When you own a small business, there are many things you can spend money on promoting your business.

But when you budget for the inflatable arm man, the catchy retail signage, and a second inflatable rocking man because your first one seemed lonely, unfortunately sometimes there isn’t much left to spare for Google Ads either.

The good news is that you don’t need to spend a lot to live big on the Google results page. As Biggie would probably have had if he had penned his most iconic hit in today’s modern world: “No money, mo’ search results.”

Whatever your budget, you will be able to take advantage of this powerful advertising tool.


Source: Google Ads screenshot

Google dominates the search engine market share with 2.5 million searches occurring every second.

On average, Google Ads earns advertisers two dollars for every dollar spent.

And the best part is: there is no minimum budget and you only pay when a user clicks on your ad. I guess that’s what they call “no risk, high reward”.

If you have a small budget and dreams of big conversions, read on for our top tips for creating Google ads that make a big impact on every penny.

10 tips for creating effective Google ads on a limited budget

1. Set a clear goal

Before clarifying your conversion goals, you should consider the big picture. What are your overall business goals? What are your advertising goals? Once you’ve clarified these, you can narrow down what your actual tactical action plan is.

Let’s say you are making faux fur coats for sphinx cats. (Someone: please do this as soon as possible.) Your overall business goal might be to sell 10,000 units this year.


Google Ads campaign review

Source: Google Ads screenshot

In this case, your advertising goal may be to push a buy-one-get-one-free promotion to households with sphinx cats.

Within Smart Bidding, you can precisely target specific keywords to help you reach your desired audience (“cat is so naked”) and make sure you never overdo it.

2. Build a great build

Set things up from start to finish and you’ll be in a much better position to succeed. That means taking the time to organize everything from campaigns to keywords, ad groups and targeted location. Your gnome fansite will get a lot more attention if it shows up for searchers living in gnome-positive cities.


Google Ads location setup

Source: Google Ads screenshot

They should be high-level, relevant, themed, and thoughtful (you made a plan in step one, remember?): No explicit setup, okay?

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3. Achieve a high quality score

It may sound obvious, but the best way to keep your small budget going is to make sure your ads are top-notch.

Quality is key here. Literally: Google evaluates each ad’s bid amount, keywords, and landing pages and assigns a Quality Score from one to 10. The higher the score, the better your ranking and the better the chances of conversion.

In a nutshell, you want to set your ad up to be crystal clear and helpful to the searcher every step of the way. Get some great tips to improve your Quality Score here.

4. Target long-tail keywords

Long-tail keywords are highly specific and target a single business. A general keyword like “brewery” will not target people who are really looking for a place in your neighborhood to “indulge in breweries,” as they say.

Instead, try something related to your city and neighborhood, or even your zip code. Specific products and services are also great here. “Brewery IPAs Vancouver Commercial Driver” would be more likely to catch the attention of anyone interested in just that.


Google Ads campaign keyword themes

Source: Google Ads screenshot

5. Make sure your landing page is optimized

The whole point here is not to just create an ad that someone clicks on. It’s creating an ad that someone clicks on… and then actually finding the product or information they’re looking for.

You can attract the attention of a budgerigar fan with “50% off bird shampoo”. Google Ad, but if they visit your site and only find softener for cockatoos, they will bounce back immediately.


Landphora optimized landing page

Source: I have too much time on my hands

This trap will not only affect your sales, but will also affect your Google Ad Quality Score, pulling you down in the rankings.

Optimize your landing page for conversions by offering specific offers you can follow.

6. Don’t spread yourself too thin

If you only have a few bucks, spending them on 40 keywords won’t go far. Focus on your priorities: the most profitable demographic, market area or product, and focus on a specific keyword only.

In other words: you want a SKAG.

Yes, I know that sounds like vulgar British slang, or you bark if a hairless cat rushes out of your living room unexpectedly. But it actually stands for Single Keyword Ad Group, and it’s the ideal, ultra-focused way to target your desired customers for less.

Google itself suggests multiple keywords, but we’re here to tell you that it’s actually pretty ineffective.

You can’t write an ad for every search with too many keywords in an ad group.

Let’s say you run a tire company. You probably have a variety of products. However, if you set your keywords to “green tires, women’s tires, small tires”, your ad will not have enough room to specifically reflect all of these options.

The searcher will only see an ad that says “Winter Tires” and may not click. They’ll keep scrolling until they see a link that clearly includes female tires (tyres…here!).


Single Keyword Ad Group

Source: Google screenshot

Meanwhile, SKAGs increase clickthrough rates by 28%. Authenticity offers clarity: users can clearly understand that they have actually found what they are looking for.

To build your SKAG, search for a medium-traffic, low-competition keyword and identify the search intent. In this example, forget your keywords “green tires” and “small tires” and go with “women’s tires”. Then highlight that term specifically in your ad headline so the searcher knows they found, clicked and bought exactly what they were looking for.

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Next, take your keyword and broad match modifier (+keyword), phrase match (“keyword”) and exact match (). And now wait for the clicks to roll! (Like a tire.)

7. Let automation work for you

Maximize your conversions with Smart Bidding and Responsive Search Ads. AI may not be able to create a great advertising strategy for you, but machine learning can help increase or decrease bids on your behalf.

Automation takes into account everything from the funnel stage to relevance to keywords and competitors.

It then either increases your bid when your ad has the best chance of success, or lowers it when your competition is set to win, so you don’t waste valuable time and money.

Ah, robots: you did it again!

(Want to learn more about how bidding works? This AdEspresso webinar helped you.)

8. Embrace extensions

From your extensions tab in your Google Ads dashboard, you can add extensions directly to your ad to indicate your location, products, features or sales promotions.

And. Joyful. Should.

76% of users searching for a nearby service visit that business that day. With local searches increasingly happening on mobile when people are in the city, you need to wave the flag that you are nearby and ready to help.

Add a call extension to your ad for your unicycle repair shop. People can simply click and search and ask if you can help them combine two unicycles in some kind of innovative, hybrid binary cycle.


Google Ads dashboard extensions

Source: Google screenshot

Or if you’re a leopard print toilet paper wholesaler, add an affiliate location extension. This will share front and center exactly which retail stores carry your rockin’ rolls.

9. Think negatively

Google Ads also offers sign-in options. negative keywords: the words you say do not do that He wants to be connected.

For example, if you sold the dolphin keychains and not the glittery dolphin keychains, you don’t want to appear in the latter’s results. All the sparkle buffs out there will be disappointed when they just click.

Check your Search Terms report to discover how people mistakenly searched for you. Here you can find irrelevant queries that lead people to you and add them to your negative keyword list.

10. Measure everything

How do people find your site? Which pages are popular and which searches bring them there? Your analytics have the data you need to measure success and patterns.

You’ll also find metrics in Google Ads itself that show you why your impressions, clicks or costs may have changed.

Take this information, analyze it and use it to inspire your next great ad experiment.

While these tricks to making the most of a small budget are true today, Google Ads is constantly being updated. Tomorrow, there may be even more ways to optimize those dollar bills so you can spend less on advertising and more on building the dancing tube girl group of your dreams.

Easily create Google Ads campaigns alongside your Facebook and Instagram ads using Moyens I/O. Spend less time moving from one ad manager to another and more time making money. Try it for free today.