Getting results on a smaller budget is the task at hand for so many small businesses. Often agencies will say you can’t get a result for less than £10k pm. This article will give you an insight into how a Google Ads expert manages a budget under £2k pm.
Budget Discussion
Picture this – you’re sat listening to a client who is going on about all the results that they want and their 12-month goals to quadruple business growth tied with the fact they want to utilise paid media to champion the growth almost on its own.
Some scepticism starts to creep up as the intensity of the clients’ dreams are magnified with every word they speak.
Finally, you muster up the courage to interrupt them and ask them what kind of budgets they want to achieve these goals with. The answer – ‘£2k a month max is the most we can afford’.
Now that sentence will polarise a few of you reading this. You’ll think that it’s a small budget but still achievable to get some results even if it’s not going to be at the level the client expects.
Some of you will think that you don’t want to touch this client with a barge pole and bolt out of the meeting as quick as possible.
Some of you will be impartial.
Whichever one you are, it’s important to be able to be in a position where as PPC experts we have strategies in place to deal with much smaller budgets.
So what’s the secret?
The real answer all comes down to everyone’s favourite un-sexy word.
TESTING
I need to make one thing clear before I get stuck in and that’s the fact that budgets should always be determined by business goals. Now getting results for £2k a month should be something every paid media manager should be able to do but it won’t happen if this is the attitude your clients have: – Expect results in the first 14 seconds of launching. – Micromanage – Ask for daily reporting – Don’t understand trial and error – Cut the budgets after 1 month if there are no results The context behind the testing also plays a big factor, if you’ve spent on the platform before and tested, you can expect results sooner.
⚡️My method is:⚡️
Take the budget, let’s call it £2k, and then create a KPI benchmark for your ads, eg: after 1k impressions, I expect to see: 100 clicks, £2 CPC, 6 conversions, etc. Test individual ad facets such as copy variants, and pinned vs unpinned headlines using a £25-£40 strict KPI benchmark so when the individual ad spends £25 if it hasn’t hit the benchmarks it gets paused. Test campaign verticals such as different products, different personas, and different services.
You can’t do too many of these as you need to keep daily spending within £66ish. I start off with just exact match keywords when the budgets are low trying to capture high-intent traffic only to get proof of concept. Make sure location targeting is for Presence not presence and interest. Make sure display expansion for search campaigns is disabled. I use a manual CPC strategy with eCPC turned off to control when and where I’m bidding. Most importantly, I communicate well with clients and make them understand everything that is going on – what went well, what didn’t, and what’s next. Managing expectations is key. That stops panic and allows testing to happen with emotion removed which is the actual secret sauce to getting results. Test, iterate, manage expectations, trial and error. Told you it was un-sexy but that’s it.
What have I left out? Please leave a comment
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