Stop wasting money on Google Ads!
Here is what I wish someone had told me before I ran my first Google Ads campaign.
Avoid Broad Match Keywords
If you’re trying to reach everyone, you're gonna attract a bunch of low-intention random clicks/garbage clicks. It can be very deceiving thinking you’re getting good signup rates with a low cost-per-click (CPC) rate, but all of this can get you into the rabbit hole of low conversion rates and high customer acquisition cost (CAC).
For example, if you're running ads for howuku.com, a website heatmap tool.
Broad match keywords like "heatmap", "clickmap", "scrollmap" are no different from burning money. Any search queries that include the word "heatmap" will display your ads, such as weather heatmap, R programming heatmap, Power Ranger heatmap, etc.
Get Specific
What you want are hyperfocused ads such as "alternative heatmap for website", "affordable heatmap software", "privacy-friendly heatmap tool", etc.
Furthermore, make sure to narrow it down to your targeted country and device type. Sending them to a hyper-personalized landing page and not just your generic homepage.
Whoever searches for these phrases has a high buying intent with very specific needs, and is ready to buy!
You will get fewer clicks and higher CPC, but overall lower CAC and a better clickthrough rate!
One Final "Gotcha"
Also, Google Ad account managers are scams.
Don't bother wasting time talking to them, they do not care about your business. All they wanted was for you to turn on their auto-recommendation setting so they could "help" you reach a broader audience and hit their KPI.
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Clicked on this expecting a post suggesting that you shouldn't do Google Ads at all. Discovered that there actually was a tip here. Google Ads was the primary acquisition channel in my last startup, but it certainly has to be done right. Thanks for sharing!
Glad you liked it!
Great, thanks! Is there any tooling (especially free) for that?
Sure, you can use Google Keyword Planner for free or paid tools like SEMRush or Ahrefs.
I do not use any tool for it since I already have a very solid idea of the keywords that work well for us.
I'm happy that more and more entrepreneurs realize this, I think it only makes sense for local businesses, where you would search for a local roofing company.
Yes I run a paid ads agency and great advice you're giving.
The simple reality is most of the time your budget is likely tiny in the grand scheme of Google Ads and so you can only afford so many clicks.
So being tight with the keyword match type, the keyword itself (Complete user intent is how I describe what you talk about), geographies, devices etc. are key. Though don't also throw out stuff too fast. It's not always the case for example that desktop is better than mobile for saas but people jump to throwing it out. Let the data decide.
Also...
1 Setup ad groups properly so each keyword has a perfect ad for it.
2 Reference the keyword in headline one and hold it there with pinning
3 Have two responsive search ads per ad group and test different copy themes
4 Get conversion tracking setup not just for the primary goal but secondary goals like pre steps to the primary one. This gives you more data on what's happening.
5 Look at offline conversions too to see not just enquiries but sales. This is a huge flaw in so many accounts I see and the main reason why Google Ads ends up giving a lot of bad leads. As you're telling it only about the leads and not the sales, so of course it optimises for what it sees.
Anyhow, good luck!
Thank You for your post. I received a call from them a while back. Great that i skipped that.
I talked to their team once, spent about 45-min explaining my business model to the rep, thought they could give me some actual advices on what should I do.
Nothing... The guy just spent 5 min teaching me how to turn on the auto recommendations and I did it.
My ad was performing quite good BEFORE, and AFTER I turned it on. 3 things happen:
After about 1-2 weeks, I realize my ad campaign became shit, I went on to disable the recommendation settings and adjusted the Max CAC limit to ORIGINAL number.
Then... ad cost and CR went flat. The Google ad algorithm refused to feed me any leads because I'm not paying a higher CAC.
I also asked the rep how the algorithm work and etc they couldn't explain it and just saying its the machine learning just trust it blindly, they don't know s***.
Great tips! Thanks for that. Im gonna startup my Google Ads journey next month. This gonha help
Good luck with your Ad campaign!!
Thank you very much, will definitly consider this in first attempt with Google Ads.
"Avoid Broad Match Keywords" This advice is spot on.
This is the best tip on time as I'm going to use Google Ads for my tools.
