How To CRUSH Google Ads with a Small Budget

when I first started my Google ads agency I ran successful ad campaigns for clients with tiny budgets as little as $100 per month that's just over $3 per day now the good news is you can absolutely succeed with Google ads with a small budget and in this video I'm going to show you how Okay so let's start by defining what a small budget actually is when we're talking about Google ads now I would Define a small budget is anything less than $3,000 per month so anything less than $100 per day and a tiny budget is

anything less than $600 per month so $20 per day or less now like I've already said you can absolutely succeed with a small Google ads budget you can succeed with a tiny Google ads budget that is possible and actually I do recommend that a lot of businesses start with a small budget because initially when you first start running ad campaigns on the platform you might not know what works you might not have the skill to make it profitable from day one so it makes a lot of sense to start small and if you lose a

little bit of money early on it's not the end of the world then once you do develop the skills once you know what you're doing once you've been able to work out which combin of keywords and ads work for your business and you know that it's profitable you can then always scale from there I think that's quite a smart way of doing things however when you are operating with a small budget there are changes that you need to make to Google ad campaigns you do need to do things a little bit differently and those are

some of the things I want to run through in this video so let's get started so the first point I want to make is around campaign types okay so when you create a new Google ad campaign you'll very quickly uh be presented with what I've got on the screen in front of me right now where you need to select a campaign type so the first thing I'll say is I think it's really important to just pick the one campaign type if you are operating with a small Google I budget you don't want to have a

search campaign and a display campaign and a shopping campaign and all these various different options because that will spread your budget too thinly across different campaigns and that's going to make it much more difficult and take a lot longer for you to work out what's working and what's not working both you as the advertiser but also Google with this optimization process we know how important that is to getting us the best possible results Google needs data to be able to optimize our campaign and be able to make adjustments and that can really help improve our

results if you've got a little bit of budget spent over here you've got a conversion via here the other day and you got one of these three days ago and then there was a few clicks this morning it's like there's just not enough information being gathered fast enough for you to be able to optimize a campaign so I would recommend you stick with one campaign type and I think if you're operating with a small budget where I'd put that is in search search is the most obvious intuitive part of Google ads it's what we all

think of when we think Google ads particularly beginners you think I'm going to go on Google search for something and I'm going to see ads that are related to my search um pop up it's easy to understand this often why I recommend beginners start with search alongside businesses to operate with small budgets I appreciate some small budget businesses will be beginners some won't but I think search is is a good place to be performance Max I absolutely love you might be thinking well if you're going to go with one campaign type why would you not

just use performance Max because if you're not familiar performance Max effectively incorporates all the other campaign types into it and um it's kind of like a One-Stop shop for Google advertising and it's brilliant and I really like performance Max but I wouldn't recommend you use performance max if you're operating with a small budget for firstly the same reason I just mentioned performance Max incorporates all these various different things and if you've got a little bit of budget being spent on a YouTube ad and a little bit of budget spent in Search and a little bit

of budget spent in display and all over the place it's going to be difficult for both you and Google to optimize but also performance Max because it is a campaign type where you are handing over much more control as an Advertiser to Google it relies on data even more than the other campaign types so we typically see performance Max campaigns perform much better in ad accounts to have a lot more conversion history because Google can see this type of person converts on this type of day via this uh network via this you know they have

all the data to be able to get you the right results the best results possible if you don't have much data in your ad account and if it's brand new or very new that's going to be the case but also if you're spending a small budget you are just going to most likely be generating less conversions than businesses that operate with larger budgets um then performance Max is not the way to go in my opinion now that might absolutely change so once you've got your search campaign working with a small budget and then you're looking

to scale you've got some conversion history in your ad account absolutely you could look to incorporate performance Max and that's something we do with clients all the time but I think whilst you're in that small budget phase better stick with search I have seen I should quickly mention that for e-commerce businesses operating with a small budget just using a shopping campaign instead of search can work well might be something that you want to test if I was to give like a a a a broad recommendation even to e-commerce businesses I would stay still stick with

