Your Complete Guide to Running Effective Google Ads Campaigns

Make your Google ads work for you and Get more out of your buck!

This article will provide comprehensive tips and tricks you can apply to your Google ads account to get the best return on your ad spend (ROAS).

It will cover the key things you need to do to get the maximum possible conversions (leads) for your business via Google Ads.

Let’s get into it.

1. Keywords research –

One thing where you must spend your time while launching the Google ads campaign is on doing your keyword research. Use Google ‘Keywords Planner‘ tool, which is very powerful, helpful and absolutely free to use. 

It gives us all the essential information about the keywords, such as their average monthly searches, competition and bid range.

Add as many relevant keywords as you need to your campaign – it enables you to show ads to your target audience searching for your products/services. 

One thing I would suggest is to avoid using broad match keywords where possible. Using the ‘broad match’ keywords in your campaign makes your ads reach a wider audience, but its downside is that your campaign ends up spending money on the irrelevant keywords by showing ads to users who are not interested in your products/services. 

So use them wisely. And instead, you can use ‘phrase match’ and ‘exact match’ keywords where possible.

2. Negative Keywords and search terms monitoring 

Like search keywords, do research for the negative keywords as well.

Research the keywords that users may be searching for but are not relevant to your business and add them at the campaign or ad group level. 

They will stop triggering your campaigns for irrelevant keywords, leaving you more budget, which can be used wisely by showing ads to users genuinely looking for your products and services.

Let’s say you don’t want your ads to appear for any search containing the keyword “cheap”, then add the keyword ‘cheap’ as a negative keyword as a broad match. And this will stop triggering your ads for any search queries containing this keyword.

Secondly, once you’ve launched the campaign, monitor the search terms to see if your ads appeared for any irrelevant search queries. Once you see any non-relevant search queries, add them as negative keywords. 

For more info about negative keywords, click here to read this article from Google.

3. Campaign Settings (Locations – You can’t afford to get it wrong) – 

When you set up the campaign, most advertisers skip the locations targeting part when they add ‘locations’ where they want to show ads. 

Google, by default, select the’ presence and interest‘ option – which means your ads will also be shown to people who are not present in the location if they have shown interest in your targeted location(s).

And this means you are paying for the clicks by users who are not even present in your targeted location. As a result, your campaign budget will exhaust quickly and get fewer conversions.

Instead, choose the “Presence” option. This way, your ads will be shown only to people in or regularly in your targeted locations.

4. Enable Auto-Tagging

Enable Auto-tagging, if you haven’t already, to track what keywords/campaigns resulted in traffic which you can later analyse to find out how that traffic performed. A great way to track your campaign’s performance, using that you can further improve your results.

Instead of adding URL parameters manually, all you need to do is turn auto-tagging ‘ON’, and Google will handle it for you.

How to enable Auto-tagging –

– Login to your Google ads account

– Click ‘settings’ and then ‘account settings’

You’ll see the option – ‘Auto-tagging’. Click it and check the box that says, “Tag the URL that people click through from my ad”. 

Click save. 

5. Ad copies – 

The next important thing to focus on is righting the best ad copies. Spend time writing the best ad descriptions and headlines that tell users about your business and how you can help them so that it entices them to click on your ad link and learn more about your business. 

In short, your ad copy should tell the users what’s in it for them.

Ad copy is also one of the factors that help Google decide the quality score of your keywords. 

Bonus Tip: 

While writing ad copy, keep an eye on your ‘Ad strength’. See if your ads cover all the keywords you have added to your campaign. 

6. Landing page experience –

Another thing to keep an eye on is your landing page. 

You have done a great job by getting in front of your target audience and presenting an offer that makes them want to know more. 

Now, it is time to check the quality of your landing page.

Keep in mind the points below –

• Send users to the correct landing page
• Your landing page must contain the relevant information as promised in your ad copies
• Make sure your website is fast and responsive
• Provide users with a way to get in touch with you – such as a contact form, phone number and email 

7. Add Extensions – 

Add extensions to your campaigns as they influence the click-through rate (CTR) and help you get more conversions.

Add extensions such as – 

• Sitelink extensions
• Callout extensions
• Phone extensions
• Image extensions

8. Quality Score –

Now let’s move on to the Quality Score. How is the quality score calculated, and why does it matter?

Below are the 3 main components of the quality score. Note it as you will always need to get these three boxes ticked.

1. Expected Click-through rate (CTR)
2. Ad relevance
3. Landing page experience

By having a good quality score, your CPC (cost per click) goes down, saving your campaign budget, which can then be spent on showing more ads and attaining more website conversions.

Bonus Tip: Always keep your ‘Quality Score’ data in the results column – So you always know what it is and work towards improving it!

“The best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing.” – Tom Fishburne

How much do you pay for each click-

Lastly, I also want to cover how much money would you pay for each click on Google Ads.

Your cost per click = Ad rank of the company below you/ Your Quality score + 0.01

How your Ad rank is calculated?

Here’s the formula –

Ad rank = Maximum bid * Quality Score

So let’s suppose your keywords quality score is 8 (given out of 10)

And the maximum amount you are willing to pay for each click is $2

Then, your Ad rank will be = Maximum bid ($2) * Quality score (8) = 16

Suppose the other advertiser has a maximum bid of $3, but the quality score is 4 then their ad rank will be = 3*4 = 12

In this case, even though you are paying less, your ad will still appear at the top because of the quality score. 

How much you will pay in this case

Let’s apply the formula I mentioned above 

= Ad rank of the person below you/Your quality score + 0.01

= 12/8 + 0.01 = 1.50 + 0.01 = $1.51

I hope you found this guide useful. Feel free to get in touch with me if you have any questions or want us to set up and manage Google Ads for your business.