Studies on the relationship between AdWords spending and ROI show that the bigger the budget, the greater the chance of yielding greater results.

But what about businesses that work off of a tight PPC budget?

If you can’t raise your budget at the moment, it’s not time to throw in the towel just yet. Look a little deeper, and you’ll see that a huge budget isn’t the be-all end-all of AdWords. It turns out that you can level the playing field and even yield a high ROI by making crucial changes in your account.

1. Use ad extensions

Ad Extensions let you extend your ad’s real estate with little effort. It includes little pieces of information such as your phone numbers, links to your websites, and reviews that make your ad more useful to users. Ad Extensions help increase your chances of getting clicks and even conversions, and the best part is, you can use them for free.

There are various types of ad extensions, and it pays to select one that will assist your advertising campaign in meeting your business goals. With automated Ad Extensions, AdWords automatically adds the information to your ad including automated calling, click to call, and sitelink extensions. With manual extensions, you get to customize your ads according to your preferences.

Big spenders usually have about 30 ad extensions for each text ad. Smaller spenders, meanwhile, usually operate on a one-to-one ratio.

2. Use negative keywords

Many marketers whisk negative keywords to the backseat, but if you’re marketing on a tight budget, negative keywords should be a priority. By not configuring your negatives, you’re likely to struggle with conversions, even when you’re bidding on high intent and relevant keywords. Not using negative keywords leads to irrelevant impressions that steal your limited budget from prospects that are actually interested in what you have to offer. Irrelevant clicks and wasted spending are surefire ways to blow your advertising budget without gaining conversion from that expense.

By using negative keywords, you get to make sure your ad doesn't show for certain keywords. It prevents your ad from showing on irrelevant searches, so you save money on wasted clicks. It also creates more chances for your ads to display on relevant searches that ultimately lead to conversions.

Big spenders on AdWords take their time adding as many negatives as possible to their AdWords accounts. In fact, about 98% of top-spending accounts have over 250 negative keywords. The result? A higher ROI.

If you’re able to use negative keywords in your campaigns effectively, you will reap a lot of benefits, including:

• An improved click-through rate (CTR) or the number of users who viewed your ad and clicked on it
• A better conversion rate
• A higher Quality Score, or a Google AdWords quality rating that may affect the amount you pay for your ads

3. Create unique landing pages

Your AdWords account is complete. You have ad extensions, well-researched keywords, and quality ad copy – the works. Still, you’re not converting as well as you should. What could be wrong?

You are probably sending all of your leads to one generic landing page.

Big spenders diversify their landing pages and tailor their ads’ messaging according to them. Prospects respond better to landing pages that are relevant to the ads they’re clicking on and to their search queries.

Developing unique landing pages may seem like a challenge for smaller businesses that may not have design or content resources at their disposal, but you may, at the very least, copy your existing landing page template and tweak it, so it becomes contextually relevant to your ad.

By doing this for each of your campaigns, you get to enhance your prospect’s experience instantly. The language becomes more specific, improving the relevance for both your users and the Quality Score algorithm (which means higher placements in search engine pages for less money!).

4. Track your conversions

Conversion tracking is integral when aiming to boost ROI with AdWords. This process lets you know which clicks from your overall ad CTR are converting. You may use conversion tracking various marketing channels as well as all major advertising platforms online, including Twitter or Facebook Lead ads.

By tracking your conversions, you get measurable data on how your organic marketing campaign or paid media spending is faring. Through conversion tracking, your team can see the numbers of newsletter sign-ups, purchases made on the website, or any other activity you’ve designated as a valuable activity for your website. You can then compare these numbers against your campaign’s KPIs to measure the results of your efforts. Comparing your metrics and conversions, in turn, helps you make smarter decisions about where you spend your online marketing budget.

As it should be any business owner’s priority to understand how his/her money is being spent, it’s imperative to care about conversion tracking, regardless if your advertising spend is $5 or $5 million. It’s simple to set up conversion tracking on your website, and it is absolutely free!

5. Be more active

Your activities in your AdWords account highly correlates with a strong performance. Regardless if you’re logging in to simply add negative keywords, view your search query report, evaluate your ad’s performance, or adjust your bids, the important thing is that you take action.

Regularly logging in to track any movement in your account lets you improve your campaign and spot techniques that may not be working well, so you can test methods that work for you.

In a nutshell, it’s not exactly the size of your PPC budget that matters. It’s the amount of work and the level of accountability that you put into your campaign that pays off.

Drive meaningful traffic to your website, boost conversion, and maximize your marketing budget to the last dollar with help from Aspire Digital Marketing. We harness AdWords and follow industry practices to get high returns for your advertising spend. Our comprehensive PPC and metrics program will consistently get you leads, without breaking your budget.

Ask about our PPC program. Call us at 732.784.3071 or fill out our form today.