Cost-per-click (CPC) is a campaign effectiveness metric that can be defined as total spend divided by total clicks. Basically, it indicates how much you pay when someone clicks on your ad. It is essential for marketers to keep this cost low for the overall profit of their business. The world of PPC is becoming more and more competitive. Unfortunately, high competition in the CPC department can make clicks very expensive. If one click is $15 and you see on average five clicks per conversion, thatâs $75 per conversion. In some cases, $75 per conversion is too high for a profitable campaign. So how does one keep a competitive edge while maintaining a low CPC?
Here, weâll look at why your average Google Ads (formerly known as AdWords) CPC is so high and a few strategies on how to lower them.
Why is Your CPC so high?
Once you notice your CPC is higher than youâd like, the next thing you should do is consider how it reached this point. It is important to know what makes up your CPC and how those individual components influence your account. Consider taking a look at these:
Competition
How saturated is this market? For instance, if it is January in Chicago, IL, and you are a swimsuit company, there probably wonât be that much competition for your keywords, resulting in a lower CPC. There are not many people bidding on keywords related to swimsuits at this time, and the smaller the number of bids the less expensive each keyword will be.
Conversion Value
It is also important to understand your conversion value. For example, a company that sells basketballs has a lower conversion value than a company that sells luxury cars. For the luxury car company, each conversion could mean hundreds of thousands of dollars, and because of this high conversion value they can bid higher per click.
Quality Score
Your quality score is a number Google assigns between one and ten. It is directly linked to how much Google will charge you per click. If you take a look at the relevance of your ads, keywords, and landing pages, and make the proper adjustments, your accountâs quality score will improve. We will revisit this later.
Here are a few ways to fix a high CPC:
Long Tail Keywords
Long tail keywords will place you in a smaller bidding pool. Youâre getting away from broader keywords and landing in a more specific group of keywords. These keywords have less competition and will grant you a lower CPC. You can also try to find similar keywords to the one youâve been targeting. You might find one that is less competitive and not as expensive as the keyword you were targeting before.
Lower Bids
The easiest way to lower a high CPC is simply lowering bids. Your ad position may fall but it can be fun to see how ads perform in the second or third position. If your key performance indicators (KPIs) stay the same, or if you get more clicks, the lower bids may be worth it.
Improve Quality Score
Working on the relevance of your keywords, ads, and landing pages is key when running a successful Google Ads campaign. Your ad copy should be relevant to search terms and any keywords in that ad group. Your ad groups, keywords, ads, and landing pages should target specific things individually. This makes sure each ad group is relevant and will increase quality score, lowering CPC. The same rules apply to landing pages. If you have an ad group for blue t-shirts, your ads landing pages should reflect the blue t-shirts in some way and not take the users to something irrelevant like a sales page.
Now you are ready to fix a high CPC! Make sure the keywords you chose to target are not too competitive or expensive. Also, pay more attention to quality scores. Is your quality score really low? Look to improve a low quality score with relevant ad groups that can lower CPC. If these things donât work out, try lowering your bids or try different keywords! There are so many ways to lower a high CPC, even in a highly competitive channel like Google Ads, so you can still create a very profitable campaign!
Need some extra help with fixing a high CPC? No worries â we can help! Improve your Google Ads campaigns and build strong ad groups by contacting our qualified digital marketing experts at Aronson Advertising today at (847) 297-1700!
