Cost-effective tactics for navigating CPC surges
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Alex Hogan 'Associate Director of Marketing' at PushON presents his tips and tactics for cost-effective navigation of CPC surges at Brighton SEO April 2024. Alex talks about what CPC surges are, what caused them, and offers some tips and tactics to reduce the impact on your advertising budget.
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Cost-effective tactics for navigating CPC surges
- 1. Cost-effective tactics for navigating CPC surges Alex Hogan PushON @PushON
- 2. What are CPC Surges? “Increases in CPC over a period time which result in the cost of traffic via Google Ads, or other paid platforms, to rise”
- 3. The cause of CPC surges “This can happen due to a variety of external factors like change in competition, ad position in line with campaign goals, and seasonality”
- 4. No Control Some Control Full Control Increase Competition & Seasonality Increased Cost More Advertisers Increased Personalisation & Automation Automation Strategies Pmax Strategies Poor Management & Landing Pages Minimal Best Practice Low Quality Scores Level of Control The Cause Examples
- 5. What is the challenge (Micro)? Cost of traffic increases which may mean ROAS drops 1 2 3 Campaigns hit daily budgets faster impacting visibility of products or ads Outranked by competitors due to lower impression share
- 6. What is the challenge (Macro)? PPC becomes a less profitable channel and harder to justify 1 2 3 Harder to fill the funnel at the top Less budget to convert users at the bottom of the funnel Rely more on Organic Search which may need additional resource or cost 4
- 7. Industry Level CPCs Auto Dating eCommerce Education Employment Finance Health Home Industrial Legal Real Estate Technology Travel Consumer B2B £1 £2 £3 £4 £5 £6 £1.6 1 £2.6 8 £5.1 5 £0.9 3 £2.2 4 £1.6 4 £2.7 7 £2.1 1 £2.3 4 £2.0 6 £5.4 3 £1.9 1 £3.0 6 £1.2 3 £1.9 3
- 8. Case Study
- 9. The Result
- 10. The Result
- 11. How to navigate
- 12. Google Trends – Spikes in interest Auction insights – Impression share Bid Caps Automated Bidding GA4 & Data Tools SEMrush - Competitors Data Analysis and Monitoring Tools to help understand changes outside of our control Tools that are impacting CPC within our control
- 13. Data Analysis and Monitoring
- 14. Data Analysis and Monitoring
- 15. 1 2 3 Daily budget caps Bid strategy Campaign types Budget & Management
- 16. Google Ads Quality Score User Experience Keyword Relevance Expected CTR Quality Score
- 17. Improving your CTR on Google Ads can positively impact your Quality Score by signalling relevance and user engagement, lowering costs while increasing ad position AKA paying less CPC to maintain or increase ad rank 1 2 Keeps ads relevant Keep ads optimised Quality Score - CTR
- 18. Keywords Ads CRO / Heatmaps Measure Quality Score Optimise Repeat “Landing pages are the first interaction a customer will have with a brand. They set the tone for the relationship” Quality Score – Keyword to Landing Pages Landing Pages
- 19. Quality Score – Keyword to Landing Pages Keywords Ads Landing Pages CRO / Heatmaps Measure Quality Score Optimise Repeat
- 20. Campaign Types - Case Study Mid-High Funnel Cost Acquisition Cost Increases Costs
- 21. Campaign Types – Case Study Display Non-Branded Search (Category) Brand Ads Remarketing Search Ads Awareness Engagement Conversion Retention Non-Branded Search (Product) 2022 CPC £0.15 £1.56 £2.73 £1.05
- 22. Campaign Types – Case Study YouTube Non-brand search Supported with Non-Brand Pmax Brand Ads Remarketing Search Ads Awareness Engagement Conversion Retention Non-Branded Search (Product) 2023 CPC £0.01 £0.11 £3.16 £0.90 Variance Vs 2022 - 93% - 93% + 15% - 14%
- 23. Bonus Tips 1 Get a Non-Google CSS 2 Use a click fraud tool
- 24. Takeaways 1 2 3 Understanding the surge is half the battle Budget Caps, Quality Score & Campaign Structure are key to navigation The CPC surge is not always within our control
Editor's Notes
- What are we here to talk about and to understand why we see CPC surges, we need to understand the root cause The bane of most advertiser’s lives & the reason our accounts underperform
- - How does google define a CPC surge
- To best explain this we can look at 3 element The cause of CPC surges Examples of how these causes occur And how much control we have
- What challenges to we face on our accounts and the day to day management
- What are the wider impacts of the surges
- It’s also important to analyse where we compare to other companies in our industries This chart has been created using account insights that we have managed as well as other data that we have access to will be available on the pushon website after the conference
- Now, what does this look like in reality - Capitalised on the dip in CPC at the start of COVID when marketing budgets were dropped - As advertisers return in 2021 CPC spikes - There is a further spike in CPC during the peak trading period
- Now how do CPC changes impact the wider KPIs and metrics
- THANKFULLY, through the tips I am going to share, we managed to turn it around and reduce CPC year-on-year whilst increasing ROAS
- Halfway point
- Similar to the chart at the start of the talk, we need to look at what is in our control and what is not Interest results in more competition, auction insights to track these competitors in the space and SEMrush to understand their budgets Is our automated bidding causing CPC to spike due to market changes, GA4 will give us a wider scope and bid caps allow us to control
- Example here of using Google trends to understand why the cost of traffic for Stanley Mug as a term may have increased all of a sudden
- Increase in demand = increase in competition
- Advertisers must be prepared to adjust their budgets to accommodate higher CPCs. Regular monitoring and fine-tuning of budgets will be essential to maintain cost-effective campaigns. Is the bid strategy in place right, when costs are increasing Are the campaigns in place delivering. You need to increase conversion rate and/or AOV. Can Pmax do this for example
- Take it back to basics Quality score impacts CPC Good quality score = lower CPC
- If we are seeing our CPCs spike, always look at CTR Need to have a constant rotation of keeping ads relevant and optimizing
- Google wants to reward advertisers with strong landing pages
- implement the following measured approach to optimise quality score across all its 4 major components keywords, ad copy/assets and landing page, following a 30-days performance monitor to observe changes & repeat optimisation process
- -b2b client -high funnel and prospecting becoming expensive -impacts costs at on the bottom line
- Combine on-brand search with pmax with account level negatives and display By combining the CRM and the account we were able to effectively manage lead quality in line with the changes
- CSS Providers 20% saving which can result in 20% more traffic for your spend Click Fraud Click fraud affects almost every industry, with 90% of all campaigns on Google Ads being impacted in some capacity. If cost of traffic increases we want to increase conversion rate and therefore a tool like this increases traffic quality
- - It is really important that when analysing CPC surges that we know what is within our control and what is not