It’s no secret that pay-per-click advertising, or PPC, is one of the most effective ways to generate more leads for your business. However it’s also no secret that PPC ads are not necessarily cheap, and can be quite daunting to those who have minimal experience with digital advertising. 

Figuring out how to capture quality leads over irrelevant traffic that wastes your time and budget may seem like a complex process at first. This is why we put together a list of steps you can follow to create a Google Ads campaign that will get your ads in front of the right people, and subsequently improve your conversion rate. But first, let’s briefly discuss the process and structure of Google Ads. 

The Google Ads Process 

The PPC process on Google Ads is simple and straightforward; it involves entering the name of your business and the goal of your campaign, setting up your target demographics, choosing keywords, creating your first ad and lastly entering your payment information before going live. 

You can choose to use a smart campaign where most of your campaign features will be automatically set up by Google, however a traditional campaign where you optimize the ads yourself provides you with not just more control but can help drive better results and overall performance. 

Structure of Google Ads

The structure of a Google Ads campaign can be broken down into three components; the Campaign where you set your targeting and budget, the Ad Group where you set keywords for each ad, and the Ads themselves where you create text or video (YouTube) ads to appear on Google Search and Google Search Partners sites. The goal of these ads should be to drive visitors to your site via a landing page. Google also has a call-only feature (click-to-call) that is available only on mobile devices. 

Leverage Keyword Planner 

A keyword is a term or phrase that is entered into a search engine to discover information on a certain topic. So by providing you with the average monthly search volumes and average cost-per-clicks for different keywords, the Google Keyword Planner allows you to create a list of high value list to use in your ad campaigns. 

Using the Keyword Planner is easy. By just entering a seed keyword you can identify new keywords and obtain metrics like search volume and cost-per-click rates. You can also change your location so you can view metrics for a certain area, or change the time frame of the search to identify exact monthly search volumes.

This is why if you’re creating an ad in Google, then using Google’s free keyword research tool should be a no-brainer. Simply access this feature by going to the Google Ads Dashboard, then Tools & Settings, and then click on Planning. It should be noted that Google pressures users to enter payment information in order to access all of its features, however as long as you have an active Google account this can be avoided. Explore further tips on how to conduct keyword research for your business. 

Segment Your Ad Groups 

The process of segmenting your keywords is a simple top-down process, where you start with a large group of keywords and create more specific sub groups that would apply to a specific ad group. This structure is known as a hierarchy or taxonomy and its purpose is to create PPC campaigns that are more cost-effective, relevant, and overall more successful with a higher Quality Score compared to other advertisers.

The first step of the segmentation process is to choose your top-level keywords. This involves identifying words that broadly represent your business’s products or services. After you identify your top-level keywords, you will begin to create increasingly specific subgroups until you reach the bottom sub-group that will contain an orientational term. An orientational term essentially represents the orientation of the user’s search query, such as “buy”, “sell”, “reviews”, “tutorial”, etc.

The last step of keyword segmentation is to fully optimize all levels of your keyword groups. This includes but is not limited to including plurals and common derivations of your keywords, synonyms, and duplicate keywords that fall into more than one keyword group. 

It’s important to regularly revisit and revise your keyword segmentation strategy. A general rule to follow is to expand your keyword groups as your business grows or as your industry evolves. Check out WordStream’s awesome article on advanced keyword grouping for Google ads.

Test Different Bid Strategies (Manual vs. Automated CPC Bidding vs CPA Bidding) 

As your audience grows, it’s a good idea to reevaluate your bid strategy on Google Ads. As you get more leads, Google collects data and has the ability to utilize it in order to increase the amount of clicks and potential conversions you get on an ad. Google Ads’ bidding features have grown in the past couple years, so it’s a good idea to become familiar with the various strategies you can follow when it comes to building a campaign. 

Manual CPC Bidding

Manual CPC Bidding is where you set your own maximum cost-per-click, either by setting a default bid for all keywords or an individual bid for each keyword. This strategy is recommended to better control your costs but can be overwhelming for new advertisers and complex accounts. 

With manual CPC you also have the option to turn on Enhanced CPC, a hybrid between manual and automated CPC bidding that will adjust your manual bids depending on if a click is more or less likely to become a conversion. Enhanced CPC bids on clicks that seem more likely to lead to conversions and lowers your max CPC bids for clicks that seem less likely to convert. This feature can help increase conversions and get more value from your budget.

Automated CPC Bidding (“Maximize Clicks”)

Maximize Clicks is Google Ads’ automated CPC bidding feature that sets your cost-per-click within your budget and tries to get you the most clicks possible. You can also set a bid limit to tell Google Ads the maximum amount you’re willing to pay for clicks. Without a bid limit, Google Ads will determine your cost-per-click based on your budget. And with the new Target Spend feature, you can determine how much of your budget you’d like to use each day

Automated CPA Bidding (“Maximize conversions” & “Target CPA”) 

When you select Maximize conversions, Google automatically sets your bids and tries to get you the most conversions within your budget. You can also set a target CPA (cost-per-acquisition) though it is not required. 

