Inside Google Ads podcast: Episode 7 - Budgets

What should you do if your campaign is limited by budget, but you can't afford to spend more money?

Let’s go Inside Google Ads to answer your burning questions about budgets.

I'm your host, Jyll Saskin Gales, bringing you more than a decade of Google Ads experience. I worked at Google for six years and now I'm a marketing coach, consultant, teacher, content creator, speaker, author and podcast host. I've worked with more than 10,000 Google Ads accounts, showing business owners and marketers how to make more money from paid ads, and now I'm here to do the same for you every week for free.

The way each episode works is this. I pick three of your burning questions to answer in detail from the hundreds of comments I receive on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Threads. You can find all those links in the show description, and if you want a chance to get your problem solved in a future episode, drop a comment on any of my social media. Remember, my Inside Google Ads course members get to do this with me live every month on an exclusive one hour call.

And now, to our first Google Ads question about budgets, Raman Virk 8568 on YouTube asks, what do you do when your campaign is limited by budget, but you can't afford to spend more money? Thanks. 

Hey Raman, the best way I like to explain this is with an analogy.

Your budget is like peanut butter and the opportunity you're trying to capture is like bread. You're trying to spread that budget to properly capture the opportunity. 

Now, if you try to spread that peanut butter too thin it's not going to work. You just don't have enough to cover that piece of bread. You're going to have a lumpy, not-very-good sandwich. You want to make sure the amount of peanut butter you have is the perfect amount to create a nice, delicious layer on that bread.

So, what you need, if you don't have enough budget, is a smaller piece of bread. How do we get a smaller piece of bread?

You need to limit your targeting and there are a few ways to do that. 

One of the fastest ways is to limit the locations you're targeting. Maybe you're targeting the whole United States when you can really just target a few states or a few cities. Maybe you're targeting all devices when that doesn't make sense for you.

Be careful though, because you might fall into a trap if you exclude mobile, let's say, from the start, when it turns out that 75% of people discover you on mobile, so be careful with devices. 

Audiences – we talked about this in our targeting episode, episode two, but you can limit the reach of your Search campaigns by applying audiences on Targeting mode.

Fewer keywords and fewer ad groups. I’ll meet with business owners a lot, they'll have $15 a day, and 15 ad groups, and then each ad group has 30 keywords. If you only have $20 to $30 a day, and you're running Search, that probably means you have about 5 to 10 keywords total. That's the right size of bread for that amount of peanut butter. 

If you're using a target-based Bid strategy like Target CPA or Target ROAS, another way to make that bread smaller is to increase your target.

So, let's say your target CPA is $40. Make the target CPA, in this case, decrease to $30. That's going to limit the number of people Google Ads can profitably go after to hit that lower CPA target which makes your bread smaller.

Or you can increase your ROAS target. Let's say your ROAS target is 300%. Try increasing it to 350% and again, that'll make that piece of bread smaller.

All in all, you do not want to have a campaign that's limited by budget because the algorithm is not going to be able to perform properly. It's like you're trying to send it off to run a race with a blindfold on. It just doesn't know what's going to happen. It can't bring the learnings back. It can't do what it needs to do. 

So, if you can't afford to spend more budget, limit your targeting or change your targets until your peanut butter matches your bread.

If you like that answer and you have a friend or colleague who could benefit from hearing it, share this episode with them, or better yet, share it on social and tag both of us. I'd love to meet your friend too. 

Here's another very common question I get asked. Hello Mr Cat on TikTok asks, how do you find out what an appropriate ad budget is?

Next week's episode is going to be all about Keyword Planner. So for now, I'll say the answer is Keyword Planner.

Keyword Planner is a free tool in Google Ads. You can find it in the Tools section. You just go there, type in your keywords, and it'll tell you what the average CPC is on your keywords, and help you forecast a budget.

I recommend that you have sufficient budget for a minimum of 10 clicks a day. So if Keyword Planner tells you that the cost per click on your keywords is going to be kind of like $5, give or take, then you're going to need a budget of at least $50 a day.

