How much will a Google adwords campaign cost me

 

This is a question we hear quite a lot of times, unfortunately there is not a one size fits all answer that we can give as there are a few variables that need to be taken into consideration. Frustratingly for all concerned our most common reply to the question is “well that depends”
Adwords works similar to an auction site but with one main difference, they take into consideration not only how much money you have to spend on your cost per bid but also your Quality score to decide your ad rank. (Your ad rank is the position you are sitting on the Google advertising display when someone makes an enquiry using your key word)
So the actual make up of the ad ranking is decided by search engines using the equation

CPC amount x Quality score = Your Ad Rank

Basically your quality score is based on how well the search engine perceives your advert to be relevant to the person who is searching
Your Quality score is affected by a number of things
1) The expected click through rate of your ad: Based partly on your adverts historical clicks and impressions
2) The click through rate achieved by your display URL
3) the relevance of your advert text to what the person is searching for
4) How successful your account has performed in the geographic region you are targetting
5) How well your ads perform on different devices (i.e mobile and desktop)
All these items are rated in differing proportions to give a quality score of between 1 and 10
The ratings given by a search engine to each of these items is a closely guarded secret but it is thought that Click through rate (CTR, or the number of people who click on your ad when it is shown to them) is most important.
Your Quality score is updated each time your ad is shown, so it is important to keep working on your campaigns rather than just throwing money at them, as you can improve your quality score over time.

 

So we are now back to how much will an adwords campaign cost me?

Google works out your price per click on the basis that they will never charge more for your click than the amount set in your maximum cost per click. If you have a quality score of 7 and you competitor has a quality score of 7 and you have a maximum CPC of $3.00 and he has a Maximum CPC of $2.00, then you will have to pay $2.01 (not $3.00) for the click in the position above your competitor.
Hopefully this explanation will give some background into why we usually answer “well that depends” when you ask about the cost of Google advertising.

If you are still thinking about advertising on Google but are not sure you want to handle it yourself send us your information and one of the team will be in touch to discuss the idea in more detail.