budget, it's important to consider your campaign goals, target audience, and market.
- You can use keyword research and Google Keyword Planner to estimate the costs of your campaign.
- It's recommended to start with a conservative budget and make adjustments as needed.
- You can't set a budget per ad group in Google Ads, but you can strategically manage your budget allocation across ad groups by monitoring performance, adjusting bids, using negative keywords, and optimising your campaigns.
- If your campaign is limited by budget, you can increase your budget, test bid strategies, focus on high-impact keywords, use bid adjustments, or use shared budgets.
Here are some additional tips for setting a budget for your Google Ads campaigns:
- Set clear goals for your campaigns. What do you want to achieve with your ads? Are you trying to generate leads, drive traffic to your website, or boost sales?
- Research your target audience. Who are you trying to reach with your ads? What are their interests and needs?
- Understand your market. What are the competitive landscape and the costs of advertising in your industry?
- Start with a conservative budget and make adjustments as needed. It's better to start with a lower budget and increase it if needed than to start with a high budget and overspend.
- Monitor your campaigns closely and make adjustments to your budget as needed. This will help you get the most out of your advertising spend.