Decreasing Customer Acquisition Costs And Click Fraud Through Google Ads Education

Founder & CEO, ClickGUARD

It starts with a click. In 2004, I became the victim of click fraud. All it took was a single click, and the business that I worked so hard to grow and run was now losing ROI. Worse yet, my colleagues and clients were reporting similar issues — the money that they had spent on ads was being eaten up by fraudulent clicks. More than 20% of my business’s ad budget was being wasted because of the volume of click fraud attacks and wasteful ad traffic.

Even if you haven’t been following the news in this area over the last decade, there’s a good chance click fraud has occurred in your ad campaigns. I didn’t notice it until it was too late. This malicious form of fraud led me to question who — or what was behind these attacks.

As the founder and CEO of a company that provides software for Google Ads, I’ve seen how gaining a thorough understanding of Google Ads can help you understand why click fraud happens and how to better prevent it — and improve your customer acquisition costs.

What is click fraud?

Fraudulent clicks are a waste of your hard-earned marketing budget. Whether the competition is clicking on your ads (manually or via bot farms) or your ads’ placement, copy or design are ineffective for your target audience, click waste and click fraud happens in a million ways.

While the idea of click fraud often brings to mind automated bots and fake accounts, that is not necessarily the case. Click fraud can actually be perpetrated by humans (some might do it inadvertently). Even more than that, it’s not the only way money can leak from your Google Ads. There are many other ways your Google Ads clicks can be wasteful.

Choosing A Google Ads Course

Google Ads can be a complicated process. It can involve trial and error and take some time to get familiar with. And as we all know, time is money. Of course, it’s always possible to look up industry experts and follow their advice. Tutorials, webinars, guides and courses have been created to help maximize ad revenue. While there’s a lot of good information on the internet, there’s also a lot of outdated, poorly organized sources.

Because there’s so much information out there regarding Google Ads and how to use it to one’s full advantage, it’s best to choose a course that’s comprehensive. (Disclosure: My company offers a Google Ads course.) The most important things that marketers should look for in the course are:

• An overview of how Google Ads works and if it’s the right fit for you

• Why cascading ad groups are a great way to organize and identify user intent

• How to set up PPC advertising campaigns

• How to choose the best Google Ads campaign for individual company needs

• How to structure your Google Ads account from the beginning so as to maximize profits

Prices don’t necessarily indicate quality. Remember to ask yourself if a course was made by industry professionals.

How To Lower Customer Acquisition Costs

With the right education, you can ask the right questions. If it’s your team or an external provider doing the advertising for you, understanding how Google Ads works can allow you to save time and resources without having to embark on costly experiments that hinder your acquisition costs.

While there’s no exact measurement of what constitutes good customer acquisition costs (CAC) because it’s dependent on a variety of factors, it’s still possible to maximize your ROI by applying some basic fundamentals. To do this, there are several steps you can follow to lower CAC:

1. Calculate your conversion costs correctly. This includes attributing and quantifying your exact acquisition cost including your indirect marketing costs that contribute to your CAC. You can set up your conversion tracking using Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager or external conversion tracking software as well. Pay attention to where your conversions are coming from, what campaign, ad group and ad creative. Also, make sure to implement UTM parameters on all ad creatives.

2. Use retargeting campaigns. Retargeting and remarketing are great ways to bring users back into the funnel. The benefit of using retargeting and remarketing is that the lower CPC (cost per click) allows you to have another opportunity of engaging with your potential customer for a fraction of the price.

3. Create strong campaign structures. Use cascading ad groups and proper nominations to track performance and measure your buyer persona’s intent — I like to call this intent optimization. Your campaign structure can be as simple as dividing your search and display campaigns into different campaign groups depending on the intent of each campaign. Use multiple ad groups to organize and match your keywords and ad creatives.

Getting the right education sets the foundation for understanding the complexity to click fraud and wasteful traffic. For example, a Google Ads education will teach you about campaign structure, campaign strategies, keyword intent and bidding strategies. These are all key elements to understanding click fraud and dealing with it.

When setting up your accounts and campaigns in Google Ads, set the right structure so you can make ongoing changes to mitigate any fraudulent activity. Then, make sure you have the right attribution model to measure the conversions and success (ROAS) of your campaigns. Finally, track each and every click from Google Ads; each click is a financial transaction and should be accounted for. Block IP addresses and IP ranges that attack your campaigns or have suspicious activity on your site.

Educate yourself on Google Ads and how to use it to your advantage, and you’ll likely get a return on your investment. Not only can you become a better marketer in the long run, but it’s also possible to decrease your acquisition costs. Educating myself on Google Ads was the best thing I ever did. Have your CMOs educate themselves too — your ad budget, and my past self, will thank you. All it takes is a single click.

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