Google Ads has proven time and again to be one of the most powerful digital marketing tools. However, there’s more to creating engaging ad copy to have a successful campaign.
For any newcomers to marketing, Google ads can be daunting at first, and for a regular digital marketer, it can still be confusing to create the perfect campaign in the first attempt.
An important step for new campaigns is the pre-campaign research and planning, which helps in aligning the execution with the actual goal of the company.
Here are 7 points you’ll need to consider when planning a Google Ads campaign.
1) Target market
The target market is a critical factor in running a successful Google Ads campaign. This is primarily because Google Ads tends to be a lot more targeted than other digital marketing platforms, and you need to know the customers you’re trying to reach.
Think about some of the demographics of your ideal customer:
• Do they have to be in the local market?
• Are they businesses, individuals, families, students?
• Which device will bring in most traffic/conversions?
• Are they knowledgeable about your products or do you have to educate them?
• What type of interests they might have?
2) What are you offering?
The fundamental of a business is to identify what you are providing and how it can help improve an existing method or solve a problem.
Answer these questions to improve your campaign:
• What are your unique selling points (USP)?
• What benefits or features you are offering right now that will get your customer to click the ad and convert on the landing page?
3) Competitor analysis
If your business is in a highly competitive market, using tools like SEMrush that can help you analyse traffic, ad copy and biggest competitors on Google ads.
Also, conducting research by using the keywords you’ve chosen can help you understand where you stand in Google ads.
A simple competitor analysis, listing out the strengths and weaknesses of their campaigns, can determine how you can position your brand to the potential customers.
• How are you differentiating yourself?
• Are you using a creative and effective CTA?
• Are there keywords being used in the ad copy?
An in-depth SWOT analysis can also help you understand where you stand in the market.
SWOT Analysis: A key part of competitor analysis is an in-depth analysis of your ‘Strengths’, ‘Weaknesses’, ‘Opportunities’ and ‘Threats’ in relation with your competitors.
• Strength: Company’s unique selling proposition such as intellectual property.
• Weakness: Lack of a widespread brand reputation.
• Opportunity: Absence of advertisers on Google within your industry and location.
• Threat: Intensifying competition is a common threat for a lot of companies.
By auditing your competition, you can gain a better understanding of where you stand and how to optimise your Google ads account and campaigns to improve your current position.
4) What is your target audience searching for? (Keyword research)
Google Ads is primarily intent marketing. The potential customer is actually searching for something you offer; product or service.
The goal is to think like the customer. However, there are many tools (including Google Ads in-built keyword planner) that can help you find search terms.
The keywords are essentially the most essential components of your entire campaign structure as it enables Google algorithm to recognise the ad.
Apart from Google Ads Keyword Planner, there are several tools that can optimise your keywords.
5) What do I want my customer to do?
Clearly determine what you want your potential buyer to do when they see your ad. Each campaign could have different action objectives based on business goals.
Here are some everyday actions:
• Buy a product
• Fill a form on the landing page
• Make a phone call
• Book an appointment/make a reservation
• Sign up for an event
• Download an eBook
Based on the desired action, think about how you are going to motivate your customer to perform a specific action. For this, list out a few result-driven Call-to-Actions. A great CTA is usually short, simple and easy to understand.
6) Your objective from the campaign
Think about what you or your company wants out of the campaigns. List out the ideal goals.
• Increased traffic to the website
• Increased foot traffic to the store
• Online sales conversions
• Leads
These are some of the more commonly used campaign objectives.
The better you know what you want to achieve the more detailed and catered your ads can be. You can fine-tune your targeting, ad copy, keywords and ad groups based on your goal.
7) Metrics to measure your results
There are numerous ways to track and measure your campaign metrics on Google Ads.
However, what you want to measure will ultimately depend on your business and goal. Definitely list out the most important metrics for your business such as:
• Number of leads
• Clicks to the landing page
• Impressions
• Sales
• Return on Investment
In the end, once you have a well-thought framework before setting up a campaign, you will be a lot more prepared to run Google Ads campaigns.
Start small, monitor your account and make changes accordingly.
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