When it comes to digital advertising, the biggest benefit is how precise you can get with your target audience, but perhaps more importantly is the fact that you can control EXACTLY how much you spend. While for other conventional marketing strategies you pay flat amounts for your advertisement, think TV commercials or billboards, this makes it very difficult to measure the Return on Ad Spend - ROAS. However, in online marketing everything can be controlled and measured with a higher degree of accuracy, even the budget you allocate to each of your campaigns. 

Now that you’ve got a little marketing money for advertising, you might be thinking, how much will I spend just on Google? That’s a fair question, but there is no universal answer as there are a lot of variables that might influence your costs. Let’s dig into the factors that influence the amount you will pay Google at the end of the month for your advertising strategy.

First, let’s talk about 2 important components for your investment in digital advertising. These need to be set right at the beginning of your campaign setup procedure:

1. Campaign Budget = is the overall amount you want to spend on a campaign
2. CPC Bid = maximum bid you specify for your campaign. 

Here’s an important note that I should mention... Putting more money in a campaign, won’t necessarily guarantee you satisfying results & ROAS. The complexity of the Google machinery is not only driven by cost, but by other important factors that Google takes into consideration:

The factors that influence the delivery for your ads is not only the money you put in, but Ad Rank, which is a mixture of the 2 above mentioned: CPC Bid and Quality Score.

Now, before we get too far down this rabbit hole, let’s return to the CPC bid and how it works. If you are new to advertising and want to keep a reasonable cap on your spending, we recommend opting for a manual CPC strategy, because you can tell Google the maximum amount you are willing to pay for a click. This doesn’t mean that Google will always charge you that specific amount because you can pay less than what your maximum CPC is as well. You only need to be $0.01 above your competitor in the auction system to get the bid. 

In theory, you can have the highest position in Google, while still paying less than your competitors. Told you it’s complex!

As we wrap up here, let’s consider a few common mistakes that people make in their Google Ad campaigns that can cause excessive spending.

• Campaign settings not fully optimized.

• Location targeting might be set too wide for your business.
• Not scheduling the business hours in ads. If you are a restaurant, for instance you don’t need ads running when you aren’t open. People can’t order anyway or call.
• Not targeting for devices. Sometimes targeting certain devices can give you better results if your brand is dependent on this.
• Not setting negative keyword terms can have a negative impact upon your delivery, because of triggering your ads for unwanted search queries
• Keywords match types not properly set. If you opt for broad match, you can have your ads delivered for irrelevant search terms, and have unwanted clicks, that will automatically spend your budget without having conversions.

There is a lot to consider when it comes to advertising on Google, and these are just a few tips to get you started. In order to truly take control of your ad spend and get the most bang for your buck, you might be better off hiring a digital agency that has years of experience over multiple industries to guide you as far as where to put your effort.