One of the most challenging tasks you can face as a marketer is budgeting for Google Ads in Singapore. Having a well-planned budget is crucial in ensuring that your PPC marketing campaign generates a meaningful ROI for your business. On the other hand, failing to budget is a recipe for disaster and significant losses for your enterprise.
Marketers in Singapore use different approaches when allocating money for their Google advertising campaigns. Some spend until they hit a monthly quota. Others use their business’s revenue to determine how much they spend on PPC marketing. The best approach, however, is focusing on optimising the profits within your desired Google Ads budget.
Estimating Your Budget
The first step of creating a profitable Google Ads is gathering data about your business. Although this can be a complicated process, it is worth the effort.
Collecting Data
Before anything, you need to come up with an estimate of how much you wish to spend for your Google Ads in Singapore. Ensure that the amount is within the limits of your business and that you are comfortable with it as well. Keep in mind that you can modify the estimated budget after conducting additional research or after you launch the marketing campaign.
After setting a preliminary budget, the next step is determining the average cost-per-click, which is the amount of money Google charges for every click on your Google Ads. You can easily estimate this using the Google Keywords Planner. These estimates are nothing but a guideline, and you can adjust them based on other findings from your market research.
Using the Google Keywords Planner is straightforward. First, you have to enter the keywords you intend to advertise through Google AdWords. If you do not have any ideas, you can enter your website address into the landing page field to get a few useful suggestions.
Once you run the Keyword Planner, it returns a list of keyword suggestions related to the terms you entered on the search box. The average cost-per-click is the figure that appears on the suggested bids column. As mentioned above, this is only a guideline for creating your budget.
The Keyword Planner is also useful in uncovering overlooked search terms that you can bid on for your PPC campaign. Ideally, you should go for phrases that generate high traffic but have a little competition. The words should also convey commercial intent.
The final step of data collection is calculating your website’s conversion rate. This refers to the rate at which visitors to your site convert into regular customers. If you are unsure about this metric, use 2% as a starting as this is the average for most websites on the internet. That said, individual businesses in Singapore can have a higher or much lower conversion rate.
Evaluate Your Competition
Another crucial tactic in creating your PPC budget is analysing your competition, especially the keywords that they are using in their Google Ads campaigns. Start by searching your business name on Google and pay keen attention to the results at the top of the page.
If you are a seasoned user of Google Ads in Singapore, it is highly likely that your business will be among the top listings on the search engine results page. Otherwise, most of the companies above you on the SERP will be your competitors.
Alternatively, you can use the Google Keyword Planner or premium tools to find out where and how your rivals are spending their Google Ads budgets. This information is vital in formulating strategies to ensure that you upstage your competitors from the top of SERP, as well as identifying cheaper keywords that most companies are not bidding for their PPC marketing.
Identify the Most Valuable Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
A KPI is a parameter that businesses use to assess their performance. KPIs vary from one enterprise to another, since each enterprise has its unique needs.
The majority of businesses in Singapore have a conversion rate as their KPI. Other parameters that companies use to measure the success of their Google AdWords campaigns are impressions share, clicks and click-through-rates, cost-per-click, cost-per-acquisition, and wasted budget.
Once you have collected data, evaluated your competition and identified you KPIs, take a closer look at your findings. You should base your budget estimate on the KPIs that you use to gauge your performances, as well as the number of sales you wish to generate from your PPC marketing campaign.
It is also crucial to assess the other marketing strategies that you are using and apply them as a starting point for your Google Ads campaign.
Allocating Your Budget
Most business owners in Singapore allocate the most significant chunk of their Google Ads budget to the top-performing keywords. This is justifiable, as suck keywords generate lots of traffic. The remainder often goes to research, branded keywords, competitor keywords, and high-intent keywords.
Research (top-of-the-funnel keywords)
If you are new to paid search, it is highly likely that you will build your campaign around top-of-funnel keywords. For instance, if you offer digital marketing services, you are likely to bid ‘digital marketing services in Singapore.’
Unfortunately, such types of keywords are exorbitantly priced. You might have to pay as S$100 for one click, which impractical for most businesses, especially SMEs and startups. Besides the astronomical prices, top-of-the-funnel keywords also have issues with intent.
A searcher who types the phrase ‘digital marketing services in Singapore’ is less likely’ to purchase your services than another who searches ‘the cost of digital marketing services in Singapore’.
That said, top-of-the-funnel keywords are not entirely useless. They are particularly useful in building brand awareness and attracting traffic to your site. However, you should bid on them wisely.
Branded Keywords
Branded keywords are the search phrases that include the name of your brand or its variations. They are useful for searchers who already know of your brand from other advertisement channels and are looking for additional information from your website.
