Do you want to reach out to new clients online using Google Ads? We can assist you.
Whether you’re still deciding whether Google Ads is right for you or you’re ready to launch your first campaign, this checklist will walk you through the process step by step.
Understand a few fundamental words
- Keywords: These are the terms or phrases that users enter into Google Search to see your ad. When creating an ad campaign, you’ll select a list of keywords that you believe people will search for when looking for what you have to offer (don’t worry: we can help).
- Bid: This is the most you’re prepared to spend if someone clicks on your ad. (Because, with Google Ads, you don’t pay to appear — you only pay when someone clicks on your ad and visits your website or calls you.)
- Quality Score: This score indicates the relevance of your keywords to your ad — and to your landing page (i.e. the webpage where people will be taken when they click your ad). A high Quality Score can reduce your bid expenses and boost your ad rank in search results.
- Ad Rank: This statistic determines where your ad will appear in comparison to other advertisements when it is triggered to display on Google. Your bid, Quality Score, and other variables are used to establish your rank.
- CPC (cost-per-click): The amount you pay when someone clicks on your advertisement. (You don’t have to pay your entire bid price for every click; it just establishes a range of possible costs-per-click.)
- Conversion: A conversion occurs when someone who sees your ad clicks on it and then takes another action you’ve designated as important, such as making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or calling you.
Set up your account
How do you ensure the success of your account from the start? Begin by categorising your items or services and basing your account structure on those. (One smart idea is to adopt the same structure as your website.)
Within a Google Ads account, there are two levels of organisation: campaigns (the higher level) and ad groups (the lower level — each campaign can have multiple ad groups). Consider campaigns to be larger categories in your business, and ad groups to be smaller, more specific sets of products or services. For example, if you own a craft supply store, you could create the following campaigns and ad groups:
Campaign 1: Sewing and knitting
- Group 1 advertising: Yarn
- Group 2 advertising: Needles and hoops
- Group 3 advertising: fabric and embroidery thread
Campaign 2: Children’s crafts
- Group 1 advertising: paint and markers
- Group 2 advertising: glitter and glue
- Group 3 advertising: Craft supplies
Creating separate campaigns, ad groups, ads, and keyword lists for your products helps keep your ads relevant, ensuring that someone looking for “glitter glue” doesn’t see your ad for “embroidery thread” and think you don’t have what they need.
The more targeted and specific your ads are, the more people you can reach who are specifically interested in what you have to offer.
Establish a budget
You can control how much you spend with Google Ads by adjusting two settings: your daily budget and your bids.
Your budget is the daily amount you want to spend on each campaign. Your bid is the amount of money you’re willing to spend on a keyword if someone searches for it and then clicks on your ad.
When you first start out, it’s a good idea to spread your overall budget (the amount you want to pay for your entire account) evenly across your campaigns until you figure out which one works best for your business. However, depending on your company objectives, you should establish varied campaign budgets and bid quantities. For example, if you want to attract customers to your “kids crafts” products one month, consider increasing the budget for that campaign while decreasing the budget for another, less important one. You can change your budget and bids at any time, so if something isn’t working, you can change it.
Select your keywords
The goal of keyword selection is to select terms that you believe people will search for when looking for what you have to offer online. Furthermore, you want your keywords to be as relevant to the ad they trigger and the landing page people will arrive at if they click on that ad as possible.
Google Ads has a free tool called the Keyword Planner that may produce a sample list of keywords for your campaigns to help you get started. (We recommend going over the list of options and selecting just those that make sense for you.) The Keyword Planner can also help you estimate how much to bid on a specific keyword so your ad appears in search results — this can give you an idea of which keywords are too expensive to bid on and which will fit within your budget. In general, the more competitive a keyword is, the higher the cost of bidding on it.
When you’re first starting out, you might want to avoid high-competition keywords to avoid blowing your entire budget on a few clicks. Sticking with low-to-medium cost keywords can still get you a lot of exposure while also allowing you to test how your campaigns are performing.
Configure your keyword match types
“Keyword match type” is a Google Ads setting that allows you to further refine when your ad will appear on Google. There are five choices:
Wide Match:
The “broad match” option displays your ad for searches that include your keywords in any order, as well as related terms. This option displays your ad in the most searches and is the default setting for all campaigns.
Modifier for Broad Match:
This option allows you to specify which words in your broad-match keyword must appear in a user’s search in order for your ad to be displayed. So, if your keyword is “high fibre wool yarn,” and you want to ensure that the words “wool” and “yarn” are always present in a search, you could add a plus sign (+) before those words. So, high fibre +wool +yarn would be your broad match modifier keyword.
Matching Phrases:
This option displays your ad for searches that include your exact keyword or your exact keyword plus words before or after it. (For example, if your keyword is “wool yarn,” you may also appear for “fine wool yarn” or “wool yarn for sale near me.” To select this option, put quotation marks around any keywords, such as “wool yarn.”
Perfect Match:
When you select an exact match, your ad will appear only when someone searches for the exact word or phrase you specify. Put brackets around your keyword for this option, for example: [wool yarn].
Negative Compatibility:
This match option allows you to prevent unwanted words or phrases from triggering your ad, thereby removing irrelevant traffic. For example, if you only sell high-end yarn, words like “bargain” or “cheap” should be avoided. Put a minus sign in front of the words you don’t want to appear for, for example: -cheap, -bargain.
Set up your landing pages.
After clicking on your ad, potential clients will be sent to your landing page. Choosing a page that is relevant to your ad and keywords can help people find what they’re looking for more quickly: for example, if your ad promotes a sale on yarn, instead of sending people to your website’s home page, choose a landing page where that yarn is prominently featured.
Choose which devices to appear on.
Do your ideal consumers do their searches on a desktop, a mobile device, or both? Are you more interested in reaching out to consumers on the go or individuals who want to make a quick online purchase? Consider the sorts of consumers you want to interact with (and, more significantly, which devices those customers use) when you set up your Google Ads account. For example, if you own a car repair shop and want to attract consumers who are nearby and in need of assistance, consider just showing your adverts on mobile devices.
Create your ads
Your ad will be many people’s first impression of your company, so make sure it conveys that you have what they need. This is easiest when the ad contains the keywords that people search for — which you can achieve by segmenting your campaign into distinct ad groups and writing unique ads for each. This will make your ads more relevant to potential customers and may even raise your Quality Score.
In addition, put a “call to action” in your ad: a clear, succinct phrase that tells the reader what you want them to do after reading your ad. Phrases such as “shop now” or “learn more” might persuade consumers to click on your ad.
Finally, before you submit your ad, double-check it for spelling and grammar mistakes.
Link your Google Analytics account.
Google Analytics is a free tool for learning more about how people interact with your ads and website. You don’t have to use Analytics to use Google Ads, so skip ahead to the next step if you prefer.
While Google Ads can tell you how many people click on your ads, combining Google Ads and Analytics allows you to track what those people do after they arrive at your website. For example, if visitors arrive at your site but immediately leave, your ad may not have reached the intended audience — or you may have directed them to the incorrect section of your website. These insights can help you better organise your ads and potentially get more bang for your buck with your marketing budget.
Click Go and check back later.
Excellent job! You’re now ready to launch your campaigns and see how they perform. Remember to return regularly to see which advertisements and keywords are generating the most clicks and conversions. Over time, you should be able to observe which techniques are assisting you in meeting your objectives and which still require improvement.
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