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How to Decrease Ad Spend on Digital Marketing? 8 Effective Strategies

How to Decrease Ad Spend on Digital Marketing? 8 Effective Strategies

May 15, 2023

With the passage of time, the method and means of advertising have changed. Now, since the entire world is online, most businesses run digital ads in order to broaden their horizon and reach their target audience.

This provides businesses with a chance to reach more people effectively and quickly, compared to traditional advertising methods. For example, the advanced algorithm shows your ads only to those who’re interested. This means – a higher conversion rate.

Having said that, all good things come at a price. This means you need to spend money to reap the benefits of digital advertising. Now, this is a tricky part where companies falter.

As advertising on digital platforms quick and effective results, companies may drift toward spending more to get better results. This could lead to a situation where they are spending more than they are earning – a situation no company would want to land into.

What you need to do is to understand ways to reduce ad spend on digital marketing. And this is what our topic for this blog is. Continue reading to know more about how to decrease ad spend on digital marketing without impacting results.

How to Decrease Ad Spend on Digital Marketing?

  • Define Clear Objectives

Before diving into any digital marketing campaign, it’s crucial to establish clear objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs). Understanding your goals allows you to focus your efforts and allocate resources more efficiently.

By targeting specific outcomes, you can tailor your ads to reach the right audience, thereby minimising wasteful spending on irrelevant clicks.

  • Understand the Problem

Always remember that the solution to any problem always begins by understanding the problem.

In this scenario, if you believe you’re overspending on digital ads, you need to understand where the excess money is going. 

A study conducted in 2018 revealed that 26% of budgets, on average, are wasted on ineffective marketing strategies and channels. This indicates that you need to find the root cause, which, in this case, is the strategy. 

Once you figure out the source, you can adopt effective practices (discussed below) to decrease ad spend on digital marketing.

  • Refine Your Audience

To know how to decrease ad spend on digital marketing, you must refine your audience. This one’s a must.

Every product and/or service has a specific target audience. And your message (through an advertisement) should reach them only. If a person is not in need of a product you offer, reaching out to them will only be a waste of resources.

For example, targeting men shaving products to females won’t bring you leads. Therefore, the ad engagement and conversion rate will be on the lower side, leading to higher spending and ineffective results.

The solution to this problem lies in refining your target audience. And fortunately, digital marketing allows it. When you create an ad campaign on social media or other online channels, you get to select your target audience. Be careful in the selection process if you want to decrease your ad spend

Besides that, you can track the data of a concluded ad campaign and obtain insights from it related to the audience that engaged with your ads. This way, you can refine them even more effectively for your new campaigns.

  • Refine Your Social Media Focus

Generally, it is believed that the more you’re active on different social media platforms, the better it is for your brand’s reach and exposure. And it’s certainly true unless spending money comes into the picture.

Creating ad campaigns for every social media channel out there is a waste of resources. You need to figure out which platforms resonate with your social media management strategy. If it’s Facebook, you can then proceed ahead to how to decrease ad spend on Facebook. The same goes for Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.

To know which social media channels to cut down, review the data obtained from recently run ad campaigns. Armed with key insights, compare the data of different social media channels and then cut down the ones that have accumulated the most budget and produced ineffective results.

Bear in mind that you can still have a presence on those channels that haven’t been producing enough leads for you. However, creating paid content should be avoided.

  • Choose your Location

Just like your target audience and ad channels, you need to choose the location wisely to be able to get the desired results from digital ads.


To explain it in simpler terms, your ad appearing to a user in France when your product is only available in The Middle East will do nothing good for your business. As a matter of fact, it will hurt your digital marketing budget and efforts.

So, what you need to do here is to select only those location(s) when creating the ad campaign where your products/services are available. This small difference can create a huge impact when it comes to cutting down your ad spend. 

  • Right Time of the Day

Not many people know that but posting ads at certain times of the day can reap fruitful results in terms of increasing engagement and reducing ad spend.

For this, you need to understand the dynamics of your target audience. For example, if you’re targeting the working class, running ads late at night won’t benefit you. Therefore, you can restrict the display of ads during these hours to save money.

  • Keyword Selection

No guide on how to decrease ad spend is complete without mentioning the keyword selection.

Needless to say, it impacts your budget and the overall performance of the ad campaign to a great extent. So, be very articulate when it comes to the selection of keywords. They should be relevant to your products and/or services and what users are searching for.

With the right keywords, your ad will display when a user enters those keywords. On the contrary, your ad will not be visible to users if it doesn’t feature the right keywords.

  • Leverage Organic Channels

While paid advertising is effective, organic channels can provide additional exposure and reduce the reliance on ad spend. Invest time and effort in building a strong presence on platforms like social media, search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, and email marketing.

By consistently creating valuable content and engaging with your audience organically, you can attract customers without solely relying on paid advertising.

Wrapping Up

To sum it up, in an increasingly competitive digital landscape, knowing how to decrease ad spend without compromising results is crucial for any business. However, by implementing the strategies mentioned above, you can see the results for yourself. 

For further assistance, you can reach out to experts at Zoom Digital. Our team of highly skilled and experienced digital marketing experts is there to guide you through the entire process. 

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