How to Make Your CPC Lower?

What is CPC? It is an acronym standing for Cost per Click, which, put simply, is the price you pay to a search engine (eg. Google) when somebody clicks on an ad of yours.

CPC measures how much is the cost of a click on one of your ads, and as such it is one of the most basic metrics in the case of online campaigns. Its value will be different for a variety of keywords and campaigns etc. Did you know that, in the United States, ad spending in the Search Advertising segment of the market amounted to over $41m in 2019? Big numbers, huh? To cut the cost of CPC you need to understand how it all works. Let’s focus on AdWord since the Google search engine is one of the most popular. To optimize your CPC it is necessary to know what an AdWords bidding strategy is. To put it simply, a bidding strategy is a collection of all the actions that you take to increase revenue. You can decide for yourself what kind of strategy to choose. 

CPC, just like any other cost, should be kept as low as possible. But how is CPC measured? It is the ratio of the amount of money put into the publication of your ad to the number of clicks on it. By following all the advice below, your CPC can become lower than ever. 

A keyword with a long tail

To lower CPC you need to increase your CTR. CTR (click-through ratio) is calculated by dividing clicks by the number of impressions. To increase CTR use a keyword with a long tail. The more generic this keyword is, the more people click on it, and the bid is therefore greater. On the other hand, you may ask why you should use a long-tailed keyword if they have a lower search volume? The answer is in the Quality Score (QS) – the higher this is the better. Long-tailed keywords have a higher QS than general ones, which means using it is one of the best ways to increase CTR and therefore reduce CPC. 

Low bids

When targeting, take into consideration that keywords with comparatively low bids also have a lower CPC than keywords with higher bids. The more competitive the keyword is the higher its cost. Also, set your bidding to the manual, rather than automatic, gives you more control over your CPC.

Negative keywords

Negative keywords help to increase the QS and CTR, which in turn means a lower CPC. They prevent your ads from being displayed as a result of inappropriate searches (which makes your CTR lower ). Negative keywords allow your ads to reach people who are interested in your services or products by letting people find what they are looking for – in your offer. They provide another opportunity to take your CTR  to the next level. It can be a very successful, but often forgotten method – so take advantage of this since we mention it to you. 

Landing page experience

Let’s talk more about Quality Score (the better QS, the lower CPC, remember?). What does Google take into consideration when measuring it? One of the main factors is the landing page. The best way to increase your landing page experience is to try out different ones. You need to find a page that includes some of the keywords in your group of ads. By adjusting your ads to lead to better landing pages, you will be able to increase the importance of, and hence the Quality Score for, your keywords. Doing so all leads to a lower CPC. 

The best positions

You may not have known that Google uses an auction system to estimate the costs according to the rank of all ads. You don’t need to be in the first place to make the most of AdWords, but you do need to be in the top four. Try to aim for the 3rd or 4th position among all ads. You will probably be forced to spend some time working upon your landing page experience, keywords, and ad copy relevance in order to achieve this. It all comes down to Quality Score because it is upon this which Google creates bases its rankings. The higher your ad is, the better the Quality Score is. You already know what this means for your Cost per Click by now. 

Geo-targeting

Geo-targeting your ads helps you to advertise in specific geographical areas where you can find people interested in your products or services. For each campaign, you can choose the location(s) where you want the ad to be shown. You can select by country, region, city, and even by postal code – so there is a variety of possibilities to choose from. By geo-targeting your ads reach precise areas where your potential customers live, which means a better CTR for your campaigns. 

A/B Test

When it comes to CTR in social media, perform an A/B test. Test your headline, copy, and images, but one at a time! Headlines are the first thing your audience reads, the pictures attract them (that is why social media are full of GIFs right now). You need to check what has the most impact on your audience, which means which posts produce better CTR results.  

Know your audience well

What more you can do to increase your CTR (and lower CPC) in social media? Get to know your audience! You need to find out what type of content your audience is looking for. Do some polls, ask them directly, and check your competitors’ social media. Analyze feedback from them and adjust your content accordingly. You need to know what to upload more often – tips, posts about products, etc – in order to achieve better CTR results.

Useful tool

It is always convenient to learn about tools that can make your life easier. One of them is RocketLink. It is a very handy tool that can help you reduce CPC and increase CTR. With RocketLink’s features, you can custom domains, scripts, and thumbnails. Remember what we told you about headlines and images? Treat thumbnails in the same way – they attract your audience, so in other words, they can increase your CTR. Take care of it.
With RocketLink you also have access to data and analysis to track all of the changes in your CTR and CPC. 

Now you know the importance of Quality Score in the case of CPC, you can cut costs quite easily. We also hope that we have helped you to understand how AdWords works so that with all these tips and by using RockeLlink, your Cost per Clicks will be lower and your CTR will be higher than ever. Fingers crossed!