If you are a business owner or a sales and marketing head in a company that wishes to increase your website sales and traffic and get your brand name to the most interested prospective customers, Google Ads can help! It is one of the best sources for new customers. If you’re considering spending any amount of money on ads to reach your target audience, Google Ads is the place to go. With the right strategy, it will have you generating revenue before you know it.
Over the years, Lauer Media has helped many businesses grow from zero to tens of thousands of dollars in sales revenue through our dedicated management and solid implementation of the most effective Google Ads campaign strategies. We are thrilled to share some helpful tips on creating a profitable Google Ads campaign.
First Things First
Google Ads platform has been around for nearly two decades, giving it some seniority in paid advertising. The advertising platform came on the scene in October 2000 as Google Adwords, but after some rebranding in 2018, it was renamed to Google Ads.
Piloting a new Google Ads campaign is an exciting yet edgy process. If you’re just getting started, you might be worried about messing it up. Before you do anything, it is advisable to visit the Google Ads website and let it take you through the basics. It will show you all the steps required, from setting up your Google Ads account to identifying your campaign goals, targeting, keywords, budget, bidding, and billing; until you are ready to run your campaign live.
After you review the Google Ads website and are done with the basics, let’s get you ready to launch a successful Google Ads campaign for your business!
Identify Customers’ Demand
To know if setting up a Google Ads campaign will work for you, you need to identify if your target customers are even searching for your product or service in Google. Suppose you are a prospective customer for your company’s product or service; what would you type to search for your need online? If the possible search term or keyword you thought of has no search volume, that means no one is typing that phrase or keywords into Google. There is no point in advertising something that no one is searching for.
You can use Google’s Keyword Planner or other similar tools to help you identify phrases you think your prospects are searching for, and it will tell you other similar, relevant search terms or keywords. Some keyword planner platforms can also show how often people search these phrases, how competitive the keywords are, and how much it will cost to advertise on each keyword. All of this information will help you determine which keywords you want to use in your campaign.
Another factor you should consider when identifying the demand of your customer is their “buying intent.” Are your customers more likely just researching with no intention of making a purchase, or are they people who are looking to buy? In other words, you need to analyze further the intent of the keyword used by your target market. For example, a person who would type “loafers shoes size 11” probably has more intention to buy the loafers than a person who searched for “what is loafer shoes?” You would want to invest more in keywords with “buying intent” from your target customers.
Build A Strong Anchor Through Your Keywords
Keywords are the main anchor of every Google Ads campaign. The more precise your keywords are, the more quality traffic you will get and the more chances of sales conversion from the leads your campaign will generate.
To make those keywords good to excellent, you have to select the correct match type to guide the search engine.
Broad match keywords cast a wide net but can sometimes get Google to stray from your original intent. Google will show your ads to any search phrase Google thinks is relevant to your keywords. Your ads will get more impressions, but they will also be more likely to have irrelevant search phrases that will waste your budget. Strategically, broad match keywords are not highly recommended.
Exact match keywords are keywords you place inside brackets. This match type allows you to advertise directly to people who searched that same thing. You get the most control with the exact match, but you will limit your exposure, but doing so may save the budget and ensure traffic quality.
Phrase match keywords are keywords or phrases you place inside quotation marks, and they can draw variants of the exact match. Strategically, phrase match is recommended because you can get the best of both worlds regarding targeting and reach. However, when you use Phrase match, you need to make sure you include negative keywords.
Negative match keywords are designated with a minus sign. They allow you to disqualify irrelevant homonyms from the search.
Note, however, that your competitors are using the same search terms and keywords that you will use. Therefore, you also need to know how to stand out from the crowd — more tips below on how you can do this.
Analyze Your Competition
It is a fact that you may not be the first in the game. In most industries, there will be competitors who have already solidified their Google Ads campaign. Your competition may have already tested and figured out what things work and do not work in your market. Instead of being discouraged, take advantage of your competitors’ insights to strengthen your Google Ads campaign and be fit to compete.
One of our favorite tools in doing competitive analysis is KeywordSpy. This platform collects, organizes, and provides easy access to your competitors’ historical advertising information. It is a free platform, and it will show you all the keywords each of your competitors are advertising on and how long they have been using these keywords. The longer a keyword is advertised, the better because that implies that the keyword is generating sales. KeywordsSpy can also allow you to view your competitors’ ads. Just like in analyzing their keywords, you can see the date when the ad started to run. The longer the ad is active, the more likely it is performing well.
It is recommended to review several competitors’ ads and keywords to see what offers resonate with your target market. You can also use other competitive analysis tools like SEMRush or Similar Web and other platforms to find out more about what works for your competitors. While you’re examining these data, look for a way to differentiate your business from all of your competitors.
