Why Your SEA CPC Costs Much Less Than What Google Shows You
Carlo Siebert explains in a guest post why the CPC at Google is always lower than you initially think.
- But when is the click price too high?
- What true value is behind each individual click?
- Every click increases the potential of holistic marketing!
When you search for click price or Google CPC on Google, you will get the following results among others:
● Calculate the correct CPC
● How much should a click cost?
● What to do if the click price is higher than expected
But when is the click price too high?
When the click costs 1€ or when it costs 3€? The following thesis is put forward: Are 10€ for a click too much? Certainly, this click price is not without, but if you look behind the scenes, even this click price turns out to be lower. It's all about the knowledge you gain with each click. The knowledge of how well and whether the campaigns work. In other words, you get a lot of data.
The data you generate through the clicks is the basis of the work or the optimizations that are carried out. Without them, you could never determine whether the ads work or not. Once evaluated, an ad can be created, the elements of which lead to even more clicks and thus also to more data.
But the click data provides much more! Now it's about the search terms of the campaigns. Not all clicks come in via the researched keywords. A look at the Search Terms report then shows much more. This report may contain new keywords for the next campaigns. Now it's also slowly becoming clear why the CPC is actually cheaper.
It is possible to use the data for your own SEO strategy.
● Is it worth optimizing for this term?
● Can you see from the data that this term does not lead to a conversion?
● Is there no traffic to the site via this term?
If this silo is broken up internally, you save the SEO team a lot of guesswork. By linking with Google Analytics the data in Google Ads can also be enriched with visitor time and for example page depth. But maybe the bounce rate is too high for an important keyword?
The content team has a direct reference point where the next resources can be invested.
What true value is behind each individual click?
The data you get through the clicks contains a lot more. As soon as the data silo is broken up, the social media team can use further insights for their work as a next step.
What insight do we get from each click on an ad about the target group? If you analyze the data from Google Ads, you can see the age or gender of the users. You can also find out very precisely from which cities and countries most clicks come. So why not align the next social ads with this? Fewer experiments means more efficiency in the budget used. Nothing goes without traffic for CRO alone.
In addition, you can deduce from this analysis what interests the converting target group and what does not. So it may turn out that the target group has a high overlap with a certain car brand (Google gives exactly this information).
Alternatively, the question can also be asked differently: Isn't it irrelevant how expensive / cheap a click is?
In the end, the result counts. If the result is not: cheap clicks (i.e. from bot farms abroad), but conversions at price X or in proportion Y to the costs, then it doesn't matter what the CPC looks like. As long as the result is right in the end. However, this would not change the logic behind the way of thinking and would rather ensure that a CPA or ROAS is adjusted accordingly for the additional value generated.
Every click increases the potential of holistic marketing!
The insight from the analyzed data can be used to optimize the campaigns, ad groups and ads more efficiently and thus more profitably. The knowledge you gain can then also be adapted to other networks, such as Facebook, YouTube, Bing and Co. But not only the campaigns can be optimized with the clicks you generate.
Looking at it holistically, it is always a part of market research with first-party data. Something that costs a lot of money in traditional market research and that companies regularly spend a lot of money on. And this, although the marketing department is sweating over how to reduce costs.
So it is important to clarify where the data can still be used. Which departments need the generated data? Other departments in marketing? Customer service? Product? If you can draw a conclusion from the previous lines, then the following: Every click has its price, but you should ask yourself whether the actual value in the data was recognized AND used? Tools like
Finch already attack directly here and offer users the opportunity to evaluate data better across platforms.When you realize the potential behind each individual click, the price usually weighs less.
Wenn Ihr Euch vor Augen führt, welches Potenzial hinter jedem einzelnen Klick steckt, fällt der Preis meist weniger ins Gewicht.