Google Ads How To Run Successful Ads & Increase Sales Or Leads

Google Ads: How To Run Successful Ads & Increase Sales Or Leads 2
CONTENTS
INTRO4
What you will learn 5
Google Targeting 6
Search Network Strategy 6
Display Network Strategy 6
Which targeting options should you use on the Display network? 9
Automatic placements 10
Managed Placements 11
Develop different creative? 12
Do you disable the Display Network? 13
Campaign Structure Strategy 14
How will we structure our campaigns? 15
What match type strategy do you use? 16
Broad match keywords and no negative keyword list 17
One match type across the account 19
Keyword Grouping 20
Keywords on the Search Network 21
Which keywords for the Search Network? 21
Keywords on the Display Network 22
Which keywords for the Display Network? 22
Which keywords for the Display Network? 23

Google Ads: How To Run Successful Ads Increase Sales Or Leads 3
Keyword Research 24
Keyword Types 24
Keyword Types 26
Pre and post qualifiers 27
Shopping Ads 29
Shopping Ads 30
Remarketing31
Budget and Bid Management 33
Budgeting strategy 33
Listing Positioning Strategy 36
Which positions are targeted for different keywords? 36
Bidding strategies 37
Portfolio or automated bidding strategies 37
Some automated bidding strategies include: 37
Brand bidding 38
Dayparting Strategies 39
Bid management tools strategy 41
Is a tool used to automate bidding? 41
Creative Testing and Campaign Optimisation 42
Ad Creatives and copy strategy 42
Destination or landing page strategy 45
1. Sending people to the wrong landing page 45
2. No call to action (CTA) 46
3. Not enough content 46
4. Slow loading pages 46

Campaign review and optimisation strategy 47
1. Search terms report 48
2. User location reports 48
3. Devices reports 48
4. Auction insights reports 49
5. Conversion reports 50
How often are they reviewed? By whom? 51
Size of account 52
Budget Size 52
Nature of business 52
Available tools 52
Level of expertise 53
Local ads 53
International ads 54
Mobile search 55
About the Author 57
RESOURCES58

INTRO
The challenges of running an effective Google Ads PPC campaign can be great.
As with other marketing channels, it’s important to start with your target audience -
identify who they are and then create a targeted Google Ads strategy. You also need
to identify and understand your key competitors.
This book will help you with your Google Ads strategy by equipping you with the
techniques that top PPC experts use to achieve high return on investment (ROI) on
all the campaigns they launch and manage.
So, whether you manage a small account with one or two search campaigns, or you
manage multiple accounts and spend thousands each month, you will be able to
apply the insights in this book to create outstanding campaigns.

What you will learn

‫ؘ‬ Which Google network type is best for your business?

‫ؘ‬ How to pick keywords that convert for a low Cost Per Action (CPA)

‫ؘ‬ Find out about the best keyword strategy that is used by top PPC experts
(and that few others know about)

‫ؘ‬ Learn about how you can turn your display network into an effective
channel that will bring you an endless stream of sales or leads

‫ؘ‬ How to choose the best bid strategy to maximise performance

‫ؘ‬ How to find the best negative keywords - not just positive keywords

‫ؘ‬ How to structure your Google Ads campaigns for maximum performance

‫ؘ‬ Should you bid on competitor names, what are the implications if you
do?

‫ؘ‬ Which days and hours should you run your ads, and why?

‫ؘ‬ Are third party bid management tools worth the investment?

‫ؘ‬ How to go about creating high conversion landing pages

Google Targeting
Your choice of network and campaign type is one of the most crucial factors of your
Google Ads success. For many advertisers this is usually an easy choice, and they
will often start with the ‘Search Network Only’ campaign type.
The display network tends to be a secondary choice made after all other search
avenues have been explored. This is fine, considering that you are targeting people
who are actively searching for your products or services, or are already in the later
stages of the buying funnel. In mailing a person on LinkedIn or Facebook meant
you could wait weeks to get a response. Often the opportunity was lost by the time
the candidate responded!
However, the display network presents some opportunities that go well beyond what
you can get from ‘Search’ and can help you to increase your leads from a wider
potential market.
Search Network Strategy
The ‘Search’ network is the primary network in Google Ads, and for most advertisers
it represents over 80% of their Google Ads PPC strategy.
There are two search network types - these are Google and its search partners.
These search partners include sites such as AOL and Ask, and they drive a high
volume of search traffic for Google Ads advertisers.
Display Network Strategy
The Display network has continued to grow, and now includes millions of sites/
placements and apps from around the world. The network is a collection of sites that
are signed up to the Google AdSense programme, and that wish to display ads on
their sites. These sites and apps number in the millions, and so it’s impossible to fail
to find sites on which to advertise.

Examples of prominent sites that are part of the Display network include Gmail,
thousands of price comparison sites, information sites, and ecommerce platforms
all of which receive millions of visitors each month.
For this reason, the Display network has a wider reach than
the ‘Search network. Some of its benefits include:

‫ؘ‬ It is ideal for raising brand awareness

‫ؘ‬ Can be used to launch a product or service that is not known in the
market

‫ؘ‬ Can use both display ads and text rich media ads

‫ؘ‬ It generally has lower CPC rates than search

‫ؘ‬ A wide choice of banner sizes to choose from

‫ؘ‬ It uses demographic targeting

With Display, you can also choose which types of sites to advertise on. For example,
based on past conversion rates, many advertisers find that apps, error pages, forums
and other similar placements are not suitable for their businesses and don’t bring
the results that they need.
This is understandable, especially as in-app visitors often click ads accidentally
because mobile screens sizes are small and clicking ads happens unintentionally.
For this reason, these placements often show high bounce rates when compared to
other options. You can disable these placements and focus on other, more relevant
placements.
Some placements could also harm a brand, and so it’s important
to review these before advertising. Some things to watch out for
include:

‫ؘ‬ Gambling sites

‫ؘ‬ Pornography sites

‫ؘ‬ Firearms sites
The Display network does have its drawbacks, including:

‫ؘ‬ Low click-through rates compared to Search

‫ؘ‬ Less targeted than Search

‫ؘ‬ Suffers from ‘ad blindness (people block out anything that looks like an
advert)