Make Your Ads Compelling and Irresistible
Use the data and insights you garnered from identifying your customers’ demand, planning out your keywords, and analyzing your competitors’ strategies; to draw a hard-to-say-no offer.
Capitalize on your USP (unique selling proposition), which differentiates your business from your competitors and serves as a reason for your target customers to choose you. The easiest way to do this is the pros vs. cons strategy. List down your competitors’ pros and cons, and identify the parts where your business is better. Once you have your USP, you are ready to build a compelling ad.
Remember, your Google Ad campaign should fulfill these two goals: First is to attract qualified prospects to click on your ad instead of the competitors’ ads. The second is to filter unqualified prospects from clicking your ads to avoid burning your budget. Compelling ads with a high click-through rate (CTR) will boost your Quality Score (QS), which will lower the cost per click (CPC) of your keywords. Remember the impact of this trifecta as CTR, QS, and CPC significantly impact each other when developing a compelling ad.
You can get creative in writing your ad copy, but below are the basic structure you can follow as your initial guide in building a compelling ad:
Punchy headline. The headline is the most critical component because it is the first thing your target customers will read. Your brand and message in your headline must be clear and relevant for the what the prospects are searching.
Clear description. Your ad description must support your headline and entice prospective customers. Here you may concisely include your USP or provide social proof as additional credentials.
Display URL. Display URL doesn’t have to be your full website link per se, it can be a destination URL or USP or call to action CTA – anything else that will make your ads stand out.
Strong Call To Action. CTA determines the next steps. It urges your prospects to do something after they see your ad – click the link, call or submit their details.
Make Your Landing Page Relevant
When your prospects clicked on your ad, a force urged them to know more about what you are offering. They will land on your site with the expectation to see the promise your ad stated.
Most advertisers underestimate the importance of using relevant and dedicated landing pages as an additional marketing arm for their Google Ads campaign. While you have an impressive homepage, it is not 100% created to make money. Yes, it explains everything your business does, all of your products and services, and all of your customers’ testimonials, but it may not be relevant to the keywords searched and the ad clicked by your prospects.
The goal is to make the entire sales process congruent, so your prospects are continually reassured they are headed to the right path in finding what they needed and clicked for in the first place. Like writing a compelling ad, creating a dedicated landing page that matches the keyword and the ad copy of your campaign will sustain your prospects’ interest to make a purchase. Garnish your landing page with relevant information to educate your prospects and top it with a powerful call to action, which will seal the deal and convert prospects to paying customers.
Relevance plays a massive role in an ad’s quality score. If your ad is relevant to both the target keyword searched and its landing page, the quality score of your ads gets an immediate boost.
Religiously Monitor and Optimize Your Ads
At this point, you are very much aware that managing an effective Google Ads campaign, like anything else, takes a bit of practice to master and a lot of data to chew on. It requires a balanced strategy and fine-tuning. Conversion tracking is one of the most crucial parts of a campaign’s success. It measures the sales generated and which keywords and ads are generating sales.
There are a lot of conversion tracking platforms that most marketers use. Google Ads also has its conversion tracking code which you can read more about from the Google Ads website.
Note that most campaigns are not profitable from the start, and they always require continual optimization to stay profitable. Pay close attention to the following aspects when optimizing your Google Ads campaign:
Bid. Once you start to generate clicks and sales, you might want to adjust your bids accordingly. If your keywords can generate sales profitably and you’re not ranked on top pages, continue to raise your bids to get more positive result. You would have to lower your bids or pause the keyword entirely if it is not generating profit.
CTR. As you know, your ad’s click-through rate (CTR) directly affects your quality score, which in turn determines how much you pay per click. You may do an A/B test of different ads to see which version gets the most clicks, to optimize your CTR.
Landing page conversion rate. There are many tools to help you test different landing page versions. One of the most recommended tools is Google Optimize. It’s free and easy to use. Like in the split test for ads, you may also do the same for landing pages, where you can set up several dedicated landing pages and see which ones will perform best.
A Little Helping Hand Can Reach A Long Way!
The process of creating a revenue-generating Google Ads campaign may look simple in perspective, but it has a lot of variables to consider. For instance, there are hundreds or thousands of possible keywords to review. Once these keywords are in place, you have the site’s traffic, conversion data, campaign performance and more, to analyze constantly to achieve and maintain optimal results.
Even if several other campaign optimization tools are there for you to utilize, getting experts’ help can be invaluable and time-saving. Feel free to contact our team at Lauer Media if you want to learn how you can start maximizing your advertising dollars through Google Ads!