Although the primary objective of a paid search campaign is to generate traffic from an audience that is not aware of your business, using branded keywords allows users to sport your listings on SERPs easily. Also, these keywords have a substantially cheaper cost-per-click than other types, which means that they generate a higher ROI for your business.
Competitor Keywords
You can gain a significant competitive advantage over other companies in your niche by knowing their keywords and backlink information. Competitor keywords cam mean two things; the keywords that your rival is ranking highly for in the SERPs, as well as the keywords your competitor is targeting, but not yet ranking for.
When you identify your competitors’ keywords, you can use the information you identify the weaknesses that you can use to beat their ranking on search engine results.
A big mistake made by marketers in Singapore is bidding on the wrong competitor keywords. It is essential to bid on keywords that your direct competitors are using. Preferably, you should choose businesses that you feel that you have a competitive edge over, be it in pricing, client bases, supplies, and so forth. It is much easier to beat your peers than it is to beat more prominent and more established companies.
High intent Keywords
High intent keywords signify a strong intent by the searcher to complete a transaction, be it a purchase, an enquiry about products and services, or any other action that increases the probability of buying an item.
Similar to top-of-the-funnel keywords, high intent keywords usually have a high cost-per-click. It is advisable to allocate a higher budget for such keywords, as they trigger prospective clients into buying your products and services. High intent keywords are mostly used by searchers who have already decided to make a transaction. An example of a high intent keyword is ‘buy pizza online.’
The only way to identify effective high intent keywords is by testing various options with a small budget. If it works, allocate more money. Otherwise, ignore the keyword and move onto the next one.
Top-performing Keywords
After running your Google Ads campaign for an extended period, say one month, you will know the impactful keywords and those that are not. If a keyword does not improve your traffic rates, discard it entirely.
Additionally, you should move your top-performing keywords into their campaigns. This makes it easier to track their profitability and performance. Moreover, it means that a useful keyword is not grouped with others that are only draining your budget.
You should also attend to the average-performing keywords – the ones that your company ranks for but do not get a high amount of clicks. Specifically, you should look to improve the copy used to describe these keywords and improve the content on your landing page as well. If there are no noticeable improvements after a few weeks, do away with them.
In most cases, it is advisable to allocate the majority of your paid search budget on the keywords that have the highest chance for converting leads into customers. Branded keywords, though useful, are not effective in attracting new audiences.
It is worth noting that what works for others may not work for you. For instance, high intent keywords might not be your top-performing keywords. Every business is different in its way, which underlines the importance of using the data you collect to adjust your strategies so that they work.
Budgeting for Other Offerings on Google Ads
Besides paid search, Google AdWords offers other tools to improve your marketing strategies. Such include display and remarketing, and they can be a useful complement to your search advertising. They also have a significant impact on the way you spend your money on Google Ads in Singapore.
Display
The Google Display Network offers clicks at a lower price than in conventional search, although the conversion rates are significantly lower. Regardless, it is a worthwhile investment.
Display is more related to traditional display advertising such as billboards than search. Even better, it allows you to target specific groups, and has remarkable analytic tools. The three primary functions of the Google Display Network are increasing brand awareness, showcasing your products, and simplifying the sales process.
The problem, however, is the reduced conversion rate, which makes this approach hard to implement for small businesses with limited budgets. Nevertheless, there are some smart ways of using the Google Display Network without spending colossal amounts of money.
An excellent place to start is leveraging in-market audiences, as they enable you to show creative banners on particular websites or to people whose browsing history aligns with your products and services.
Remarketing
Remarketing is a way of connecting to people who have in the past interacted with your website. As an integral component of Google ads, remarketing allows you to strategically position your ads in front of these audiences as they browse the internet.
Furthermore, remarketing has numerous benefits for your business. By showing your ads to people who are already familiar with your brand, it prompts them to make further purchases. A remarketing list can reach up to two million websites simultaneously.
It is easy to create and scale an ad using the Ad gallery tool. Most importantly, Google offers efficient pricing and a tool for tracking the performance of your campaign, where your ads are showing, and what price you are paying.
Conclusion
At first, creating a budget for your Google Ads in Singapore can appear to be an impossible task. However, as this article shows, the key lies in adequate preparation, especially in the data collection and keyword research.
When allocating your budget, focus on the keywords that are likely to generate leads that convert into customers. After all, the ultimate goal of PPC advertising is to drive up sales. Once you are proficient in paid search, expand your scope and implement other Google Ads offerings such as display and remarketing.
Finally, it is essential to make use of other paid search platforms to maximise the impact of your marketing campaign. Bing Ads is the most obvious option, although you can also consider Facebook Ads and LinkedIn.
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