What Is The Cost Of Advertising On Google?

The cost of advertising on Google depends on various factors like the industry you are in, competition, agency or freelancer fees and so on. This will depend on what your needs are, so it’s important to evaluate this before you advertise.

Many advertisers start with small monthly budgets, and this can be as low as £300 per month. Some advertisers spend less than this, but this is usually not effective and is likely a waste of time and money.

So, this really depends on several factors and in this article, I’ll be highlighting some important ones to consider.

 

6 factors that influence the cost of advertising on Google

1. Ad format and placement

The type of ad formats you choose and where they are placed, determine your cost of advertising on Google. There are many ad formats to choose including search text ads, shopping ads, display ads, video ads, app ads and others.

And they appear in different places depending on the campaign type that you are running.

Generally, search ads tend to be the most expensive due to their high visibility and intent-driven nature. People who search on Google see search ads, and the goal to appear on the first page and at the top can be quite expensive. But the conversion rates for search ads are usually the best, along with shopping ads.

Display ads are usually far less competitive and so, the average cost per click tends to be lower than search and shopping. And this is true with video ads on YouTube and the cost is usually much lower.

 

2. Level of competition

The level of competition is a big factor to the cost of advertising on Google. So, the keywords and placements you want to use will determine how competitive it will be and doing some research will give you an idea.

Highly competitive industries and popular keywords typically have a higher average cost per click (CPC) as businesses bid against each other to gain top positions.

And the more competitors you have chasing the same keywords, then the higher the cost.

 

3. Quality Score and relevance

Quality Score is a metric in your campaigns that lets you know how your keywords are performing. It’s a score between 1 and 10 and getting a high score for all your keywords is desirable. That’s because it helps to achieve low costs per click and receive better placements in the ad auction results.

So, with high quality scores you’ll pay less to achieve higher positions and this makes your ads more relevant to searchers.

To improve your scores and reduce the cost of advertising on Google, you’ll need to improve ad relevance, landing page experience and expected click through rate.

 

4. Targeting options

Google Ads provides numerous targeting options which allow you to reach specific demographics, locations, interests, and behaviours. The cost will be higher for more advanced targeting options, but this can help you maximise the effectiveness of your campaigns by reaching the most relevant audience.

 

5. Ad budget and bidding strategy

The ad budget you set is another big factor to the cost of advertising on Google. This directly impacts the reach of your Google Ads campaigns and how successful they are likely to be.

You can set a daily or monthly budget in your campaigns to set the maximum you want to spend. And you can easily reduce or increase this as you like or as recommended by the Google Ads system.

Also, the bidding strategy you select determines what CPC rates you’ll pay. And the system will advise you too on what budget to set based on that.

 

6. Cost to hire a Google Ads specialist

Another cost to consider is if you should hire a Google Ads specialist to help set up and manage your campaigns to get the best results. The benefit here is you get an expert to work on your campaigns who will likely bring better results than if you did it yourself.

But you must consider the costs of doing this. The costs can vary and will depend on their experience, your advertising budget, size of account and so on. And you must think whether you want to hire a freelancer or agency.

The average hourly rate from Google Ads freelancers is £56 per hour. And for agencies the average hourly rate is about £86 per hour.

But there are many who will charge more and some higher and this will depend on things like experience.

 

To optimise the cost of advertising on Google, consider the following strategies:

1. Keyword research

Keywords are at the heart of Search advertising campaigns in Google Ads. So, you should do thorough keyword research to find those with the right search volumes at affordable rates. These tend to be long tail keywords and they can be highly profitable when approached in the right way.

This helps you to reach the right audiences who are more likely to convert into customers.

Use the Keyword Planner tool in your Google Ads account to carry out the research. It’s a free tool. But there are third party tools like SEMRush and others, but these are not free, however they offer some good capabilities.

 

2. Ad optimisation

Another way to improve the cost of advertising on Google is through optimising your ads and campaigns. So, you should test different ads, headlines and descriptions to achieve the best results.

And that includes regularly updating and optimising landing pages to enhance the user experience and get better quality scores.

 

3. Location targeting

A quick way to reduce the cost of advertising on Google is to narrow your location targeting settings. So, you should focus on regions that yield the best results for your business and eliminate any that are bringing in poor results.

You can easily see this in the ‘Locations’ reports and this can be areas you are targeting like countries, cities, towns, postcodes and so on.

If you remove any locations, you will not receive any traffic from them and that will help to reduce your spend.

 

4. Ad scheduling

Ad scheduling is a feature in your Google Ads campaigns that allows you to choose which days and hours to run your ads on. So, you can run your ads 24/7, which is the default setting, or pick certain days and hours on which to run them on.

Start by analysing your historic data to find out your peak periods of user activity and when you see the best results. Then you can narrow the ads to the best performing times.

Showing your ads during high conversion periods can improve cost efficiency.

 

5. Conversion tracking

It’s almost impossible to optimise the cost of advertising on Google without setting up conversion tracking. So, this is one of the first things you need to do before you start advertising in Google Ads.

Conversion tracking allows you to measure the effectiveness of your ad campaigns so you can improve them. It provides you with insights into which campaigns, keywords, ads, bid strategies and so on are driving your sales or leads.

You can then remove any that are not working, and save a lot of your budget.

 

Conclusion

Overall, the cost of advertising on Google varies and depends on several factors as outlined in this article, and that includes your budget, ad formats, competition.

I’m a Google Ads specialist and I have over 15 years’ experience setting up and managing PPC campaigns. Contact me to discuss your requirements.