Which targeting options should you
use on the Display network?
In each Display network ad group, you can choose various targeting options, as
listed below. You can have one or more targeting options (for example, combining
automatic with interests) to make your targeting more precise.
Some targeting options available include:

‫ؘ‬ Automatic/keywords

‫ؘ‬ Managed placements

‫ؘ‬ Interests

‫ؘ‬ Topics

‫ؘ‬ Demographics

‫ؘ‬ Remarketing

Automatic placements
With automatic targeting, you use keywords just as you would in a search campaign.
However, you are not bidding on these keywords, you are instead notifying the
system that you want placements that have these keywords in their content. One
major difference with Search campaigns is that match types don’t work with the
Display network, and all keywords are set to broad match.
You can also add negative keywords (just as with a Search campaign) to ensure
that your ads are not placed on pages with specific keywords that don’t match your
requirements. Also, like Search campaigns, you can add different match types such
as exact match and phrase match.
With automatic placements, you can also block specific sites that are not converting
for your business or are not relevant to you. So, you should look at your automatic
placements report in the campaign to see where you are getting traffic, and then
take appropriate action.
Some things that your Automatic Placements report can tell you
include:

‫ؘ‬ Which placements are driving the most volume?

‫ؘ‬ Which placements have the highest conversions and conversion rates

‫ؘ‬ Placements that you need to get rid of (based on conversions)

‫ؘ‬ Which content is most popular for your site?

Managed Placements
Managed Placements give you greater control, because you can choose the sites
and apps on which you want to advertise. Unlike Automatic Placements, you have
greater control over where you advertise and who sees your ads.
Target specific sites using the Display Planner tool:
The Display Planner tool works in a similar way to the keyword planner tool by
finding sites on which you can advertise. You can search for sites using keywords
and then choose to find placements. The results are then ranked from the most
relevant to the least relevant.
You also see the number of impressions each placement receives. This can help you
to decide what your budget will be, and which sites are likely to bring you the best
results.
You can also choose to advertise on specific pages of the sites that are of interest,
not on all the pages on the site.
Both Automatic and Managed Placements are set at the ad group level, so you can
have different types of ad groups for each campaign. It does not make a difference if
you combine them, and it won’t be necessary to split them into separate campaigns
unless you have a large account and want to report them separately.

Develop different creative?
The Display network offers more options in the type of ads that you can run. You
can advertise using desktop and mobile text ads, standard HTML and flash banners,
rich media ads and even video. This enables you to experiment to assess the ROI
for each creative type.
Google provides the Display builder tool that allows you to create banners to advertise
on the Display network. This tool is free, and you can use it to create unique and
customised HTML and flash banners that are relevant to your business.
To get started with this tool, you simply need to create a Display campaign and an
ad group, and then add your website URL. The tool then scans your site for relevant
text and images that it can use to build the creatives.
It also gets ideas from your text ads (if you have them) and lays them out in a way
that will lead to better click-throughs.
However, this tool is limited in its capabilities, and it is often not as good as the
banners that are created by a graphic designer. It has a standard layout that is not
changeable, and limits how much text and colour you can have in your creatives.
So, if creating a strong brand awareness is important to your business, then this
may not be the tool for you. It works better for direct response campaigns that are
looking to get immediate sales or leads. Also, if you have a premium brand (like
luxury clothing or watches) then you are better off hiring an experienced graphic
designer to create your banners.

Do you disable the Display Network?
Best practice is to separate the Search network from the Display network in your
campaigns. In the past, Google’s default campaign setup was to include these two
very different networks, however, after a lot of testing and feedback from marketers
and advertisers they now see the wisdom of separating the two.
The only combined option that remains is Search Network with Display Select. That
said, I still see this as an ineffective way to run your campaigns. It doesn’t address
the issue that the Search and Display networks are two very different beasts.

Campaign Structure Strategy
Campaign structure is important to ensure that searchers using a specific search term
trigger the relevant creative. It’s important to know the limits that each campaign,
ad group, ad and keyword is subject to.

‫ؘ‬ 10,000 campaigns (includes active and paused campaigns)

‫ؘ‬ 20,000 ad groups per campaign

‫ؘ‬ 5,000 keywords per ad group

‫ؘ‬ 300 display ads per ad group (includes image ads)

‫ؘ‬ 4 million active or paused ads per account

‫ؘ‬ 3 million keywords per account

‫ؘ‬ 10,000 location targets (targeted and excluded) per campaign, including
up to 500 proximity targets per campaign*

‫ؘ‬ 100,000 active ad extensions per account

‫ؘ‬ 1.3 million references to ad extensions per account
Most advertisers will find the above limits more than sufficient for their needs.
If you find that you have exceeded these limits, then you should consider setting up
another Google Ads account and then creating a Manager Account or My Client
Center (MCC) account so that you can access all your accounts with one login.

How will we structure our
campaigns?
There are many ways to structure your Google Ads campaigns,
including:

‫ؘ‬ Website layout

‫ؘ‬ Locations

‫ؘ‬ Keyword themes

‫ؘ‬ Language

‫ؘ‬ Product or category type
Keyword Strategy

What match type strategy
do you use?
Some of the biggest Google Ads mistakes I see when I take over
a new account are with match type selection. Some common
mistakes include:

‫ؘ‬ Having broad match keywords and no negative keywords

‫ؘ‬ Using only one match type across the account

‫ؘ‬ Using the same bid for all match types

‫ؘ‬ Putting no thought into match type strategy

‫ؘ‬ Setting all keywords in an ad group to broad
LET’S LOOK AT SOME OF THE
ABOVE POINTS IN MORE DETAIL..

Broad match keywords and no
negative keyword list
Broad match keywords will bring a ton of traffic to your website. This will include
synonyms, closely related terms and a wide range of searches that have little to do
with what you are selling.
This means for example a broad match keyword like ‘red rose’ will bring such
searches as:

‫ؘ‬ red rose

‫ؘ‬ rose

‫ؘ‬ flower

‫ؘ‬ purple rose

‫ؘ‬ And many other variants.
This is why you need negative keywords if you are bidding on broad match types.
Negatives will stop your ads appearing in the auction for any searches that are
irrelevant.
As you carry out your initial (and ongoing) keyword research, you should be on the
lookout for any keywords or phrases that don’t reflect your product or service offers.
You can build a list of these terms in the shared library and then apply it to any
campaigns or ad groups that you like. In fact, it’s better to create it there because
it will save you a lot of time, especially if the terms apply to all (or most) of the ad
groups and campaigns.