I'm not going to say that this is the appropriate budget. Your question was, what is the appropriate ad budget? I want to say that's your minimum budget.

So, if you do that minimum budget calculation and you're like, whoa, that's a lot of money. You need a new game plan.

If you do that minimum budget calculation and you're like, yeah, I can afford that. Then you might want to increase it a bit more to maybe get more than 10 clicks per day for an appropriate ad budget.

Another answer I give when people ask me what's an appropriate ad budget is just: whatever you can spend. If you can't afford to advertise, don't advertise.

And if there is one thing that I can leave beginner Google Ads practitioners with, it's that Google Ads are not always the solution to your problem.

Your problem is you want to find more customers. You want to grow your business. You want to make more money. Google Ads can absolutely do that, but it is not always the best way to do that. So, when we're talking about budgets, we definitely need to keep that in mind.

By the way, you can receive a transcript of this episode in your inbox each week. So if you're online right now, and you'd like these tips and tricks for later, sign up for the Inside Google Ads newsletter on my website. The link for that is in the description below this episode.

Our last question is about budgeting when you're in a competitive niche. Noufel Saeed on TikTok asks, what if the CPC is really high so a $600 budget won't suffice?

This is in response to a video where I say my kind of blanket advice, lacking more context, is that you should spend at least $600 a month per campaign on Google Ads.

So if CPCs in your niche are really high, and that won't suffice, you're going to need more budget! But aside from that , audiences are your best friend.

I'm going to refer you back to episode two. Again, if you didn't listen to it, it’s on Targeting versus Observation mode and how you can use audiences to limit the reach of your Search campaigns to those people who are most likely to convert. So for the full how-to on that, go to episode two, then come back. 

Another thing I'll say is you shouldn't rule out formats like video.

I know you're thinking, “I'm in a niche and my Search CPCs are high. Why would I start running video?” But running a Video campaign can be much cheaper than running Search. Your cost per view may be 10 cents or 20 cents, so you can run a Video campaign and then remarket to the people who viewed the Video campaign.

This is actually something I'm running a test on in my business right now. I have a Video campaign running on a cost per view basis. I'm getting 10 cents per view, which is really low, okay? 

But keep in mind that on YouTube, a view means they watched at least 30 seconds or the end of the video, whichever comes first. It doesn't mean that it came across and they watched two seconds and then left. That's just an impression. A view is really engaging, if someone has chosen to spend at least 30 seconds with your content before moving on to whatever it is they actually want to watch. 

You can remarket to people who have viewed your videos by creating a YouTube segment in your Audience Manager in Google Ads.

Then, separately, I have a Search campaign with keywords like “google ads coaching” and “google ads course” and other products I have, but I have that Search campaign on Targeting mode to only target people who have seen one of my YouTube ads. Because anyone searching for Google Ads Coaching or Google Ads Course is probably not in a position to want to pay for a Google Ads course or to want to spend what I charge for my Google Ads coaching.

And that is okay. Everybody is not my target audience. So people who have already seen one of my YouTube videos, they're much more engaged and understand the value I bring. They are much more likely to book coaching or buy a course and so by using Targeting on my Search ads, I’m able to achieve that.

To sum up, if your campaign is limited by budget, make your bread smaller. 

I’m kidding. If you can't increase your budget, you need to decrease your reach so that your budget matches the opportunity.

And Keyword Planner is a free tool in Google Ads that will be your best friend for budget planning. So be sure to tune in next week for episode eight, completely dedicated to your burning questions solved with Keyword Planner.

If you'd like me to take a look at your Google Ads account with you and solve the challenges you're facing together, you can book a call with me. The link to my calendar and more information about a coaching call is in the episode description. 

I'm Jyll Saskin Gales and I'll see you next week Inside Google Ads.

Sign up to get the Inside Google Ads episode transcripts delivered to your inbox each week, for free.