search but if let's say you're operating with a small budget and you're an e-commerce business and you've tried a search campaign it didn't work then maybe look to explore shopping obviously all other types of businesses anything Leen service based etc etc um search is going to be the way to go on that point number two is to only focus on one offer now you most likely have a range of different products and services that you sell and could sell uh to people via Google ads but I would like you if you're only operating with a

small budget to just stick to the one to start with one of the reasons for that is exactly what we just described in the previous point it's consolidating data you advertising lots of different Services lots of different products you're going to generate a conversion here a lead there or a you click it's all going to be too spread thin you're not going to be able to optimize either you or Google whereas if you focus things down onto the uh onto the one offer you get much better data so that then leads to the question of

which product or service should you offer so what I'd recommend you start with is your best performer to date assuming you have some data so if you've been running Google ads already let's say you've been advertising multiple products but you are operating with a small budget you want to consolidate down to just um the one well just take a look at which one has performed best from a return on ad spend standpoint and go ahead and use that one if you're advertising multiple different Services take a look at which one uh does best in terms

of a cost per lead basis um assuming you know your services are roughly equal in value if there some that are much more valuable but the leads cost more you know you can go with those that's fine there's just a bit of Common Sense there I wanted to quickly mention but yeah go with your best performers if you've been advertising elsewhere you're new to Google ads if you advertising elsewhere and you still have data from other marketing channels other advertising platforms that let you know which ones are the best performers then again go with those

what is sold best elsewhere is a good chance that will sell best in Google ads as well so you can absolutely use that if you don't have either of those things you haven't been advertising you're brand new you haven't been marketing but you have a range of products and services um to sell I would focus in on the ones that have a higher value because it's easier with Google ads to with all advertising to be profitable if you are advertising something that has a higher value I'll give you example let's say you're selling a $50

product via Google ad campaigns now it might cost you $20 in terms of Google ad cost so cost per conversion to get that sale now if instead of selling a $50 product you sell a $500 product that's 10 times as much in terms of the the revenue you bring in when you make that sale but it probably won't cost you 10 times as much in terms of the Google ad spend so instead of it being $20 to generate that conversion it's unlikely to go up all the way to $200 it might go from $20 to

$80 let's say it's going to be more because you're selling a more expensive thing that's more difficult to do but it's not proportional so it's just easier to generate a profit if you're selling things with a higher value so that's something that I would uh recommend you think about if you don't have data on what's your best sellers and what what performs best and one of the reasons why we do this why we want to go with our best performer and why we want to consolidate down is because we want this budget that you've got

that's small at the moment to be as profit Prof as possible you want it to go as far as possible because if that works and is nicely profitable that's going to allow you to scale within that offer focusing on that offer but also it's going to allow you to then incorporate other products and services and you think oh great we've got when this is working really well nicely profitable here we can reinvest some of that into other Google ad campaigns for other products and services that we sell and look to expand and see if we

can get those profitable and grow the business that way number three is to focus on smaller locations where possible so I've just gone a little bit further on from where we were at the campus cign type to another part of uh when you're creating a new Google ad um campaign and I'm in the location section now this campaign is set up default to be United Kingdom and let's assume that we're advertising a chain of gyms in the UK so we could advertise to the whole of UK because perhaps we you know we serve lots of

different markets there's lots of different gyms around the country but in that sort of scenario what I think is best when operating with a small budget is to get more specific so we can click on enter another location and then advance search and then you know we've got a chain of gyms but perhaps our one is um one of a new facility one of our most impressive facilities and there's lots of capacity so we want to particularly advertise that right so we could go ahead and enter in uh Oxford as a city you could look

to include that in here and then you can see the area in the map uh just targeting that we could always in that sort of business switch to a radius targeting instead if we feel like people are willing to travel um a little bit further I mean 20 mi is probably a little bit far for a gym uh but we could add in say 10 miles and we could look to do something like that instead you know you're going to have to decide what's the best approach depending on your business and how far either you're