The other option is to
add them individually
at the campaign and ad
group level. You will want
to do this if the negative
keywords are only
relevant to specific ad
groups and campaigns.
There are many sources to help you find negative keywords,
including:

‫ؘ‬ the search terms report found in the Keywords tab

‫ؘ‬ in the search queries report found in Google analytics

‫ؘ‬ in the Google Search Console (formerly Webmaster tools) the search
terms report here is delayed by a few days, but it is valuable because
it gives you search results for Organic traffic that will show as ‘not
available’ in Google Analytics

‫ؘ‬ Google’s keyword planner tool. As you carry out your research and build
your campaigns, this is perhaps the first place to start, especially if you
have no traffic reports yet for your website

‫ؘ‬ Forums and groups (such as Yahoo groups) can give you ideas for
negative keywords

One match type across the account
This mistake is common, especially for broad match types that many people use
because they have little experience with match types. By having one match type
across your account (like broad match, for example) you are likely to have poor
quality scores. It also means that some search terms that are highly profitable are
not receiving the attention that they deserve.
Some people will restrict their reach by adding ‘exact match’
keywords only. This setup is not ideal for the following reasons:

‫ؘ‬ You will miss out on highly profitable search terms

‫ؘ‬ You won’t receive traffic from long tail searches

‫ؘ‬ You will likely have low traffic volumes

‫ؘ‬ Your CPC costs are likely to be high
I like to include all match types in my campaigns and use bid increments to notify the
system of my most valued to least valued keyword match types. So, for the keyword
‘car insurance’ example, this is how I would bid:
This is effective because it prioritizes my exact match keyword first because I have
determined it is the most relevant, followed by phrase match and then broad match
keyword being the least important because it is likely to bring a high volume of
searches that are not relevant.

‫ؘ‬ Car insurance - £1

‫ؘ‬ “Car insurance” - £1.50

‫ؘ‬ [Car insurance] - £1.75

Keyword Grouping
1. Comparison/quality - Compare car insurance
2. Adjective (price/product qualifiers) - Cheap car insurance, women’s car
insurance
3. Intended use (Intention)- high mileage car insurance
4. Vendor - Churchill car insurance
5. Product type - holiday insurance, car insurance
6. Location - Car insurance UK
7. Action request - Buy car insurance
8. Combination (Mostly longtail keywords) - Cheap high mileage car
insurance

Keywords on the Search Network
Which keywords for the Search Network?
Keyword selection for the Search Network is critical, and it starts with research using
tools like the Keyword Planner in Google Ads or third-party tools like Wordtracker.

Keywords on the Display Network
Which keywords for the Display Network?
Keywords in the Display Network are not as important as they are on the Search
Network, simply because there are other targeting options that include managed
placements, remarketing, topics, and others.
If you choose to use keywords for targeting on the display network, you will run them
as broad match because it’s not necessary to add other match types. That’s because
your ads are contextually targeted, and the purpose of the keywords is to find sites
on which to advertise that have your keywords in their content.
However, you can use negative keywords (like you would on the search network)
to prevent your ads from appearing on placements that are not related to your
business. This also helps to increase click through rates (CTR) because your ads will
be more relevant to people browsing on these placements.
Negative keywords
As mentioned in the section ‘Broad match keywords and no negative keyword
list,’ having a negative keyword list is important to the success of your advertising.
You should start building your list early and regularly update it as you find more
opportunities.

Your keyword research campaigns should include both positive keywords and
negative keywords, and this is the most effective way to launch your campaigns.
Leaving negative keyword research till later will cost you a lot of money, especially
if you use other match types besides exact match.
Negative keywords can be added at the ad group level and campaign level, and
these options affect the search terms for which your ads appear.
You can also create a negative group list in the ‘shared library’ and then apply your
lists to any campaigns you have running. The benefit to this is that you can save time
by creating one list that you can apply to all accounts and not create lists for each
individual campaign.
Which keywords for the Display Network?
I’m often asked how many keywords should each ad group have? In truth, I’ve seen
ad groups with one keyword and others with hundreds of keywords with all match
types.
From my experience, it’s important that you have a manageable number of keywords
in each ad group that are each extremely relevant to the ads, and vice versa. So,
if you have hundreds of keywords in an ad group, it’s very likely that you have
keywords that don’t belong there. It would be much better to separate them into
other ad groups and create ads that are related.
An ideal number of keywords in each ad group can be anything between 5 and
20. This should be sufficient to target all the related terms for the ad group theme.
Anything higher is likely to cause targeting problems, and this leads to poor quality
scores and low CTRs (Click Through Rates).
Anything below 5 usually means you aren’t targeting all the keywords for that theme,
and you could be losing out on a lot of traffic. If you’ve chosen to add the keywords
in another ad group, you could easily have many ad groups that are difficult to
manage.

Keyword Research
Keyword research is one of the first
things you should do when you
start with Google Ads, and you
should continue with it throughout
your experience with Google Ads.
There are many tools to help you
carry out effective research. Some
are free 3rd party tools, but some
of the best ones have a small
associated cost.
Google Ads has a keyword planner tool that is a great improvement over the older
Google Keyword tool that was phased out. Here are some of the benefits of the
Keyword Planner:

‫ؘ‬ It groups similar keywords into tightly- themed ad groups

‫ؘ‬ You can export your keywords and work on them in a spreadsheet and
then upload them to Google Ads Editor

‫ؘ‬ You can access historical data for your keywords and assess the trends

‫ؘ‬ It allows you to find out how competitive your keywords are and what bid
to set
Keyword Types
There are two main keyword types you
should be aware of:

‫ؘ‬ head keywords

‫ؘ‬ long tail keywords

Head keywords are often popular high traffic keywords that are difficult to rank for.
This is because many advertisers target them, and this pushes the Cost Per Click
(CPC) rate up.
Head keywords or terms are one- or two-word keywords. Examples are:

‫ؘ‬ women’s clothing

‫ؘ‬ shoes

‫ؘ‬ men’s shirts
As you can see, these are high traffic keywords that you should avoid if you have a
low budget or even a medium-sized budget. They drive high volumes of traffic and
big players like Amazon will be bidding on such keywords.
The problems with bidding on head keywords are:

‫ؘ‬ They are costly and few when compared to long tail keywords

‫ؘ‬ They don’t convert well because it is difficult to ascertain buyer intent

‫ؘ‬ They are difficult to get a page 1 ranking for because every advertiser is
bidding on them
The power of your keyword strategy lies in bidding on long tail keywords, and this
is why:

‫ؘ‬ In total they represent over 80% of traffic volumes

‫ؘ‬ They are easy to rank for

‫ؘ‬ Because they each have low traffic volumes many advertisers ignore them
(they won’t show up in keyword research results and that’s why they are
less competitive)

Keyword Types

‫ؘ‬ They are very specific, and searchers are usually at the later stages of the
buying funnel and ready to purchase
However, some marketers define long tail keywords differently, with some defining
them as any keywords that are low in traffic but represent a wide variety of products.
An example is product part numbers, which will often be one- or two-word keywords
but are not very popular with advertisers; however, they convert very well.
Some marketers define long tail keywords as keywords that have three or more
words, are low in traffic individually, or are less popular with advertisers.

Pre and post qualifiers
Keyword selection is something you need to plan and think about carefully. Not all
keywords you find as you do your research will work for you, so you should first
understand the nature of the keywords that you discover.
As mentioned earlier, head keywords are high volume, high competition keywords
that you should only bid on if you have sufficient budget. Many advertisers make the
mistake of bidding on such keywords with low budgets and without understanding
the searchers’ intent.
For example, it’s not easy to determine what a person searching for ‘Advent PC’
wants. Are they looking to buy, or are they looking for general information about
Advent PCs, or are they looking for pictures of the PC or some other feature? It’s
hard to determine!
That’s why you should start with long tail keywords such as ‘buy advent PC’ or
‘advent PC software bundles.’ With these, it is much clearer what the searcher intent
is.
This brings me to the best bidding strategy. It’s based on pre and post qualifier
keywords and works something like this:
Say you sell Virus protection software, and you want to find highly profitable keywords
that will convert to sales.

First, do a search for all the various
types of malware threats. This is what
you are likely to come up with:

‫ؘ‬ Virus

‫ؘ‬ Trojan

‫ؘ‬ Adware

‫ؘ‬ Browser hijacker
Next, make a list of all the adjectives
and verbs that people will use to
search as they look for ways to remove
malware. This is what you are likely to
find:

‫ؘ‬ Remove

‫ؘ‬ Delete

‫ؘ‬ Removal

‫ؘ‬ Cleaner

‫ؘ‬ And so on…
Next, using a merging tool like www.mergewords.com you will merge these two lists
and produce hundreds or even thousands of keywords that you can group into ad
groups and bid on.
So, you could build a long list of keywords such as:

‫ؘ‬ Remove Virus

‫ؘ‬ Remove Trojan

‫ؘ‬ Remove Adware

‫ؘ‬ Remove Browser hijacker

‫ؘ‬ Delete Virus

‫ؘ‬ Delete Trojan

‫ؘ‬ Delete Adware

‫ؘ‬ Delete Browser hijacker

This is effective keyword research, and you will find the results to be amazing. In
fact, this is the strategy that the best PPC experts use.
You can do this with all your products, and you will easily beat the competition in
your reach, costs, and profitability on Google Ads.
Shopping Ads
Shopping search is a vertical
in the Google interface and
it’s where searchers go to
when looking to compare
and purchase products. Some
shopping listings will appear
alongside regular search
listings reach, costs and
profitability on Google Ads.
A tool that can help you combine your keyword lists is www.mergewords.com

Shopping Ads
Using Google Merchant Centre, you can upload a data feed in CSV or XML format
that lists all the products you want to promote with their main features such as
Name, Price, Image URL, Link URL, etc.
The first time you create and upload your data feed you are likely to encounter
problems and some rejections, especially if you have little experience with the
system. There is a bit of a learning curve, but you can quickly master the interface
by reading the guidelines that Google provides.
Some problems you are likely to encounter are:

‫ؘ‬ Missing parameters

‫ؘ‬ Incorrect feed formatting

You will then link your Google Ads and Merchant Centre accounts so you can create
shopping campaigns in Google Ads and promote your products.
Some things to be aware of as you are creating your shopping ad groups include:

‫ؘ‬ You can create one ad group that lists all your products, but this is not
best practice setup

‫ؘ‬ You can filter your products based on product ID and category

‫ؘ‬ You set your bid at the ad group level

‫ؘ‬ You can add negative keywords to prevent your ads from showing up for
certain searches

‫ؘ‬ However, you can’t bid on keywords because targeting is based on your
product listings
Google shopping is a highly effective channel and as a retailer you are likely to see
better conversion rates and performance than search campaigns because searchers
are likely to be at the later stages of the buying funnel.
Remarketing
Remarketing is a way to retarget people who’ve visited your site before with ads that
encourage them to return to your site and complete the actions that are important to
your business. For example, an ecommerce business will remarket to people who’ve
been on the site but did not place an order.
To target these visitors, you need to create audience lists that describe the people that
you want to target. If you are a B2B business and you are giving away free whitepaper
downloads, you can create an audience for visitors that haven’t downloaded a
whitepaper, and then exclude those that have.

It’s important that your lists are
well defined and configured
correctly because you want your
messages to be well targeted. An
audience for ‘All Visitors’ is not
a best practice setup strategy,
especially if you have high traffic
volumes.
However, remarketing can be
used to target people who’ve
never been on your site but that
do have a specific interest in
your products or services and are
similar to your audience lists.
There are two ways to create
your audiences: within Google Analytics or within Google Ads. Here are the benefits
of creating them in Analytics:

‫ؘ‬ You will only ever have to update your tracking code once

‫ؘ‬ You will receive more powerful reports in analytics to understand your
audiences better

‫ؘ‬ You can create audiences from other traffic sources (and not just Google
Ads)
Creating them in Google Ads means you will have to add tracking code each time
you create an audience and that will be time consuming and could cause errors; the
better option is to do it within Analytics.

