When it comes to online advertising, it isn't about how much you spend, it's about how you spend it. Should you be spending more on Facebook or Google? What is the best budget for your industry? When should you stop putting money behind a poor-performing campaign? For these answers and more, join our live webinar with our in-house pay-per-click expert. You'll learn: - How to use 2018's results to set the best budget for your business in 2019 - What processes you can set up now to keep wasted spend in check all year long - How to quickly determine which ad types are actually worth putting your budget behind - What signs you should be looking for when managing your bids

1. LIVE WEBINAR
© Copyright 2018 WordStream, Inc. All rights reserved.
Budgets, Bids and
Winning New Business
in 2018
How to Allocate Ad Spend Like a
Pro This Year

2. 2

3. Logistics
• Webinar will be recorded – check
your inbox for materials
• Submit your questions for Q&A

4. Logistics
• Webinar will be recorded – check
your inbox for materials
• Submit your questions for Q&A

5. I am a bounty hunter of happiness and profit
(& a Star Wars nerd)

6. • Am focused on the business
metrics of my stakeholders (clients).
• Know when to invest and when to
hold back.
• Live for the thrill of winning for my
stakeholders.
This means I:

7. | #WordStreamLive
Talking Money is Hard – Talking Profit is
Easy

8. By the end of this session, each of you will have
the tools to be a fellow bounty hunter of
happiness and profit

9. What We’ll Be Covering
➔ Baseline/Questions to Ask
➔ Poor Performance Caused by
Lack of Budget
➔ Can’t Spend the Budget
➔ Account is Winning
➔ Role Play/Casestudy
Navah Hopkins
Services Innovation
Strategist

10. Baseline/Questions to Ask

11. Before We Can Begin Hunting, We Need to Do
Some Reconnaissance

12. Are All Parts of the Business Equal, or Are Some
Worth More?

13. Are There Hubs of High-Value Customers, or Are
They Truly Spread Out?

14. Are Phone and Website Leads Equal? Do
Conversion Rates and Auction Prices Align?

15. • Impression Share
• Auction Price
• Conversion Rate/Value
Three Trails Good
Hunters Follow:

16. Most Advertisers Struggle to Achieve 50%+ of
Available Impressions
Based on
2973
accounts
with at least
$.01 in
search
spend
Average
impression
share is 47%

17. Search Auction Prices
Vary by Industry – don’t
bring a blaster to a
lightsaber duel

18. If You Know You Have An Easier Time Winning on
Mobile/Desktop, Don’t Be Afraid to Focus There
Mobile:
4.39% CTR
$34.79 CPA

19. ✓Location Targets
✓Duplicate Keywords
✓Structure of the Campaign
✓Match-types of keywords
✓Bidding strategies
Raising Budget is a
Last Resort – Check the
Following First:

20. Poor Performance Caused by Lack of
Budget

21. Wasted Spend is the Enemy

22. If there’s a hint of wasted spend, it
can be hard to convince clients to
open up budget.

23. Here’s the problem: a budget that isn’t aligned
with the structure it’s asked to support will always
be wasted spend

24. Can your budget support 10 “top of page clicks”?

25. Here’s what,
“Top of
Page” looks
like:

26. If Not, Assess if You Can Get The Traffic With
Different Search Ideas
Based on $369
spend between
October 25th and
November 23rd 2017

27. The QueryStream can help!
3% cheaper
& perfect
conversion
rate!

28. Broad Keywords Can Drag Your Budget into
Unintended Auctions
162%
More
Than
Average

29. If they’re all too high, find out if clients can live
without that Traffic

30. • Use extensions to communicate
valuable ideas without paying a
premium.
• Bid adjustments can focus the
budget.
• Lumping strategic initiatives
together can cause all to fail.
Not all profit centers
are equal:

31. Daily Budgets Needed For AT LEAST One Lead
Based on 2018 Average CPC
Monthly
budget will be
30.4 X daily
budget

32. Bing’s Auction
Prices Can Be More
Forgiving

33. Starting Bing Is As Easy As Setting Up An Auto-
Import

34. • Be transparent about industry costs
and whether budget expectations
are realistic.
• Offer options that work within the
requested budget.
• Give realistic timelines for growth
When crafting marketing
budgets/assessing clients:

35. Can’t Spend the Budget

36. It can be intimidating to ask for more budget,
when you’re struggling to spend existing budget.

37. Your Campaign is Likely Losing Impression Share
to Rank

38. • Too many targets
• Bids and auction prices not aligned
• Search volume isn’t there for
“important” keywords
Here are the most
common culprits:

39. | #WordStreamLive
There’s only
so many
signals a
budget can
accommodate

40. Targeting 5+ locations without bid adjustments
can cause budget allocation issues

41. Different Locations Have Different Auction
Prices, Search Patterns, & Time Zones

42. Number of ad groups can also choke a budget: 5-7
is the golden ratio!
60% of
impressions
Budget
will only
go to
“winners”
instead of
everything

43. Bid to budget ratio is only
part of the equation: if the
bids are too low, you won’t
even enter the auction

44. While it is true Google can up to double your
budget, you can’t bank on it delivering premium
volume if you’re consistently under bidding

45. Search volume is an important mechanic in
account health

46. Google’s not going to
waste its time or your
money on pages that
lack transactional value

47. But those pages may be important to clients

48. • Turn important low volume
keywords into site links/callouts
• Make a low budget “experiment”
campaign to house these ideas
• Ask the client if they’d be open to
content marketing being
responsible for those ideas.
Here are three easy
solutions:

49. Account is Winning

50. Congratulations! You’ve vanquished your enemies
and achieved profit!

51. But we’re bounty hunters of profit and
happiness…there’s always more to be had

52. • Can your client handle more leads
or are they at capacity?
• Is this seasonal – should we invest
now, or hold for next season?
• Should the budget go to existing
initiatives, or would you rather
expand to new platforms/parts of
the business?
Before we continue:

53. Here is what I look for in a winning campaign
Consistently
above 75%
impression
share!
Campaign live for at least three months

54. Important: Never dump large amounts of money
into a winning campaign all at once!

55. Gradually increase budget by 10-15% each week
over a month

56. A great way to expand is to layer in display!
In-market display
ad with affinity
content!

57. Display Average CPC’s Are Cheaper – Build Your
Perfect Audience to Be Picked Up By Search
Remarketing
10%
conversion
rate vs 4%
conversion
rate

58. Display Can Bring Users Your Branded and
Remarketing Search Campaigns are Poised to
Pick-up
$496
Monthly
Budget
168550
Monthly
Impressions
701
Monthly
Clicks
*Average monthly budget, impressions and clicks across
4000 accounts (no budget over $50 and no budget under
$1)

59. Don’t Forget About Facebook!
26% Of Clicks Result In A
Conversion (Spark Central)

60. • Average CPC is $1.72, but this is
determined by how many folks
click on your ad!
• Budgets can be ad set or
campaign level – choose the level
of control that suits you!
• 19% of time spent on mobile is
on Facebook.
Facebook Budgets

61. By running campaigns on other networks, you can
expand your Google market:

62. New Campaigns Are Expensive – the
first 1-2 months of a campaign will be
about data acquisition

63. 63
Role Play

64. Budget conversations are a game of transforming
“cost” into “investment”

65. • CTR
• Quality Score
• Impression Share
• Extensions
• Match-types
Clients won’t care
about:

66. • Quality of leads
• Return on ad spend
• Volume of leads (as long as quality
isn’t impacted)
• Year over year growth
• Growing the value of a customer
Clients will care about:

67. If we want to grow the budget, we need to speak
their language

68. Scenario One
➔ Client makes $3000 per
customer (on average)
➔ Client has 8% conversion rate
through the site/25%
conversion rate through
phone calls.
➔ They currently budget $15
per day and their keywords
cost between $6-$12 per click

69. • Focus on client’s best conversion
rates.
• Showcase potential profit, instead
of leading with costs.
• Offer solutions aligned with real
world metrics.
• Position paid channels as heroes
who bring leads on slow days,
rather than another bill to pay.
How we win:

70. Scenario Two
➔ Highly involved client keeps adding in new
keywords that have much higher average cpc’s
than the core account. They’re all on broad.
➔ Average CPCs for core terms range between
$3.25 and $5. Budget is $100 a day, and you
consistently struggle to spend the budget.
➔ Client demands to cover the whole of the US,
although sales data shows California and
Florida are the best hubs of customers

71. • Prevent wasted spend by working
through you, the trusted
professional.
• Explain the costs associated with
everything the client wants to do,
and let them opt into it.
• Connect strategic suggestions you
make to real world data, showing
the client you’re not limiting access
to leads.
How we win:

72. Scenario Three
➔ Campaigns consistently meeting desired
metrics, but client is looking for more leads.
➔ Client wants higher value leads that you know
you can achieve, but the average CPC and CPA
are 25% more than the current structure is
delivering.
➔ You consistently spend the budget and know
borrowing money from existing initiatives will
hurt performance.

73. • Celebrate that the client is looking
to grow, and be transparent with
them on costs and time-frame.
• Show awareness of the clients’
business by highlighting any
seasonality/historical trends and
factor trends into
recommendations.
• Use momentum to secure top of
funnel investment in Display and
YouTube
How we win:

74. Client Story: Koru K9

75. Meet Koru K9:

76. Koru K9 Grew Through Online Marketing!
Benchmark (November 2015)
➔ Spend: $1,295.75(AdWords)
➔ Impressions: 30,570
➔ Clicks: 368
➔ Average CPC: $3.85
➔ Conversions: 23
➔ Conversion Rate: 6.25%
➔ CPA: $56.34
Post Optimizations (March 2018)
➔ Spend: $6,100
(AdWords/Bing/Facebook/Display)
➔ Impressions: 59,000
➔ Clicks: 2,000
➔ Average CPC: $2.69
➔ Conversions: 225
➔ Conversion Rate: 9.6%
➔ CPA: $27.07

77. • Built trust by identifying and
eliminating wasted spend brought
in by broad terms and tangential
searches.
• Focused budgets by geos served
and replicated winning structure
across those areas.
• Layered in display to educate
markets on why their approach to
training works.
How did we achieve
victory?

78. For Profit!

79. | #WordStreamLive
Build trust
through
transparency
about budgets
and timelines.

80. | #WordStreamLive
Use extensions
to promote
expensive ideas
when your
budget cannot.

81. | #WordStreamLive
Honor thy bid
to budget ratio
and conversion
rates

82. | #WordStreamLive
Check for
alternative
ways to achieve
expensive
traffic, but if the
ROI is there,
invest!

83. | #WordStreamLive
Acquisition
costs go down
with increased
exposure to
brands –
Display brings
the audience!

84. Thank You!