willing to travel to people or they're willing to travel to you depending on on how you're you're set up but focusing in on a core specific location um is not something I'd recommend businesses do with larger budgets because you are going to miss out on potential conversions uh leads sales if you can actually serve nationally internationally or in larger geographical areas if you can actually serve those people um but with smaller budgets I think it makes sense when you go more location specific as well you can then tailor your campaigns to that location so coming

back to the example of advertising a gym within Oxford we would want to make sure that the place name is obviously in the keywords that we're targeting but it's also in all the ad copy it's in all the ad assets to make that AD stand out much more and resonate much more with people searching for a gym in that location that'll make it much more likely that people will click that'll make it much more likely that people will convert and The Campaign Will then be more profitable which as we mentioned in the previous Point allows

you to then scale it and reinvest and go from a small Google ads budget to hopefully a large one that is producing um fantastic results so this is not strictly necessary if you're like I've got a small budget but I still want to advertise you know in a broad area or nationally absolutely fine that is okay but just something to think about if you're thinking of ways of like I just feel like our campaign is spread too thinly we're not getting data we need you can try bringing it in making it more uh tightly uh

organized from a geographic standpoint and then then tailor that campaign more specifically to that location and you'll likely see better results Point number four is to Target less expensive keywords now this is not something that I would usually recommend I'll explain a bit more about that um in a second but just to show you exactly what it is that that I'm talking about here I I'll run through a quick example for you so I'm back in our example um Google ad account I'm just going to come up here and search for the Keyword Planner and

then we'll jump into the keyword planal I'm going to go ahead and click on discover new keywords I'm going to use a different example this time let's assume that I'm running a campaign for a business um that offers gardening Services now what we're looking for here is obviously Google has given us a number of keyword ideas that are related to our sort of core broad term that describes what this what this business offers and then what I want you to do is go ahead and and take check out this column here where it says top

of page bid high range so to be at the top of the page um most of the time for these keywords this is most likely what you're going to end up paying in terms of a a cost per click right and then when we take a look at these we will see that some of these keywords are going to be more or less expensive there's going to be variations so for example landscaping near me is £391 uh Gardener near me is £246 so what I would do is I would have a scroll through these and

have a look and see if you can find ones on the less expensive side so for example if gardening Services is a broad term that accurately describes the services offered for this business Gardener near me actually seems like quite a good option and it's on the cheaper end of things it's £246 in comparison to a bunch of the others um and then you can go through these and you can start to pick out you know another one there Garden maintenance near me well that sounds pretty dead on and that's cheaper in a215 and you can

see that um there are going to be quite a lot of variation some keywords are going to be twice as expensive as others you might want to avoid the ones in this scenario that are well into the3 and go with the ones that are closer to the twos yard cleaning services that may or may not be applicable depending on on the services and that you offer but you can come through and think okay Landscaping Company near me when I've got a small budget of £455 probably isn't the way to go weed treatment for lawn at

just over a pound is significantly less maybe that's something you offer maybe that's something um that you don't now when you're going through these you do need to obviously not just look at the top of page bid high range you also need to keep in mind the keyword and make sure that for example this this one here weed treatment for lawn is nice and inexpensive but if that's not actually something you you do other types of ging Services obviously don't therefore go ahead and and Target that keyword but you can find um various options in

here and you can go with the ones that are less expensive I think when you've got a smaller budget you want to make sure you've got a decent click volume and that's going to help you and Google optimize the campaigns and targeting keywords that cost half as much or less and some of the more expensive ones that you could be bidding on is a bit of a no-brainer now this isn't perfect and the reason why I said this isn't something I'd usually recommend is is that the keywords that are less expensive to Target are usually

less expensive to Target for a reason it's because either they typically don't convert as well or they do convert but the value of the customer is less so I imagine that's kind of what's going on here right so weed treatment for lawn is significantly less expensive at just over a pound than Landscaping Company near me and I imagine part of what's going on there is that um Landscaping Company near me the people that click on become a lead and go on and use Services they probably spend a lot more than people that just want a

simple weed treatment landscaping services might be you know Landscaping Company might be something a lot more significant and therefore higher value so it isn't just always go with the least expensive keywords that's going to get you the best return on ad spend most profitable campaigns because that quality Factor either from a value or a conversion rate is factored in so as you look to spend more and you scale adding in some of the more expensive keywords that might produce higher value customers is absolutely fine but what we're doing at the beginning is we're trying to

