Mike Mancini here with PPCVideoTraining.com and today we are answering the question, how much do Google ads cost? All right let’s get to it.
Now we have a number of factors that determine how much your Google ads cost and I’m going to go into each one of those in depth but stay tuned until the end.
I’ve got a couple of extra steps that are very important that you don’t want to miss out on and also a way that you can get a rundown on exactly what we talked about and compare it to what you have going on in your campaigns.
When it comes to figuring out how much Google ads cost there are a number of factors. With that said, there is a point when Google ads are essentially free. Here we are on Google right now and let’s just say I want to look for a plumber. Go with the old trusty plumber search.
As you can see, all of these ads right here that are identified by the green ad box as well as these up here at the top, because they’re got the sponsored logo on them, all of these right now are free because nobody is clicking on them.
This is a pay per click option, but just having your ad right here is free right now until somebody clicks on it.
You Can See This is a Google Ad
So, if you’re a service business and you’re thinking, “Well that’s great, I’ll just put my phone number in my ad. People will call it and I won’t get charged,” that used to be the case. A lot of people did that, but now when you see a phone number like this in the ad, that is a Google tracking number, meaning if somebody calls this, Google measures that as a click and you will be charged.
But as of right now, all of these ads are free until somebody clicks on them.
So, if somebody does click on your ad, there are a number of factors that go into that cost and it’s not always determined by Google.
#1 What Industry Are You In?
Number one would be the industry that you’re in. It’s obviously going to be much more expensive to advertise, let’s say a industry like real estate or automobile sales than it would be if you were selling apparel or shoes.
#2 Where Are You Advertising?
Number two, where are you advertising? Are you advertising in a small rural area or are you advertising in a metro area with millions of people who could potentially see your ads? Because that will affect your cost and one of the biggest reasons for that is because of competition.
Where there are more people, there’s always going to be more competition unless you have a monopoly on the market, which these days that really just doesn’t happen too often.
#3 Are Your Ads Relevant?
Number three, are your ads relevant? When you go into building your ads and writing them out, are they relevant to what you’re trying to sell? I want to give you a really easy way to understand this.
If you are an auto dealer and you are advertising, or you are trying to sell blue trucks, but in your ad all you talk about are cars, red cars, yellow cars, everything but blue trucks, Google knows this.
They see where you’re sending your traffic and if they check it out and there are no blue trucks on your website or for sale on your website, your ad is not reflecting what you are trying to sell.
So, if they’re clicking on an ad about blue trucks and they get to a website that only has red cars, Google is going to increase your cost per click and they’re going to do this because you’re not relevant. You’re not being honest about what you’re trying to sell and to be honest, they’ll take your money if you want to give it to them.
So, what they’re essentially doing is they’re upping your cost per click saying you know what, this ad is not relevant to what you’re trying to sell and we’re just going to raise your cost per click and if you want to pay us, great, that’s fine.
But if you don’t, you either need to change what the ad says or change where you’re taking those visitors to. And believe me when I say they will keep raising that up. We’ve seen instances where people are paying $10 or $15 a click, where other clicks they’re paying a dollar.
What you’re talking about in your ads is obviously extremely important when it comes to deciding how much Google ads cost.
#4 Are Your Landing Pages Relevant?
Number four, in determining how much Google ads cost, and we touched a little bit on this in the previous steps, but talking about are your landing pages relevant?
So once again in our ads if we’re talking about blue cars, but on the landing page it’s talking about red trucks, there is a discrepancy there. Google sees this when they search your website when they’re scanning your ads.
If those two don’t match up, they’re going to drive your cost per click up and your ads are going to be more expensive.
#5 Are People Taking Action
Number five, are people actually taking action? If people are not clicking your ad, if they’re seeing your ad and not clicking on it, Google is measuring this. If they do click your ad and get to your landing page or your website and people are not taking action there, Google is measuring this.
It’s extremely important when you’re setting up your campaigns, what are you trying to do? Are you trying to get lead generation? Are you trying to make online sales? What are you trying to do?
Because depending on how you set your campaign up, it’s going to be completely different if you’re just trying to get eyeballs on your website to read an article or to see some updated statistics where people are not necessarily taking an action, but they are just spending time reading.
But if you are looking for lead generation or sales, you want to make sure that you have your campaign set up the right way, so Google starts to measure those.
Let’s say you are doing a lead generation or sales campaign, if people are not following your offer, if they’re not calling, if they’re not filling out forms, if they’re not making purchases, Google is measuring all of this and the reason that they’re measuring is they want people to find what they’re looking for.
And I get into this discussion with people a lot and when I say that, they’re like, “No, they’re not. Google just wants to make all the money that they can.”
The whole idea behind the search engine and them charging for ads is to show people what they want and if you use Google as a search engine and every time you go to Google you don’t find what you’re looking for, you’re not going to go back there and they realized that.
