Google Ads : New Accounts
Creating a Solid Foundation to Support GrowthA proper foundation is vital in creating an advertising account that you can grow into as your business expands. What you’ll find below is an overview of my process for bringing your Google Ads account live.
There are three main phases that I follow – our prelaunch interview, the campaign build out, and post-launch analysis and optimizations.
Prelaunch interview
This is where I learn more about your business goals, objectives, and current configuration. A portion of this happens in our initial conversions, but at some point, I take a deeper dive prior to account set up.
Campaign Build-out
There are several defined steps that I take I building our your account, from keyword development to post-launch analysis of search terms and overall performance.
Keyword Development
Selecting the right keywords is critical to driving advertising the produces results. I take a close look at three main sources for keyword ideas.
1. Your current site. I examine your Google Search Console reports (if available) for keywords that are currently being entered to find your site organically.
2. Google Keyword Planner. What better source for data than the actual source? Google provides a wealth of information about keywords and related ideas. I explore them all.
3. Third party tools like SEMRush, HREFS, and SpyFu. Outside tools are great for analyzing market data, including keywords your competitors are using.
Determining Keyword Match Types
After learning about your business goals and budget, I’ll configure keyword match types to meet your requirements.
Most campaigns are configured with Exact, Phrase, and Broad Match modified match types. Broad match is added carefully and selectively after speaking with you or your team.
Top performing keywords are typically optimized as single keyword ad groups (SKAGS). All others maintain tight thematic groupings.
Keywords are monitored closely to eliminate wasteful search terms that could be triggering your ads. I also watch for search terms coming in that could represent keyword bidding opportunities that we might have missed.
Bid modifiers are added to the more liberal match types to prevent them from competing with
Negative Keywords
I will add many of the most common before we even launch. If your account has been running previously, this works even better as we can examine the data in your search terms report and add negatives to eliminate waste.
Ad Extensions
My goal is to always optimize the potential ad space that Google provides. As part of the launch ad, extensions will be activated for your account.
Common Ad Extensions:
- Site links
- Call extensions
- Message extensions
Call outs - Structured snippets
- Location extensions
- Price extensions
Ad Copy
The skills needed to write ad copy are often very different than anything else within Google Ads. Not everyone can write compelling ad copy, and this is where many Google Ads managers fall short.
When I write ad copy, I gain a thorough understanding of the customer. I explore the emotional triggers that influence purchase activities.
Quality Score Considerations
As I build out your account, my goal is to always create a quality search experience for your future customers. Ad copy and landing pages should focus on the actual search terms that someone has entered into Google.
I can control this fairly well with exact and phrase match keywords and will do everything I can to drive a higher quality score to reduce your cost-per-click (CPC).
Landing Pages
Like ad copy, the creation of landing pages also requires different skills, most often graphic design and web development. My skills extend from marketing into website development, having coded and developed many websites.
Landing pages should be created for each of your main keywords that drive the bulk of your business. To gain top performance at the lowest cost, content should maintain consistency with the search term and ad copy that triggered the click.
Pages should also be A/B tested in a constant effort to optimize and drive new customers.
Conversion Tracking
If needed, I will help you to configure conversion tracking on your website. This is typically a snippet of code that Google provides. It is usually inserted on a thank you page, or on multiple pages for a variety of conversion types via Google Tag Manager.
Remarketing
Remarketing is a powerful way to stay top of mind with potential customers who have visited your website or app. I can help to configure your remarketing tag as well.
Post Launch Analysis and Optimizations
Once we launch, I will immediately begin to monitor the search terms that result in ad clicks. Negatives keywords will be added regularly.
There is a general ramp-up period of two weeks before Google has absorbed your ad into their system and reporting has stabilized to the point that we can pull insights from data.
After launch, I will schedule regular calls with you to discuss observations, changes, and optimizations that have been made to the account.
AdWords Audits
Google Ads is a powerful marketing platform that targets potential customers with high purchase intent.
But like a high-performance engine, a lot can go wrong if you’re not careful.
One misconfigured setting can result in thousands of dollars in waste in a single day.
Optimization
There is no such thing as “set it and forget it” in the world of Google Ads.
Search terms, keywords and the market
From small accounts to large, proper optimization is the difference between advertising that drives business growth vs tremendous waste
Performance Reporting with Insights
The value in reporting comes from insights, not data. I take the time to analyze your numbers and make recommendations based on account performance and market fluctuations.
The focus depends on company goals, but here are a few of the most common metrics that are regularly monitored.
CPA - This is the Cost per acquisition or action, depending on the goals, but is often a lead or sale. This figure is important to track and it’s a leading indicator of cost. I use this to compare the expense of acquiring a customer to the revenue generated over time (often referred to as customer lifetime value).
CPC - Cost per click is what you are paying when someone clicks your ad. There are many factors that drive this, including market fluctuations (basic supply and demand for certain keywords) and your Quality Score - a measure of relevancy and quality of overall search experience. The higher your QS, the lower your CPC.
CTR - Your click-through rate is a great indicator of interest and engagement. High
RoAS - Another key metric is your return on ad spend. This is similar to
Eliminate Wasteful Spend and Start Driving Quality Leads, Sales, and Growth.
Personalized Attention to Your Account
My personal attention means that your account is never outsourced to a 3rd party for the sake of maximizing agency profit. I am committed to learning your business inside and out in order to attract quality leads and customers.
Depending on the size of your account, we will have weekly, biweekly, or monthly meetings to discuss progress and goals.
Stop wasting money and start driving results.
Contact me today for a complimentary consultation.