get you results with your small budget that are profitable that will allow you to scale and if with a small budget you know let's say you're spending $1,000 a month okay and you've got so what's that $30 a day if you're going to be spending targeting keywords that cost5 six $7 a click you're only looking at like six clicks a day and it's going to be so difficult for you and Google to be able to optimize those campaigns and learn and work out what works whereas if you're targeting something that's closer to $2 a click

you're going to get 15 clicks a day you're going to get that much more data that much more likely to work out what works and be able to optimize those campaigns so it is not something I recommend with large budgets but with small budgets I think it's a good way to go now there are a couple of other points that I want to make around using small budgets when it comes to your Google ad campaigns before I do that just want to very quickly let you know about our done for you Google ad services so

Mike agency can create manage and optimize your Google ad campaigns for you we can take all the workload off your hands we can help you get better results than what you're currently getting almost certainly we've probably worked with a business just like yours in the past and if you are ready to take that step from a small Google ads budget and really scale and take your Google ads Next Level and have them do that much more for your business we can absolutely help you with that so there is a link in a video description below

you can click on that and go ahead and book in a free call with one of our team members completely no obligation where you can just find out more about what it is that we do and how we might be able to help so if you're interested go ahead and book that free call and hopefully we get a chance to work together so Point number five is to pre-qualify with your ad copy now the way Google ADS works is that you only pay Google if someone actually clicks on your ad if they don't click then

you haven't paid anything you haven't used up any of your small Google ad budget so you can put certain things in your ad copy certain words and I'll get some examples in a second that will put off people that aren't suitable they'll think oh this isn't for me and they don't click now those people were unlikely to convert anyway so if you don't put them off they'll probably click you'll end up paying for it and then they won't convert and that will be a waste of budget where is if you do put in things to

really pre-qualify people that can help this is so important with a small budget because we need every click to go as far as it possibly can larger businesses with larger budgets are normally more willing to get more sort of Market penetration and they're they're happy to potentially not convert a quite high percentage of clicks to actual customers because they want those people going to the website they know they're going to retarget them there's there's more a bit more of a brand exposure play um going on there but with smaller budgets we need every click to

count as much we can and we can prequalify so let's have a look at an example okay so to demonstrate this I'm back in our example um Google ad account I'm in that new Google ad campaign creation process I've just skipped ahead a little bit to where you create um the ads themselves and we're in the headline section so if we go back and use the previous example that we used when I was going through the keywords that is a gardening Services business and I believe one of the key words that we identified that was

relatively inexpensive was um Garden maintenance near me or something along those lines um if we had a business like that we could add in you know obviously we could add in uh Garden maintenance CU that's one of the most important things in the service but as one of the headlines we could add in something like starting from $500 per month and you can see how that would do such a good job of putting off people that are looking for a gardening maintenance gardening service that's way less expensive than that perhaps people with smaller Gardens you're

only after people with much larger Gardens and then those people therefore aren't going to click on the ad and that means it's not going to cost you uh money as a Google Advertiser and you can only pay for clicks from people that are like yeah sure I was expecting my gardening to be $2,000 a month cuz I've got this massive great big yard and it needs a lot of work and all that sort of thing so so that's absolutely fine and that allows your budget to go further now one thing I will quickly mention about

this as well is if we added some others in uh just so I can demonstrate you know let's say we add in excellent customer service and uh family run business I mean there's going to be all sorts of things you could add in here right that are going to sell your your products and services what we can do here is we can guarant guantee that this particular headline always shows up um in our ad by pinning it so if we click on this little pin we can say look I always want this to show up

um in position one so no matter what combination of headlines you use it's always going to be position one starting 500 $500 a month in this case that might be a little bit too aggressive but you can do that if it's really important to you and you just find that you're getting clicks from people that aren't what you aren't in a position to be able to purchase your products and services and you don't want to waste money advertising to them um then this can be a great way to go to add in something like this