Budget and Bid Management
Budgeting strategy
Budgets are set at the campaign level, and this is one of the most difficult decisions
that advertisers must make. In fact, it’s also one of the most error-prone areas of
Google Ads. Most advertisers (especially small businesses) set very low budgets that
aren’t sufficient to see good returns from the campaigns.
An example is an ecommerce site that has a low budget that exhausts early in the
day and goes offline in the evening. Such a site could miss out on traffic that is
potentially more profitable when people have more time to search and purchase -
unlike when they are at work during the day.
Also, many potential customers do a lot of comparison shopping and will often
convert later to when they first searched. When they return to search and are hoping
to find your website where they first found it but then find that it has disappeared,
they will click through to competitor sites and purchase there.

This scenario is evident in multi-channel reports that show that transactions take
place after 2 or more clicks of paid ads. Clearly these people have searched then
clicked, then returned sometime later within the conversion window, clicked again
and finally placed an order.
Setting your daily budget is easy. You decide what you want to spend per month
and then divide that by 30 to arrive at your daily budget. As your ads run, you may
notice on some days that you are spending slightly above your maximum budget,
however there is no need to worry about that. The system will ensure that you are
not charged more than your budget over a 30-day period.

What if you realise that you have set a high budget, but you are spending far less
than you would like? There are a couple of things you can do to check why you
are under- spending, and you can add new columns to your dashboard to assess
the cause. You can add columns for the Search Impression Share, Lost Impression
Share (rank) and Lost Impression Share (budget).
Search Impression Share - this shows what percentage of impressions your ads are
receiving and is also a good indicator of the share of clicks your ads are receiving.
Lost Impression Share (rank) - this metric reveals the percentage of impressions that
your ads are losing because of a low ad rank. This also affects the number of clicks
you receive.
Lost Impression Share (budget) - this shows the impressions that you are losing
because of a low budget. Again, this is a good indicator of the number of clicks that
you could be losing out on because of a low budget.
These three metrics add up to 100%, and with that you can then work on increasing
or decreasing your share of impressions.
Is daily budget sufficient that ads are served at full delivery (always present)?
There are two options for setting your budget spend throughout the day: spread
evenly throughout the day, or accelerated delivery where you spend it all as soon as
possible. The default setting is to spread your budget evenly through the day
There are pros and cons to both options. For example, an accelerated delivery could
cause you to exhaust your budget early and lose out on traffic and sales later in the
day. So, if you are a business that receives higher visitor sales and interactions later
in the day, you will lose out on greater profitability.

Listing Positioning Strategy
Which positions are targeted for different keywords?
Based on keyword conversions in the top position or other positions on Google and
Search partners, you can target specific positions for your keywords.
Generally, keywords that are in the top position benefit from significantly higher
click through rates and conversions, but that differs from sector to sector.
Not all keywords should occupy the same positions, but rather you should test
positions and see what the best options are based on your keyword groupings.
Higher positions often mean higher costs, so you should be prepared for higher
cost per click rates if you increase your bids either manually or using an automated
bidding strategy as described in the ‘bidding strategies’ section.
An effective technique for increasing your ad position without excessive bid increases
is to work on your quality scores. This is obviously a longer-term strategy, so don’t
expect to see improvements in your quality scores overnight, especially if you have
a large account.
However, if done promptly and well, you can see a significant jump in quality scores
within days and a corresponding increase in your ad position. Low quality scores
have many disadvantages for your account, including:

‫ؘ‬ Higher CPC costs

‫ؘ‬ Lower Ad positions

‫ؘ‬ Expensive campaigns

‫ؘ‬ Lower traffic volumes
As you can see, there are many factors to consider if you want a higher position for
your keywords and ads.

Bidding strategies
Portfolio or automated bidding strategies
Portfolio strategies are set in ‘shared library’ and allow you to pick the strategy that
is most suitable for your business. For example, for businesses where products are
standardised and customers receive a similar offer from other suppliers, being listed
at the top is important because buyers won’t shop around. They will pick one of the
first retailers, especially if pricing is the same.
Other benefits of achieving top positions in the auctions is a higher click through
rate (CTR) and a corresponding increase in sales and revenue. Advertisers that are
listed at the top benefit from higher brand awareness and more confidence from
shoppers.
However, it’s important that you test positions to see where you get the best ROI.
For any campaigns you’ve run in the past, you can check how you’ve performed for
CTR, traffic volumes and conversions by looking at the Top vs. Other Report under
segments.
Some automated bidding strategies include:

‫ؘ‬ Maximize Conversions

‫ؘ‬ Enhanced CPC

‫ؘ‬ Target CPA

Brand bidding
Should you be bidding on your brand name and close variants of it? That depends
on a few factors. One of the main ones is to find out if competitors are bidding on
your brand name. If competitor ads are appearing for your brand name, you will
lose out on some of this traffic, especially if theirs are results above the organic
search results and not just to the right of the listings.
So, this means you should create a brand campaign and bid on your brand name,
including misspellings of your name, website address and other similar terms.
If you are ranking lower for your brand names in organic results, then you may
seriously benefit from bidding on your brand name. Ranking lower for your brand
name is especially common when you have recently launched your site (like in the
last 6 months) and there are older and more established sites that are already
ranking. It’s also common when your name is quite generic and not unique as it
should be.
Bidding on competitor brand names Bidding on competitor names is
controversial, and at times leads to conflict or even litigation. However, it’s a
profitable strategy, especially when ads and keywords are created effectively, but
that sometimes means not adding the brand name to ads that can lead to poor
quality scores.
Whatever you decide, it’s important to know how this will affect the performance of
your ads and if not done accurately it can lend more credibility to your competitors.

Dayparting Strategies
Are ads best delivered continuously through the day and week, or are different
certain days and times targeted (e.g., office hours, evening after-ad breaks)?
Dayparting or ad scheduling is about showing your ads on days and hours when
you are open for business and when you know, based on research and customer
insights, that you are most profitable.
The truth is many businesses are fine with an ‘always on’ strategy due to the many
ways that people are researching and purchasing products on the web. For example,
an accountancy practice that is open Monday to Friday 9am - 5pm could also run
its ads outside of working hours and on weekends too, when many small business
owners will search for a local accountancy firm.
So, it’s important to be visible outside of these hours, and above all you should test
your day parting settings to see when you get the most conversions - especially if you
are just starting out with Google Ads.
If you have been running ads for some time and have conversion tracking in place,
you can use time reports in Google Ads to see when you are getting conversions.
You can access these reports in the Segments tab in your campaigns.
You can also increase or reduce bids on specific days or hours to increase your
exposure and achieve a higher ad rank or reduce bids when you know conversion
rates drop. Experiment with this feature and you will be amazed to see how your
CTR, and conversions will increase.

