How not to blow your Google Adwords advertising budget

674 09-05-23 Read Time: 6 min

Advertising a mobile app in Google Ads requires a professional approach – this is a simple truth that marketers and business owners often forget. They do it themselves or outsource it to specialists who will do it “fast and cheap”. Weeks go by, considerable sums of money are invested in advertising, but the result is unsatisfactory – the application audience does not grow, the money and valuable time are wasted. At best, the company goes to other specialists to correct the mistakes. At worst, they abandon their attempts at contextual advertising. How do you avoid this and keep your Google Adwords budget intact? We will tell you in our material.

What are the features of Google Ads for app promotion?

Google Adwords is one of the most effective tools for promoting mobile applications. Ads in the form of banners, text blocks and video clips are placed across Google Search, Google Play, YouTube and partner sites in the contextual media network. The approaches to setting up and analysing such campaigns have their own peculiarities and are somewhat different from advertising with traffic to a website.

Google Ads for App Promotion generates creative, recommends audiences and locations for display, and uses downloaded material and information from Google Play and App Store pages – you can use automatic settings or set your own parameters.Learn about the key settings that affect the effectiveness of your ads:

• Semantics – keys and minus words;
• Geotargeting;
• Language selection;
• Audience parameters;
• Rate – price per conversion (app download or targeted action);
• Campaign budget – total and daily.

Start with ASO optimisation

Google Ads selects keywords, customises audiences and display locations based on page content in the storerooms. Ads are seen by people who are interested in similar mobile products and apps in the same category. That’s why it’s important to perform quality ASO optimisation of your app, which means designing your storeroom pages to meet the requirements of Google Play and the App Store:

• Select keywords;
• Create a headline and sub-headlines;
• Write an optimised description that appeals to the target audience;
• Design screenshots and icons;
• Process feedback on a regular basis.

Quality ASO optimisation solves another important task – it helps the user quickly determine the value of the app and understand if it is worth downloading. When a user clicks on an ad, they are taken to an app page on Google Play or the App Store, and the first thing they see is the description and screenshots. These elements must be eye-catching, otherwise ad clicks will be wasted – increasing the risk of budget wastage.

Setting the right goals

When promoting an application with contextual advertising, the following targets can be selected

• Install the app. The algorithm is set to find people who match the targeting parameters, are interested in similar products, but have not yet installed the app. The technique is used to attract an audience to a new project.
• Performing a targeted action – making a purchase, completing a level, placing an order, taking advantage of a promotion, etc. When such a goal is selected, the ad encourages existing users to return to the app and take the desired action. This objective is available for products that already have a minimum of 250,000 installs.

Based on your chosen target, the Google Ads algorithm optimises your ad campaign and chooses who and where to show your ads. But targeting isn’t just another setting. It needs to be aligned with your marketing strategy and taken into account when creating ad creative, for example:

• The call to download the app or start the game will help to attract a new audience;
• It is better to focus on the product and its benefits rather than the app itself to increase sales;
• Bring back users who have not visited for a long time by informing them about new and interesting updates.

“Smart advertising campaigns – trust but verify

“Google’s smart campaigns do everything themselves – they automatically create ads, set up audiences, adjust bids and allocate budgets. It sounds appealing – press a few buttons and you’re waiting for a flood of app downloads. But it’s not quite that simple. Artificial intelligence automates many processes, but still requires expert oversight. You need to constantly monitor campaign results, analyse reports and make immediate adjustments to settings, turn off ineffective ads, regions, keys and audiences.

An important point: Artificial intelligence takes time to learn, so don’t panic on the second day after launch and allow the system to gain intelligent experience. Google Ads needs several dozen conversions to find the optimal strategy and deliver the best results. Don’t stop your ad while the algorithm is learning, because every day it gains more power to optimise your ad campaign.

Keep an eye on the technical status of the application

The problem of technical glitches in the app goes beyond the ad setting, but is a common cause of Google Ad budget wastage. For example, ads get clicks, users download the app, but they’re in for an unpleasant surprise – bugs, freezes, slow downloads. Reality doesn’t match expectations, people delete the app. This is not good for the product’s statistics, its store rating drops. To avoid draining the advertising budget, we advise:

• Ensure that the application runs smoothly and without errors;
• issue regular updates;
• Respond to user complaints;
• Respond to user complaints.

Set up analysis

Without analytics, it is impossible to monitor the conversion rate of individual ads and the effectiveness of the strategy as a whole. Calculating and evaluating metrics allows you to understand which groups of ads are producing the best results and which are not working and need to be adjusted. Various tools are used for mobile app ad analytics, such as

• Firebase – Google Analytics for mobile apps, which collects statistics and reports on a variety of parameters.
• Play Console – a developer’s personal account in Google Play for managing their app. The tool provides a wide range of analytics for contextual advertising.
• App Analytics is an install and behaviour analysis tool for mobile apps running on iOS.

These and other analytics tools allow you to measure ad effectiveness, analyse user behaviour and adjust ad campaign settings so you can spend your budget wisely and get the most out of your project.

Optimise your advertising campaign

The success of an advertising campaign depends not only on the initial settings, but also on subsequent adjustments and optimisations. Based on the results of the analysis, we recommend

• Make regular changes to audience settings, keywords, geo-targeting, bids, etc;
• promptly disable ineffective ads and develop promising strategies;
• Do not rely on automatic settings alone.

And the most important piece of advice on how not to blow your Google Ads budget is to trust a professional to run your advertising campaign. An experienced professional will always see the big picture, take a holistic approach to advertising, and identify and eliminate hidden problems before they become critical. This will keep you out of trouble and get you the results you want in the shortest possible time – increased installs, positive feedback and in-app sales.