Google Ads is a powerful tool that drives traffic to your website and can also help you increase sales. It’s important to understand how Google Ads work if you want to utilize the full potential of this platform. In this guide, we will explain how Google Ad works and show you some useful tips on how to use it for your business.
We’ve all seen Google Ads. Whether it’s called Google AdSense, AdWords, or just Ads, they are the ads that appear in the search results on Google. While setting them up is important, learning how to manage and maintain their performance is a whole different ball game.
What is Google Ads Campaign Management?
Google’s advertising platform is an essential piece of the puzzle when it comes to launching, setting up, and managing your online marketing campaigns. But this article isn’t about setting up your Google Ads campaign. It’s about what you can do after you have set it up to maximize profit opportunities.
Those who have successful ad campaigns spend a lot of time on the backend, measuring the performance of their ads and looking through different keywords. They switch up designs and copy to improve their ads, and they test everything against key metrics to see how they perform.
These are the necessary steps toward building a campaign that can pay you for months and even years if you hit the nail on the head.
Good thing Google provides us with some simple ways to track everything in the backend. First, you can set email notifications to alert you whenever something happens with your campaign.
- Check Current Campaign Performance
Before you can determine what needs to be changed, you first need to look at your ad performance and see what’s working and what isn’t.
There are five key metrics to pay attention to:
- Impressions
- Clicks
- Cost
- Conversions
- Click Through Rate (CTR)
Impressions:
An impression occurs each time your ad is displayed and seen by someone on Google. The best way to increase your impressions is to increase your campaign budget. Budget plays a role here but ad quality and relevance are ultimately the most important factors.
Google is a platform that has a very simple goal: to provide users with the best results. If Google decides your ad doesn’t seem relevant for the audience you’re targeting, it won’t display your ad high enough and you will end up with low impressions and poor performance.
Clicks:
This is the bread and butter of all Google ads specialists. Everyone wants more clicks. A click happens when someone sees your ad and then clicks it; ideally, you want as many clicks as possible but if your ad isn’t getting clicks, you may want to rethink your copy or targeting.
Cost:
Cost is the amount of money you spend, simple right? What’s more important is your “cost per click,” or CPC.
Advertisers who are successful at scaling their ads have figured out how much money they can spend to get a click or conversion. For example, if you determine that putting $2 into Google ads results in you making $5 for every click, it’s simple math at that point. Spend $4 and you’ll make $10, and keep building
While it’s tempting to follow the rule of thumb that bigger is better, this isn’t always the case. If your ad has a low-quality score or poor ad rank, you could end up paying more than necessary for each click. You can use Google AdWords cost estimator to get an estimate of how much you need to spend on search engine.
Conversions:
Conversion occurs when someone takes the action you want them to take. For example, if you’re running an ad for an e-commerce store and you want people to see the ad, click it, and then buy a suit on your landing page, each time someone buys the suit, that would be a conversion.
Click Through Rate (CTR):
Your click-through rate (CTR) is the number of times your ad was clicked divided by the number of impressions it had. The CTR determines the effectiveness of your ad. It shows you what parts of the ad work well and which don’t, so you can improve them.
Click-through rate = number of clicks / number of impressions x 100
If you get a lot of clicks or impressions but don’t have many conversions, it could mean there’s something wrong with your ad. Your CTR is based on the number of clicks and impressions you receive.
- Re-evaluate your Ad Target
The goal of targeting is to understand the buyer intent of your audience and draw up a solid buyer persona. With every type of digital marketing, your focus should be on understanding who you’re trying to reach.
When thinking about your ideal customer, you need to ask yourself what they want. What do they look like? Where do they live? How much money do they make? What are their interests? You also need to ask what upsets them. By doing this, you can create an ad that is targeted at the right audience.
Here are some metrics you can use for Google Ads Targeting:
- Demographics
- Affinity
- In Market
- Custom Intent
- Remarketing
- A/B testing your Ad Copy and Design
Now let’s take a look at your ad copy and design. It’s broken down into a few different segments:
- offers
- headline
- description
- URL
If you’re not happy with the performance of your ad, test different things. The most important thing to learn is that only one variable should be tested at a time. That way you will know if the change was successful or not.
For instance, if you notice that you’re getting a lot of impressions but not converting well, change the headline to catch the reader’s attention more. If you notice that you’re getting a lot of clicks but few conversions, your offer may need to be more relevant.
- Think about Negative Keywords
Don’t complicate this: Negative keywords are keywords that you don’t want your ad to show up for. There are many reasons why someone would do this but one of the big ones is you’re letting Google make a lot of the decisions for you. In that case, you might want to use negative keywords for things such as brand names,
- Optimize your landing page
When running Google ads, it is important to realize that a big part of campaign management happens off the SERPs. This includes your landing pages. If you have an ad that is getting a lot of impressions and clicks but you’re still not converting, chances are there is something wrong with your landing page.
You’ll want to fix this quickly before Google finds out and drops your ad lower due to low relevance.
Optimizing your landing page requires you to take a look at the overall offer, the headline, structure of the page, CTA, and placement of buttons and calls to action. The best way to identify what is not working is by A/B testing.
- Consider Switching to Automated Bidding
When you create a Google ad, you have two choices: automated or manual bidding. Each has its pros and cons.
Automated bidding allows Google to decide how much you’ll pay per click based on a few key metrics.
- Increase Site Visits
- Increase Visibility
- More Conversions
- Target ROAS
When considering manual bidding, remember that you’ll have to do the research yourself. You won’t be able to use a blanket budgeting strategy for your campaigns. However, manual bidding does give you more control over your ad spend.
Remember setting up your ad and hitting start is only one piece of the equation. The steps you take after that will really determine the success of your ad.
We at AI Advertisment incorporate AI in Google Ads Campaign management in order to fetch better results and visibility for your business.
Contact us now for AI PPC services, we assure you it’s going to be a wise decision.