Another setting that is popular with many advertisers is to reduce bids or stop ads
between midnight and 8am. Most people are asleep at this time and results show
that conversion rates are also low.
However, you should be aware of time zone settings of the countries you are targeting.
For example, a London based company targeting Los Angeles will have a time
difference of 8 hours, and time zone settings cannot be changed after setup.
There are many benefits to using this feature (which is available in your campaign
settings) including:

‫ؘ‬ Gain more exposure at peak times

‫ؘ‬ Reduce bids during quieter periods

‫ؘ‬ Show specific ads at specific times

‫ؘ‬ Easy to change and setup

Bid management tools strategy
Is a tool used to automate bidding?
Automation is an important part of
pay per click advertising because
of the many time-consuming tasks
involved in managing your bids.
With the right tools in place, you can
significantly reduce the time it takes
to manage your campaigns and bids
and use that to focus on growing
your account.
For most advertisers, Google Ads
provides sufficient tools to manage
bids. There are many tasks you can
complete, including:

‫ؘ‬ lowering and raising bids on significant days or hours

‫ؘ‬ lowering and raising bids when you have hit a certain quality score

‫ؘ‬ increasing bids for keywords with a certain number of page views
In fact, there are hundreds of other bid management options, and this will often
depend on your objectives, keyword volumes, etc.
I’mstillnotconvinced 100%thatbidmanagementtoolsareidealformanyadvertisers,
simply because Google Ads already provides these capabilities in the interface.

Creative Testing and
Campaign Optimisation
Ad Creatives and copy strategy
How are the headline 30-character spaces and 90-character description space
used to encourage click-through (and reduce click-through from unqualified visitors
if necessary)?
One of the challenges of running paid ads on Google Ads is that you have limited
character space to convey a compelling message that will encourage high click
through rates. Copywriting skills are handy here, and it’s one of the reasons
copywriters are often called upon to write pithy messages that drive traffic.

However, you also have sitelinks, call, callout, and review extensions to play with,
and the display URL is another option to add text or keywords that make your ads
more relevant.
Is alternative copy tested?
Testing ad copy is critical to find the best ads that drive clicks and lead to high sales
or leads for your business. One test of the effectiveness of your ads is the Click
Through Rate (CTR). This is the number of people who click through to your site
divided by your ad impressions, then expressed as a percentage:
CTR = Clicks / Impressions
For example, if you had 5 clicks and 1000 impressions, then your CTR would be
0.5%.
One of the basic ways to start testing your ad is to create two ads in each campaign
and test them against each other to see the CTR that they each get. An ad with a
higher CTR is usually the better one, and it will often have a higher conversion rate.
You should also ensure that you receive sufficient clicks and impressions to determine
the better performing ad. One hundred clicks are often a sufficient volume to base
your decision on.
How are ads tested?
There are many things you can test with your ads including:

‫ؘ‬ features

‫ؘ‬ benefits

‫ؘ‬ calls to action

‫ؘ‬ offers, coupons and discounts

‫ؘ‬ dynamic keyword insertion ads

Ad split testing or A/B testing involves creating very similar ads that differ in one
small element. So, you can duplicate one ad and then change the call to action to
test how searchers respond to the two.
Tohavegreatercontrolonthetestexperiment,eachadshouldhaveequalimpressions.
You set this in campaign settings, and this will apply to all ads and ad groups in that
campaign. So, if you want a different setting for some ads, then you should create
another campaign.
Multivariate testing is more advanced and involves testing multiple ad elements; this
involves 2 or more ads that differ in their text.
The goal of multivariate testing is to determine which combination of ad variations
performs the best out of all the possible combinations.
Using symbols in text ads
Certain symbols are allowed in text ads, but you won’t find many advertisers using
them. Some common ones include trademark and copyright symbols which add
some credibility to the advertiser and positions them as the better brand to choose.
They also convey to the visitor that they are clicking through to the official website
and not a third-party site or someone pretending to be the official advertiser.
No known research exists regarding the effectiveness of adding symbols in ads,
but I’m quite sure they do lead to higher click through rates. That’s because people
are naturally drawn to something that is unique on the page and that looks more
credible.
Bear in mind that character limits still apply when you add symbols, and you should
only add them if they won’t take up too much space from other more important text.
Symbols are usually used in the title where they have more prominent placement
and are easily noticeable, but they can be added to description lines where they will
work perfectly as well.

In Google Ads, symbols are usually associated with foreign languages like Chinese
that take up more space than regular language text.
Destination or landing page strategy
How are landing pages improved?
Landing page quality is one of the three factors that affect your quality scores. The
other two factors are expected click through rate and ad relevance.
Searchers cannot see what is on your landing pages without clicking through to your
website. Therefore, your ads make a promise to your target audiences, and they
will click through to your website to see your offer and decide whether they want
to go ahead and purchase, download, contact you or whatever else your ad has
compelled them to do.
So why are landing pages often not effective, and why are average conversion rates
low across industries? Here are some common reasons:
1. Sending people to the wrong landing page
Sending visitors to the homepage first is often not a good idea. The homepage is a
general page with a lot of generic information that doesn’t interest many visitors. In
fact, it is a starting point to other sections of the site that contain more detailed info
and where people can find what they need. Also, many searches are performed on
the homepage as people dig deeper into your site.
For ecommerce sites, sending visitors to a category page is also a poor choice
because it means your visitors must search again or browse through pages to find
what they need. Frustration can ensue, and although bounce rates may be low, this
is not a great user experience. However, category pages are sometimes suitable
when searches are more general and it’s not clear what colour, size, or make that
a person wants.

