Want to create a successful Search campaign, but not sure how? Here are some top tips that are sure to help.
Keyword Research
Although you may think you know your business and what your customers tend to search for, do not rely on your instincts when it comes to keyword selection, always do your research!
Initial research plays a huge role in determining the best keywords/phrases to drive relevant traffic to your website.
By doing this, you’ll know from the get go whether or not the terms you’re planning to bid on have search volume, and you’ll be able to identify additional keywords relevant to your product/services.
Within your Google Ads account, you’ll have access to a Keyword Planning tool (where you’ll find potential keywords, expected cost-per-clicks and search volumes) but if not, there are a range of other keyword research tools available online.
Efficient Campaign Structure
Why is account structure so important? Firstly for your own sanity, you don’t want to get lost in the mess! But by having a clear structure, you’ll be able to efficiently manage different KPIs, budgets and campaign groups without a problem.
Unless your account is very large, you’ll typically only have a few campaigns, all separated for a purpose, e.g by goal (leads, website traffic, sales), by product/service, or even by location.
Under each campaign, you’ll need a set of ad groups, and using your keyword research, group relevant keywords together to form these ad groups.
For example, if you sell shoes, you’d typically want to group all shoe types together under a single campaign named ‘Shoes’ but you’d create ad groups within this campaign e.g ‘Ladies Shoes’, ‘Men’s Shoes’ etc. Simple right?
Ad Copy
When it comes to nailing your ad copy it’s important to think from the perspective of your customers, what would make you click on an ad?
As standard practice, try to use the keywords within headline one to keep the ad copy relevant to what the user is searching for, and by doing this you’ll also be boosting your quality score so it’s a win win! (Don’t forget to send users to a relevant and easy to navigate landing page if you want an even better quality score)
Another important step when it comes to writing effective ad copy is split testing multiple variations, by trialling different messaging in each ad.
Over-time, you’ll have enough data to identify the highest performing ads and you’ll be able to create new ads combining the best elements to split test even further!
Finally, always include a call-to-action, as it’s the perfect chance to motivate your audience to take real steps towards becoming a customer or client.
Ad Extensions
Not only do ad extensions ensure a higher click-through rate, as they make your ads more prominent, but they also provide additional information making the ad even more relevant for the user.
As standard you want to be using at least four ad extensions per campaign, here are some examples to get you started;
- At least four sitelinks (directing users to different pages on your site)
- As many call-outs as possible, the more the better!
- Structured snippets (if relevant)
- Call extensions (your business phone number)
- Location extension (where your business is located)
Additionally, ad extensions are a component of your Ad Rank so by adding in relevant extensions, you’ll not only be improving your overall rank, but you’ll be able to win a higher ad position at a lower cost-per-click by bulking up your ads with relevant extensions.
Adding Bid Adjustments
You have probably been managing bids at either ad group/keyword level, but with bid adjustments you can set bids based on a number of other factors, including;
- Location
- Demographics
- Device
- Hour of the day/time of week
Once you have a significant amount of data, you’ll be able to review performance and add in the necessary bid adjustments.
For example, you notice mobile users are gaining more conversions at a lower cost-per-acquisition, so using this data you could set an increased bid adjustment as mobile users are more likely to convert.
Alternatively, if you noticed that on Sunday evenings your campaigns were spending a lot but not converting, you could add a negative bid adjustment to decrease bids at this time to reduce wasted spend.
Keep in mind when using multiple bid adjustments, that these will be multiplied against each other! Meaning if you had a maximum CPC at ad group level of £1, but added a location bid adjustment for Nottingham at 20% and had a mobile bid adjustment of 10% your max. CPC would be £1.30.
If you are interested in learning more about bid adjustments and the benefits take a look here.
Automated Bidding Rules
You may or may not of heard about automated bidding rules but they are a true life saver!
By setting up automated rules you can automatically make changes to keyword bids, campaigns, ads, budgets and more, based on specific requirements (that you choose) – which really takes off the heavy lifting and allows you to focus on the fun stuff.
For example, if you were worried about your ads falling below the first half of the page, you could set up a rule to increase your bid whenever it’s below a position 3 – (to set up these rules, look under ‘Tools’ in the top right corner of your account)
Using rules will help you save time, monitoring the campaigns for you and making frequent changes, but don’t forget to check in on performance regularly. Don’t completely rely on your rules!
Regular Optimisation
One final tip I have for you is regular account optimisation – you could have automated rules set up, amazing ad copy and structure but you still need to frequently check in on your account, make manual changes and ensure nothing is going terribly wrong!
A few key areas you should be keeping an eye on are;
- Budgets – you need to ensure you’re not overspending/underspending so monitor budgets regularly.
- Keywords – look out for higher spending keywords that may not be contributing positively to the account and lower bids where needed, or increase bids on lower spending keywords which are converting well.
- Review your search queries – always keep on top of your search queries and build up on your negative keyword lists to block out irrelevant queries which could be resulting in wasted spend and alternatively, there will be converting queries that you can add into your campaigns.
- Monitor your KPIS/Goals – to make sure your KPIs are moving in the right direction, look out for a high cost-per-acquisition so you can act on it quickly to reduce, or make sure your return-on-ad-spend is still profitable for you.
Hopefully these top tips have helped give you some insight on how to run a successful Search campaign!
