For Google Ads Beginners: 5 Pieces Of Advice To Small Businesses
PPC (pay-per-click) marketing, otherwise known as search engine marketing, is one of the most popular digital marketing methods today. If you’re doing PPC, then you’re using Google Ads: over 90% of search enquiries end up going through Google every single day, so it just makes sense to go where the traffic is.
But many small businesses can struggle with the initial hurdles of PPC marketing. There are layers of technical jargon, copywriting issues, and advanced budgeting or campaign types which can be difficult to wrap your head around.
This article will provide you with the basics you need to enter the world of Google Ads marketing and avoid many of the common pitfalls that other businesses fall into.
1 – Don’t just automate
Google has been pushing hard for increased automation of Google Ads campaigns. This includes everything from bidding strategies that scale automatically to wholesale generating assets and ad copy through things like dynamic ads.
Initially, this can seem like a great innovation – less work from you, and optimisation from the guys who surely know what they’re doing with their own platform! Right?
Let’s be savvy: Google has every incentive to generate clicks on your ads, not conversions.
It’s called PPC for a reason – every click is money in their pocket. Trusting fully in Google’s automated recommendations can lead to massive wastage in budget and your ads generating low quality clicks that are unlikely to fully convert.
When you’re getting started on your campaigns, never take Google at their word. Review all their recommendations individually and carefully consider how likely they are to improve your bottom line.
Most importantly, particularly with smaller business accounts: always try to start with manual bidding strategies for your campaigns. This gives you the most control over your budget initially, and lets you get an idea of the scale of demand for the service or product. You can always switch to automatic bidding later!
We’ve had campaigns with Google optimisation scores as low as 40% that have generated huge returns on investment for clients. This might be their platform, but their word is not law!
2 – Diversify your campaign types
Google Ads lets you run a range of campaigns – conventional old search, display, and shopping campaigns. All of these stretch across the range of Google services, with search ads appearing in search results pages, display ads appearing across the Google display network (most prominently, YouTube) and shopping campaigns appearing in the product recommendation tabs on search as well as the Google shopping tab.
All three require wildly different set up methods, but they’re a great way to cover all of your bases at the same time. Is the goal of your ads campaign driving engagement and brand awareness? Then consider a display campaign on top of a regular search campaign. Are you an ecommerce store looking to get eyes on your products? Then a shopping campaign should be the primary driver of your PPC strategy.
Of course, this isn’t a call to unquestioningly set up all three. Display, in particular, can be an expensive undertaking with little tangible results for small businesses, purely because it will show to a large but low intent audience, generating clicks that are unlikely to convert.
Be sure to carefully consider all of this when picking out which campaigns you feel suit your business. There are also alternatives to search campaigns, like performance max and dynamic ads, which can be great for advertising specific services on top of your more general offer through search.
3 – Keep an eye on search terms
The primary vehicle for a search ads campaign are keywords. Your keywords let Google know which specific searches you’re targeting, as well as what variations of them (say ‘plumber’ and ‘local plumber’) you’d be fine with appearing for too.
But unless your campaign is operating almost entirely under exact match keywords, chances are you’re going to be generating search terms. Search terms are what they say they are: they’re variations of your keywords that your ads have ended up appearing for in some way, shape or form.
Having other keyword match types is vital for improving your campaign’s reach and allowing you to cover specific enquiries you might not have in your keyword list initially. But sometimes, search terms can be complete bunk: full of things only tangentially related that have driven up cost.
If you notice a sharp spike in your ad spend, always check your search terms first! More than likely, one of your campaigns has had a run of bad luck with them. You’ll need to set up strong negative keyword lists to improve your filtering.
4 – Don’t delete or edit old ads
Google Ads is a game of constant iteration. There’s probably going to come a time when you want to edit and delete ads. Your competitors are always doing this, and no ad stays on top of search forever.
But what happens to your old ads? Should you just write over your existing ones? Delete them entirely for new ones?
Absolutely not!
Always pause your old ads, copy them, and create new ones. This lets you preserve the data for how those old ads performed, so you can compare them against the old ones.
If you bulldoze over your old ads, you’ll have no baseline to see whether the new ads were even an improvement.
5 – It’s all about data
Google Ads isn’t a one and done process. You don’t just build a campaign and walk away to let it tick away. With PPC, you’re going to want to monitor and improve your campaign as it gets better.
That’s why it’s important to be a responsible curator for your campaign’s data. Never delete anything permanently, and never edit over it either: you’re in a process of iteration, and the old always informs the new.
It can seen exhausting – PPC is a process that requires a lot of oversight and maintenance. If you’d rather focus on what you do best – managing your business, not an Ads account – why not reach out for an expert PPC management service?
With these tips in mind, you’re equipped to take your first steps into PPC marketing!