now I should say that when you do this strategy when you use this method you are going to reduce your clict rate naturally because lots of people are going to see that and go this isn't for me now that's the point because you're hoping to improve your conversion rate from click to eventual customer um but it doesn't mean that less people are going to click that can affect your quality score which can make your cost per click overall more expensive I think with a lot of business with small budgets something along this line is still

a good idea because you just need to make every click count you don't want to have lots of clicks uh not converting you need them to convert at a higher percentage as possible there are also ways you could make this you could still do this but make it a little bit less aggressive so you know instead of having a monetary amount we could use other criteria so um this wouldn't apply to this type of business but if I just delete out the examples we've got in uh there are many different ways that you can pre-qualify

so you could have something like perfect for 65 Plus if that's your target audience and anyone that clicks through who's not 65 Plus or not buying this as a gift or whatever for someone who is 65 plus um is a waste of your small Google ad budget then you can add something like this in and go great you lot don't click I want only people that are in that are obviously this age range or buying for someone in this age range to click because those are the only people that we could serve or you could

do it location based um we mentioned in in previous example in this video talking about Oxford as a city here in the UK um you know we could put in something along these lines like local to Oxford um as a headline and pin that and get that in there and that could help put off people that aren't local to Oxford I mean some of that's going to be taken up with the location targeting criteria but we could get more specific U we could be like West Oxford or East Oxford or whatever and you can get

really um quite detailed in there so different ways to to do this depending on your business are is there a big chunk of your target market that might be searching that might be clicking that you just want to put off or think about how do you categorize those people is it based on budget is it based on an age range is it based on a location these are some of the most obvious examples and there could be other things as well it could be based on what profession they work in all sorts of different ways

that you can do this but it can be a good way to avoid wasting money on clicks that will not convert or are very unlikely to convert and therefore make your small Google app budget go that much further number six is to optimize aggressively and early and this is quite different when you're operating with a small budget versus a larger budget is that we will look to to turn off underperforming elements things like keywords uh and other elements within our Google ad campaign early we will do so before we've reach statistical significance if we get

a sense that an element a keyword is not performing as well as other elements we will go ahead and turn that off and I think for a lot of the reasons we talked about you don't have any budget to waste we don't want to waste any budget on in this example keywords that don't produce as good a return on ad spend as other keywords they could still be nicely profitable if we had a larger budget we'd still probably Target it but we want need our budget to go as far as possible so it's as profitable

as possible so that we can scale and so that we can reinvest in other campaigns and other products and and and all that sort of stuff so here I've got um an ad account up one of our client ad accounts actually we've had to uh blur out the the keywords um so you can't see see that but I wanted to show you this Based on data and the most important thing here being conversion value uh divided by cost right so we can see here that the average for these keywords is 3.28 that's the number at

the bottom but obviously within this there are some that are performing significantly better than others you know we've got one here at at a 6.1 as an example although that hasn't generated a huge amount of Clicks in comparison to um well particularly this this top option but when we're going through this we might look at say the 2.76 and the 2.75 and go they need to be turned off if we're operating with a small budget we've got these on and that's absolutely fine with a larger budget because those are still nicely profitable right 2 point

almost a 3X is still nicely profitable we're happy to run those we're happy to take advant of the traffic that is searching for that but if you've only got so much budget to spend why not spend more of it on a keyword that can deliver a 4X conversion value to cost Ratio or a 3 plus X um in terms of this one which is they're doing a lot of the heavy lifting in in this particular campaign so I think I'm a big fan and I talk about this a lot in my content of waiting for

statistical significance a lot of advertisers turn things off too early they're a little bit too trigger happy with a small budget we will be like that we will be aggressive we'll be trigger happy and I think it's better to go early than it is to go late so if you've got a small Google ads budget that probably means you're relatively new to Google ads if that's the case I'd strongly recommend you check out this video in this video I walk you through the entire Google ad campaign creation process from scratch it's probably the most valuable

video that I've ever created on the top of Google ads a full beginners tutorial that walk you through everything make sure you get every single setting every element right to get the best possible results so if you haven't already go ahead and check it out