I remember I used to do searches going five, six, seven pages deep on Google and now I pretty much find anything I’m looking for right away on the first page.
That’s because they have it designed to show you what you want to find. They are giving you what you’re looking for and they want their ads to do the same thing.
If people are clicking on your ads, getting to your landing page of your website and not taking that action that your campaign is designed for, Google is going to notice that and they’re probably going to raise up your cost per click.
All right. Now I’m going to give you two more things that are very important. I left these to the end because these are ones you cannot overlook, but they throw a lot of people for a loop as well.
#6 What’s Your Competition Look Like?
Number six, competition. Now, I know we already talked about location, but one thing you must understand with competition is just because there is a lot of competition out there does not mean that you are going to have to pay a huge price.
And just because there is a lot of people out there advertising does not mean you have to outbid everyone.
One of the greatest things about Google Ads is they will reward you for doing your job correctly when it comes to advertising your product or service.
So if you are getting a lot of clicks on a keyword, people are seeing your ads, your ads are relevant and they’re clicking on them, they are then taken to the landing page or your website and people are taking action, Google’s measuring all of this and if they see a lot of people start to do that, they are going to decrease your cost per click.
Now a lot of people find that hard to believe, but anybody that’s run a campaign for quite some time can show you results that stand out and you’re just like, “Wow.”
So there are a lot of instances where it can be in a large metro area and there’s a lot of competition, but you can be outranking some of those really, really big companies who have huge budgets and you can be doing it because you are giving the people who are looking at the ads and clicking them, you’re giving them what they’re looking for.
This happens a ton. I can’t tell you how often our clients are coming up above huge competitors, but it’s because our ads are put together the right way and the experience is setup for the end user to get what they’re looking for. That cannot be stated enough. Give them what they’re looking for.
Not Google, but the end user. If they follow all the steps and take the correct path and get to where they want to be, Google will reward you for that by bringing down your cost.
# Is Google Trying to Scare You?
And the last thing, and one of the biggest ones, Google will try and scare you off if it’s a competitive industry or if you are not basically following all the previous steps that we have touched on. A lot of people will see this in a campaign and you can see right here, it says max cost per click of $3.50, but it says below the first page bid of $6.67.
Well, that’s almost double what I have our max cost per click bid at.
Is Google Scaring You With These Numbers
Here’s where it gets interesting. Just because you up your bid to let’s just say $7 to make sure it gets on the first page does not mean that you will be paying $7 a click for those keywords, and that’s where it throws a lot of people. They will automatically see that, “$6.67 cents, no way. I’m not going to use that.”
If it’s a good keyword for you, if it performs well for you and people take all those actions and get to those end steps, there’s a good chance that Google is not going to charge you that $7 a click.
Some instances are, I have clients where there literally is around $7 a click. Google says, “Hey, you need to change your max cost per click.” What they’re doing is it’s an area with a lot of competition and they’re essentially saying, “There’s a lot of people in this area who are trying to get these keywords.
We can’t show all the ads. This is the bidding process. Are you willing to bid up to $7?” We say, “Yes,” but when we see our ads, our ads are always in the number one or two position and we’re paying $2.40 a click.
This is a way for Google to weed out those people to make sure that they’re serious about it. If you’re not serious or if your ads and everything don’t line up, they’re going to say, “You know what? That’s fine. If you want to bid it, but we’re going to charge you essentially $7 a click.” So, if you’ve done everything correctly, you will not be paying that price.
Now, with all of these steps said, there are keywords that do get out of hand and that are very expensive. This is WordStream.com, a great PBC resource and they always release this report that talk about the 20 most expensive keywords in Google AdWords advertising.
And if you go down here, I’m just going to skip the graph, you can see insurance is up to $54.91 cost per click. Loans, mortgage, attorneys.
Now, if you’re an attorney and you’re seeing this, $47 a click I can’t afford that. One thing you need to keep in mind is everything that we just went over. I personally work with some attorneys and in large metro areas and the clicks, cost per clicks have never seen $47.
In fact, they’ve never seen half that. So this is just an average. A lot of these are just an average in the industry.
The problem is a lot of people in the industries are in these industries where they can afford $47 a click, such as a large law firm, however they maybe don’t have somebody running their ads the correct way or testing or improving them or all those other things.
You need to keep that in mind when you see these numbers that come off these reports.
I know that’s not an exact answer to the question of how much Google ads cost, but as I talked about before there’s a number of factors that go into that calculation.
So, to recap and kind of help you figure out where your cost per click could be increased, I created a worksheet CLICK HERE that you could take and go through your campaigns with it and just try and make sure that your ads are relevant, the locations, everything is on that checklist.
And this will help you get you on the right path and making sure that your cost per click is as low as you can get it.
DOWNLOAD WORKSHEET HERE FOR FREE
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