2. No call to action (CTA)
After reading your content and interacting with your site, visitors will often leave if
you don’t spell out what action you want them to take. If you don’t have a call to
action (especially at the beginning and end of the content) they will leave without
purchasing, downloading, subscribing, or registering (or whatever action is important
to your business).
You should add prominent call to action buttons or links that tell your visitors what
you want them to do next. Some common CTAs include ‘Buy Now’ ‘Order Now’
‘Request Quote’ ‘Contact Us’ etc.
3. Not enough content
Content on your site should be complete and include all the info that visitors need
without turning to other sites – especially those of your competitors.
4. Slow loading pages
Slow loading pages create a poor user experience and is one of the main reasons
visitors defect to your competitors. Your pages should load under 5 seconds, but
overall, you should aim for 2 seconds. In Google Analytics you can see the average
speed for your site and using tools like Google PageSpeed Insights you can identify
the factors that are leading to slow loading pages.
Also, the Google Search console can identify factors that are leading to bad website
experiences, and it gives you recommendation on how to improve them.
All these factors lead to a poor landing page experience and result in poor quality
scores for your keywords. You can turn this around by ensuring that your site and
landing pages are tightly themed towards searchers’ queries, and that every offer
you make in your ad is available within one click.

Campaign review and
optimisation strategy
What is the workflow for
reviewing and improving
success?
Campaign review and analysis
is one of the difficulties of
Google Ads Management.
There are many metrics to
look at and many reports to
consider as you work towards
improving the performance of
your campaigns.
One important thing to ensure
is that you have sufficient data
from reports on which to base
any decisions. That could
be data from ad testing or historic data that you have from past ad campaigns.
Google Analytics is important here, and a best practice is to link your Google Ads
and Analytics accounts and then import some metrics (like bounce rate) in your
dashboard.
However, the reports that are important to your business will also depend on what
industry you are in and whether you are a B2B or B2C business. Some important
reports in Google Ads are:

1. Search terms report
This report is available in the Keywords tab and lists all the search terms that led to
click throughs to your website. This is one of the most important reports in Google
Ads because it shows you the searches that people use and the keywords that
triggered them.
You can also customise the columns and add or remove conversion data, traffic
metrics, engagement metrics etc. One of the main advantages of the search terms
report is that it helps you to build a negative keyword list to prevent irrelevant searches
from triggering your ads.
2. User location reports
User location reports are available in your campaign, and they show you the
countries in which your website visitors are located. You can see which countries are
converting best and then boost your presence in those locations.
It will also help you to identify locations to which you may not have advertised,
but because your advanced location options in campaign settings are not setup
correctly, you are getting traffic from them.
3. Devices reports
This report is easy to reach and is available in your campaigns tab. You can see how
your campaigns are performing on mobile, desktop and tablet devices, and this is
for such metrics as CTR, conversions, and percentage of clicks.
For example, if mobile is underperforming, you can use bid modifiers to reduce the
CPC rate to get fewer clicks from these devices. You can’t turn off mobile completely,
but you can reduce it by 100% to stop virtually all traffic.

Unfortunately, you can’t turn off desktop and tablet either, but you can increase your
mobile bids and get more traffic for mobile devices resulting in a decrease in other
device traffic. Google implemented these changes due to the big increase in mobile
traffic across all sectors.
4. Auction insights reports
This is an interesting and important report because it helps you to see what share of
search traffic you have compared to your competitors. It is based on a set number
of searches in your account, so, you will not have any data here if your account is
new and hasn’t had any traffic.
One of its major benefits is that it helps you to see how targeted your ads are and if
you are bidding on the right keywords. So, if you recognise many of the competitors
in your reports and if they offer similar products or services, this is generally a sign
that your ads are targeted.
Of course, the case may be that many competitors are also bidding on the wrong
keywords because their targeting or keyword match type is incorrect. However, sites
like Amazon and other big advertisers will often bid on a wide range of keywords
that are outside the realm of what they offer.
An example is an aerial repair company we were managing. They were competing
against Amazon on a large percentage of their keywords, and this was because
Amazon was offering aerial repair kits. This can be seen as an indirect competitor
offering a substitute to what this client was offering their customers.
The auction insights report shows you for what percentage of the searches your ads
were in the top position. Based on your findings in this report, you will now need to
decide on which position you want to occupy in the auction results.

Your decision here should be based on your knowledge of your target customers
and how they acquire your products or services. For example, some products and
services are standardised, and advertisers compete on price, so your prospects will
likely click on multiple ads including the ones at the bottom to find the lowest price
- this is often true for insurance products,
On the other hand, for many services prospects will often request up to three quotes
from suppliers. The sites at the top will usually benefit, and the ones at the bottom
will have the lowest click through rates (CTR) and sales, so it will be important to be
in the top 3 positions. The auction insights report will help you make this decision
based on the nature of your products and the knowledge you have of your market.
5. Conversion reports
These are perhaps the most accessed reports in Google Ads, and that makes sense
considering that they reveal how you are performing on sales and leads. They show
how your ads, keywords, ad groups and campaigns are performing.
With these reports its possible to calculate Cost Per Action (CPA) and Return On
Investment (ROI), two high level metrics that marketers, business owners and C-Suite
managers should know and understand.

How often are they
reviewed? By whom?
The frequency of campaign review
is important to the success of
your Google Ads strategy. Your
campaign review will be split
between regular daily, weekly
or monthly reviews and ad hoc
reviews that you undertake to take
advantage of new opportunities
and counter competitor strategies.
A twice-weekly review is sufficient for many small to medium size businesses, and
this will take up only a few hours each week to look at reports and make changes
(such as adding negative keywords from the search terms report).
There are many factors that determine this, including:

‫ؘ‬ The size of your Google Ads account

‫ؘ‬ The size of your Google Ads budget (usually tied to the point above)

‫ؘ‬ The nature of your business (do your offers and messages change
regularly?)

‫ؘ‬ What tools you are using?

‫ؘ‬ Your level of expertise
Now let’s look at each of the above factors:

Size of account
If you have a large account (as in hundreds of campaigns, thousands of ad groups
and hundreds of thousands of keywords) then campaign management will be
complex, and it makes sense to use the free Google Ads API service. With this you
can automate your bidding and reporting processes and manage your account
easily with updates that would take you forever to accomplish manually.
Budget Size
With a large budget, you are likely to have many keywords to bid on, and you must
create more ads, ad groups and campaigns - that means a lot of work. It also usually
means you can target more countries if your products and services are suitable for
international audiences, and you can implement a wider range of campaign types
like display, product listing ads, video ads and remarketing.
A small budget means fewer keywords to bid on, and therefore less traffic. That
means you don’t spend a lot of time looking at reports (like the search terms report).
Nature of business
If you are targeting end users or consumers, it’s likely that you will have more
keywords to bid on, especially if you are an ecommerce business. Consumers
outnumber business customers, and they search in many ways when compared to
people searching for business products or services. Online fashion retail keywords
can number in the hundreds of thousands, and even if your budget is not large, you
can have many keywords because CPC rates tend to be low.
Available tools
Bidding tools are available that help to simplify the reviewing of your account and
then implement changes based on the settings you add. Some tools that can simplify
the bidding process include WordStream and Marin software.

