Scaling your advertising with a larger budget can be really tricky

So essentially the way it works is if you want to pay a small amount per click then Google will limit your ads’ reach by pushing them further down in rank, or by simply not showing them as frequently. But if you have a small budget this is fine, because it is a lot more profitable to make a sale if you didn’t spend much for each click. The problem is when you want to sell MORE via advertising and so you try to get Google to spend more of your money.

Google will respond in one of four ways to you increasing your budget:

• Increase your budget at the same cost per click and maintain the same value in sales per click — lucky you! This means you are selling a product with good search volume and there is plenty of sales to go around between you and your competitors.
• Increase your ad spend at the same cost per click by reducing the quality of your clicks, i.e. you can spend more but your Return On Ad Spend drops because you’re now targeting a broader range of people who are not in your buying audience.
• Increase your ad spend at the same quality by increasing your Cost Per Click. I.e. you can spend more, and you’re still getting in the right kinds of people, but you have to pay more to Google for each click so your Return On Ad Spend drops.
• Completely ignore your request to spend more and underspend your budget at the same quality and Cost Per Click. I.e. you increase your budget but Google spends your old budget. When you see this, it typically means that there is a low search volume for your products and scaling may be difficult, or that your website is not converting well compared to other websites in your industry.

The trick to get out of a scaling rut is to accept a higher CPC or lower quality on the campaigns that are already performing well, and scale those campaigns. Then with the campaigns that are not performing well, or not performing well yet, keep your budget smaller so that when they do make sales the sale will be more profitable.

When you scale your budget it is good to split your big campaigns into several smaller ones with different criteria. This way you can give larger budgets to the criteria that perform better, and accept a higher Cost Per Click on these campaigns.