How to Spend More on Pay Per Click Without Wasting Money

Once in a while, I get this request from a client.

“Let’s spend more.”

Ah, music to my ears!

There are so many different scenarios to this situation. If the client had a limited budget to begin with, spending more can be quite easy. A few tactics to spend more in Adwords would be as simple as:

1.    Switch from standard to accelerated ad delivery
2.    Inch bids up to position ads slightly higher
3.    Include ad sitelinks
4.    Advertise all days and all hours

And if that doesn’t get ad spend to where it should be:

5.    Add remarketing to the mix
6.    Advertise on the Google Display Network

What happens when you are doing all of the above? How can you spend more?

There are smart and creative ways to spend more. Here are a few:

1.    Optimize the account. Break out campaigns into smaller and tighter themes. This can dramatically increase impression share providing more exposure and more clicks. Look for the best converting keywords and house separately into their own adgroups.

2.    Geo-targeting. Are there any states or countries that outshine others? Create state or country specific campaigns.

3.    Dig deep into analytics, are there any themes you haven’t capitalized on? Things change all the time, there just may be new trends since your last check.

4.    If not already, advertise on Bing and Yahoo! Leave no stone unturned. Many of my clients laugh about this when I offer it up but then we do some searching and find that some of their competitors are in fact, advertising here too. Try it.

5.    Expand your efforts on the Google Display Network.

  • a.    Try using the new contextual targeting tool.
  • b.    Try targeting with the new Topics option.

6.    What are some of the other marketing efforts and promotions? Can PPC enhance these promotions? Communicate with other team members such as the sales teams and content writers. Far too often, teams work in silos, get friendly and find out what they are working on.

What have I missed? In what smart ways have you increased ad spend? Please share.