Level of expertise
If you choose to setup a Google Ads Smart account, many bidding and targeting
options will be made for you, and this works for many businesses (especially local
services) that have low search volumes and are less complicated to manage. With
this setup you can review ads once or twice a week, and it won’t take more than 2
hours in total.
For advanced users with larger and more complex accounts, 5 - 7 hours a week
of reviewing, updating, and managing the account should be sufficient. This also
includes tracking and reporting of analytics traffic to see how Google Ads campaigns
are performing for conversion and engagement metrics.
Specialist and innovative paid search techniques
These include local, international, and mobile search.
Local ads
Most service businesses primarily target a local audience, and research by Google
reveals that about 96% of people search for local services on the web. That means
that Google ads are an important tool to target a local audience.
Three major benefits of local ads are that:

‫ؘ‬ Customers have greater trust for a local business

‫ؘ‬ Conversion rates are higher

‫ؘ‬ Although traffic is lower, CTR tends to be high

For local search advertising to be effective, you should understand how people
search and acquire local services and products, and which devices are important
to them. That includes many factors, such as whether you are targeting consumers
or businesses. Your position in the auction results is very important, and for many
local services (like electricians, solicitors, and repair services) having a top 3 position
is crucial. That’s because prospects will often request a quote from the top listed
suppliers and less often from the lower ranked listings - and even less from those
on page 2 and beyond.
These services are standardised, so there is little to differentiate one supplier from
another. This means that price is a very important factor, and they will request a
few quotes and go with the lower priced supplier. Therefore, branding is important,
especially when it’s done early to create awareness with target markets and to have
first preference with the market.
For suppliers below the top 4 positions, CTR will often be very low, and their leads
will be of quality.
International ads
International ads should have their own campaigns as you target individual countries.
Google Ads makes ‘going international,’ easy and it requires little change to how
you are currently targeting your domestic markets.
However, there are some issues to consider. For example, many of your international
prospects will not phone in, and communication will be via email or through your
online support system. So, displaying a phone number with call extensions may
not be necessary - or you can display a separate number with your country code
featured prominently.

Shipping rates will almost always vary for international customers, and it’s unlikely
you would offer the same free shipping to your foreign buyers as you do to local
buyers. Also, these customers will want to know about your delivery rates, and so
it’s a good idea to include this information in the ads. This is one major reason why
you should create separate campaigns for each country, you are targeting, or you
risk showing ads that have delivery rates that are not applicable.
Again, language is an important factor for all ads, and they should be written in the
language you’ve selected in campaign settings. Showing English ads to people in
France is unlikely to be effective.
Also, targeting all English-speaking countries (like the USA, Britain, Australia,
and Canada) with one ad is not appropriate for many advertisers because of the
differences in spelling and dialects.
Mobile search
Mobile search is growing in popularity and has now overtaken desktop for total
volume. It plays an important role in the early stages of the buying journey, especially
for online retail and other ecommerce sectors.
Prospects will use their mobiles to search for and research their purchases and will
either complete their purchases on mobile or use other devices like desktop, or use
offline channels such as in-store.
Either way, mobile is crucial in the path to purchase, and as more consumers are
using multi-channel and multi-devices to acquire products and services, it’s important
to have an effective mobile strategy that includes all other channels.
Mobile bids - mobile bids can be increased or decreased. Please note that mobile
bids are currently the only devices that you can adjust, as you cannot increase or
decrease desktop and tablet bids individually.

You may want to decrease mobile bids or virtually stop them if you have discovered
that the conversion rates and all key metrics are low. You can compare mobile
device performance to desktop and tablet performance on the campaign page by
clicking the ‘Segment’ tab and then ‘Device’.
This will reveal metrics for all device types, including mobile devices with full browsers.
You can see the impressions and clicks you are getting for mobile, assess the CTR,
and see what conversions and conversion rates these devices are bringing.
For your display campaigns you may discover that you are receiving traffic from
mobile apps, and then find that the conversions are too low and bounce rates are
too high. You can block these by excluding traffic from mobile apps in campaign
exclusions, however it’s likely that you will find you are still getting a few clicks from
these devices. If you want to stop them completely (and all mobile traffic too) you
can opt to decrease all mobile bids by 100%. This will virtually stop all mobile traffic,
including apps.

About the Author
Mike Ncube is a Google Ads specialist and PPC consultant and author
with extensive experience in a wide range of digital strategies. He is
a Google Ads Certified Partner and has been managing successful
Google Ads accounts for over 13 years.
www.mikencube.co.uk
info@mikencube.co.uk

RESOURCES
There are many resources that will help you to run effective PPC campaigns in
Google Ads. Check these out:
Google Skillshop - https://skillshop.withgoogle.com/
This is the official Google training platform that offers free courses in a Learning
Management System (LMS). And you can take the exams and if you pass you will be
certified and can work towards Google Partner status.
Google Ads Blog - https://www.mikencube.co.uk/blog/
Check out my blog to learn effective strategies and tips to manage your campaigns
effectively. And signup to get regular updates in your inbox.
Google Ads Academy - https://googleadsacademy.mikencube.co.uk/
Get a full day one-to-one or group training online to equip you with all you need to
run great campaigns without spending a penny, at the Google Ads Academy.
PPC University - https://ppcuniversity.mikencube.co.uk/
Join the PPC University to learn from Google Ads courses that cover Search, Shopping,
Display, Performance Max and other campaign types.
PPC Tutor Podcast - https://ppctutorpodcast.mikencube.co.uk/
Follow the PPC Tutor Podcast to get the latest tips and resources you need to run
effective PPC campaigns in Google Ads and to find out how you can learn it in the
best way.
PPC Webinars - http://ppcwebinars.mikencube.co.uk/
Join free webinars each month to learn about Google Ads and get actionable
insights that you can implement in your own campaigns.

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