When people look for Google search training, most are starting at the beginning. They may have some experience launching a campaign, sure. But the vast majority of people don’t have any experience in launching a successful one. Successful advertisers are off to optimization efforts or pulling the plug fast. Because of this, we felt the most appropriate use of this blog post was to give people 101 level training. We suspect you’re beginning at the beginning here. There’s no better place to start than how launch your first campaign.
Choose a Goal
The first real step to launching a Google Ads account is choosing a goal for your campaign. This is the first place that you really need to think about what you’re doing. You have a few options here, but first you just need to consider what your goals are for advertising on Google. Do you want to grow your brand awareness? Do you want to drive people to your website? Small and medium-sized businesses may care about these. Most are first just trying to see if Google Ads can help them score new customers at a reasonable return on ad spend. To achieve that, you need to consider how you typically drive most of your business today. Are people calling your phone first? If so, it’s very likely you’ll want to choose “Phone call leads” as your conversion goal. Are people submitting a form on your website? If so you’ll likely want to use the “Submit lead form” option. Is your goal to drive someone straight to enter their credit card and make an online purchase? If so, your goal is simply “Purchases.” You have a lot of other useful options. “Contacts” for when someone makes contact. “Book appointments” when someone schedules a meeting with you. “Signups” when they create an account or submit an email address. Others exist for local businesses, mobile apps, and more. The important thing to consider is your end goal is. The second most important thing is what the first action someone who is going to purchase makes. You’ll surely want a conversion goal for the end result. Consider though that Google Ads takes ≥ 30 conversions per month to truly optimize. This isn’t an absolute rule. But if your budget is too small you can’t expect 30 people buy from a few hundred clicks. Here, set the goal lower. Include another, higher volume conversion action that often leads to a purchase. You can always keep both! We’ve seen success firing earlier and final conversion signals for buyers. But just want to make sure to choose a conversion goal is that often results in a purchase. After that, you want to keep the goal you choose realistic.
Choose a campaign type
Google Ads automatically throws you into search themes from here. Instead, at the top of the page choose to view other campaigns types. Google Ads funnels you into a Performance Max campaign to start. We’ve seen this perform very well, but rarely for new advertisers. Performance Max requires a high total budget across your entire account. They thrive when you’re driving many conversions, certainly more than ~ 30.
The average business wants to target prospective buyers to start. This means people that are looking for products to buy. At the University of Marketing we call this “purchasing intent.” The best place to target these people with with a “Search” campaign. These run advertisements on Google search. They’re targeted to the specific phrase someone searches for. Buyers often include terms like “for sale,” “price,” in [Zipcode],” or others before a purchase. These are your gold mine for immediate profit. You can always circle back to increase awareness later. Captured immediate demand when you launch.
Select Keywords and Location Settings
The next step prompts you to select keywords. Local businesses should choose terms that indicate someone is go to their shop. For other purchases, look for any keywords that indicate an urge to buy soon as we mentioned. From here, choose “More settings.” Google includes three default settings you’ll want to turn off. First, choose “Location Options” under “Locations.” Google defaults to “People in, regularly in, or have shown interest in your included locations.” For most this casts too wide of a net. Instead choose“People in or regularly in your included locations.” This makes sure your ads don’t show to people who show only a vague interest in your location.
Network Settings
Network settings are another place where the rubber meets the road. Google effectively turns Performance Max back on here. Instead go to “Networks” at the bottom of the screen. Turn off both “Google Search Partners” and “Google Display Network.” Search partners are 3rd party sites that include Google search. This means non-Google websites, Parked Domains, Youtube and other Google sites. We find that these have very different intent and may purchase at lower rates. We recommend you turn this setting off. We consider this an expansion test that is not fundamental to launch.
The Google Display Network is even worse for most. The display network shows ads on “relevant sites, videos, and apps across Google and the Internet when you have leftover Search budget.” We recommend you save this “leftover budget.” Start by advertising when ad spend can drive customers. Display ads show up on third party content websites. Display ads interrupting people consuming other content. Display ads also don’t let you show ads on strict phrasing. Instead, they matching ads to content that’s loosely related to keywords included. Keep this turned off, for the love of Pete, and make some danged money please. Review the rest of the settings, and you can almost completely ignore “Audiences” for now.
Create Ads
Put a good effort into creating ads, but don’t sweat the step too much. Google will automatically fill fields with content from your website. We would not recommend you allow them to do this for the final url, or the page people will visit when they click your ads. Google typically adds your homepage here. Homepages are often general company information. Instead, add a page here that displays products with a simple path to buy. Or, use a landing page the pitches your services with a clear call-to-action. Once you’ve done this, using some of their AI content is fine, but we find it’s pretty poor quality. Instead, delete about half of the headlines and and descriptions. Write the most compelling copy you can, here. Copywriting concepts will be your best friend. Always be closing. Attention, interest, desire, action. Greed or fear. Know if your product is a painkiller or vitamin. Write something that’s compelling for a reader, but don’t focus only on that. Google’s ad rank factors in something called quality score as well as your bid. This is their estimate of the quality of your content for users. Google certainly wants you to use compelling copy as we mentioned. But they also compare your headlines and descriptions to the keywords you choose. Because of this, we recommend you include keywords directly in the headline of at least 1/3rd of your ads. Also, feature a keyword prominently in least one of your descriptions. Once you’ve done this you can probably skip adding features to your ads (Assets), and move to the next stage.
Bid Strategy & Budget
In the next stage you’ll set a bid strategy. This one isn’t too complicated. Most businesses should start optimizing for Conversions. Driving leads, phone calls, or customers is probably your goal anyway. Most small and medium sized businesses don’t want to try anything else at first. You don’t need to select any other settings on this screen. We do not recommend setting a target cost per action yet. You’ll then just set a daily budget for this campaign. You don’t have to sweat this too much either, and can just choose a budget that’s comfortable. Note that we don’t recommend setting a budget under $10/day. That’s probably too little to drive results on any reasonable timeline. Think of your budget as one bucket. Certainly, give Ads some time to see if it works for you. But if it doesn’t pause as quickly as possible rather than letting it drag on on a low budget. Finish setting your daily budget, and your campaign is off to the races!
At a high level, when launching your first campaign you want a few key things. First, you want a fundamental understanding of how online marketing works. You can think of this in an AARRR framework. Also consider the standard marketing funnel (which some say is a bit outdated). Next, you also want a fundamental understanding of how Google Ads works. Google operates a real-time ad rank auction that uses generalized second-price auction mechanics. From there, consider the scope of what you’re trying to do. This is literally your first rodeo. By that, we mean that you want to, frankly, create a campaign that’s minimally viable. You don’t need the the kit and kaboodle, the full kitchen sink, or all that and a bag of chips. Don’t need to let analysis paralysis set in. You want to get the job done, and move on. We wish you happy hunting, and hopefully this gives you some valuable tips to lead you to your first launch.