All the best!
People like me, who use privacy-focused browsers, have all the display Google ads blocked. I cannot see any ads except for search ads.
Great post Donal. Quick question : according to your experience, what is the average CAC you can expect when running GAds for a micro-saas (niche) ? (for sign up and for closed clients, with a convertion rate of approx 5% )
It is really hard to say as all keywords are different and depend on how competitive is your industry for these keywords for bidding.
The most important question is, how much is your LTV?
Ideally, your LTV to CAC ratio should be at least 3 times and above.
Say if your LTV is $300 - then your maximum CAC should be lower than $100. The higher your LTV the higher you can afford to pay for ads.
Calculating backwards
$0.25 / 0.05 / 0.05 = $100 CAC
Something like that.
If the math doesn't work out for your side project then you probably should not be looking at Google Ads.
Good luck!
Great info and advice - thanks for posting.
We are planning within 2 weeks time to launch a larger Google adwords campaign for our SaaS solution. And your input is very usefull.
We plan to test various marketing channels, whereas google adwords is one of them, to see which ones provides most value.
What alternatives to google adwords would you suggest?
We are also considering Capterra (since we are a B2B SaaS solution), but are there other channels out there that could be relevant to pursue?
If Google Ad works for you then the low-hanging fruit is probably enabling Bing Ad. Same concept and is cheaper than Google. Probably targeting older demographics or corporate companies.
Haven't tried Capterra ourselves cant comment much on that.
Thanks for the advice. Just started google ads for the first time this week and this is helpful... Already seeing that more clicks and lower CPC isn't necessarily a good thing.
It is worth paying more for the CPC if it is actually converting well and making sense to your unit economics.
Thank You for your post. I received a call from them a while back. Great that i skipped that.
I received a call from them TODAY, I just politely told them off.
Great 😊🙏🏻
General advice for beginners
Thank you for sharing, useful advice.
I completely agree with you. I am also facing the same problem. Besides Google ads, I have been trying to add Facebook ads, but it seems to be of no use. Despite my efforts, I am only getting reach and impressions, whereas they are the ones getting paid. Therefore, we need to explore other marketing strategies, whether they are paid or free. At the end of the day, the only thing that really matters is the result.
True, only result matters. Keep making small bets and experimenting!
Thanks for your advice. I appreciate it and will definitely follow it. Let me know if you have any other suggestions.
You mentioned narrowing down ads to targeted countries and device types. How did this impact the cost and effectiveness of your campaigns?
If you have a CR of 10% for Desktop and 1% for Mobile. By narrowing down your ad campaign to only target Desktop would reduce your cost and improve your CAC.
Same goes to country targeting, some countries have higher purchasing power or higher maturity to adopting your tech and you should only focus on those.
You need to know your buyer journeys otherwise you're just spending money to drive a higher CAC.
Thanks for sharing! Very useful information.
Sounds amazing. Do you have any tips of choosing country for internet startup? Because users from any country usually can use it. But as you said it's better to do personalisation
Different countries have different purchasing power/behavior or needs.
For example, AI tools are super hot in the EU and US but may not be the same as countries in SEA such as Malaysia, Thailand, etc.
Conversion rates can also be very different for the US vs India for example.
I can't tell you which country to target and you really need to dive into your customer data to find out what is the most optimal country to target.
Speaking of personalization, it does help to maximize your chance to convert your paid traffic. Anyway, I've also built another experimentation platform with free personalization if you need to do {{Country}} {{City}} kind of personalization for your LP.
Thanks for the helpful insights regarding the potential pitfalls of Google Ads!
Is there any tooling for these that can help with these?
Sure, you can use Google Keyword Planner for free.
I do not use any tool for it since I already have a very solid idea of the keywords that work well for us.
I will definitely remember this!
Thanks for such a info
Great advice, thank you!! Recently went through this problem trying to get traffic to my recent projects (online radio website - myRadioGlobal and b2b sales website - getvcdeals).
I agree that the broad match is a new way for Google to sell smoke, too much low-quality traffic.
Timely advice! Thanks!
Thanks for advice
Thanks for the advice!