Target CPA is similar in that it will try to get you the most conversions as possible, however you will need the determine a target amount you’d like to spend for each conversion. 

Improve Click Quality Using Keyword Match Types

Keywords are words or phrases that are used to match ads with the terms people are searching for, therefore the purpose of keyword match types is to determine how closely a keyword must match a user’s search query in order for the ad to appear on the search page. 

Broad Match means that your ad may appear on searches that relate to a keyword but may not include it, or feature part of a keyword phrase but not the whole phrase. This can help you attract more visitors to your website and save you time in your keyword research, however you should try and avoid broad match keywords as it’s easy to attract irrelevant traffic to your website and use up your budget in a short period of time.             

For Example, if you were bidding on the broad match keyword boat shoes, your ad may appear if someone searches “boat” or “shoes.”

Phrase Match means that your ad will only appear if the user’s search query includes the exact phrase that you are bidding on, however the search query can also include other words. Phase match is more flexible than exact match as you can reach customers who you can assume are looking for your product or service.  

For Example, if you were bidding on the phrase match keyword “boat shoes”, your ad may appear if someone searches “boat shoes,” or “buy boat shoes,” or “blue boat shoes.” 

Exact Match, as the name suggests, means that your ad will only appear for search queries that include the exact keyword you are bidding on and no other keywords.

For Example, if you were bidding on the exact match keyword [boat shoes], your ad may appear if someone exactly searches “boat shoes,” but will not appear for any other variations of that keyword phrase.

You should break up your ad groups by different match types. For example, having one ad group for phrase match, and another ad group for exact match where you can target your ads content more effectively. 

Utilize Google Ad Extensions 

A Google Ad extension is essentially free additional space for your ad where you can include important information like contact information, locations, callout extensions, and sitelink extensions. By using relevant extensions on your ads you can improve your click-through rate (CTR) by offering useful information to users as well as improve your ads visibility on the Google search results page. 

One of the most impressive features of Google Ads is its ability to determine which extensions to show based on a user’s search query. This is important because if too much information is displayed, your ad may appear too busy or even confusing to the user. An example of this feature is a phone number appearing in a search query with the phrase “reservation,” or a location (address) extension appearing if someone were to search with the phrase “near me.”

You can use both manual and automated extensions for your ad campaigns. As the name suggests, manual extensions require some setup while automated extensions are added automatically when Google Ads predicts these will improve your ad performance. 

Optimize Your Landing Pages and CRO

A landing page is a type of web page that potential consumers can "land on" after clicking through from an email, ad, or other digital format. What differentiates landing pages from any other page on your website is that landing pages are usually ‘standalone’, meaning that they cannot be accessed from within your website. 

Given that the typical purpose of a landing page is to get a potential customer to take a specific action such as joining an email list or buying a product, it’s important that your landing page is optimized for your target audience. Therefore, if you have multiple ad groups, you should make a landing page for each. 

Making sure that your landing pages are optimized for conversions (CRO) by using mobile-friendly formats, and avoiding the use of too many fields as excess information can undermine the original goal of your landing page as is the case with ads themselves.

You can track your landing page’s performance such as how users are navigating the page and where users are dropping off by using heat mapping software like CrazyEgg.com and UserTesting.com . Call tracking is another useful tool you can use to determine how many phone calls you’re business is receiving from your landing page that originated from an ad click. One of the most popular websites that offers call tracking services is whatconverts.com. 

Take Advantage of Remarketing

Remarketing, also known as retargeting, is an easy way to connect with and convert potential customers who have already shown interest in your business by placing your ad in front of them. This is done with the addition of a script to your website that tracks users via cookies. 

With Google Ads’ remarketing features, you can place your ads in front of users who have previously visited your website or are actively searching for your business. You can also build remarketing campaigns that target a specific case, such as users who have placed an item in their virtual shopping cart but never checked out. 

As is the case with regular Google Ads campaigns, remarketing campaigns can also utilize automated bidding so you can make the most of your campaign’s budget at no extra cost.  

The ads you show to these users can either work to get them to return to your website (standard remarketing), show them a product that they previously viewed on your site (dynamic remarketing), all while providing you with quality campaign data that will help you gain insight as to where your campaigns are the most effective 

Connect with Customers with CRM and Marketing Automation

By connecting your Google Ads account with a CRM marketing automation service like HubSpot or GetResponse, your leads are automatically placed in email marketing funnels so you can send targeted offers and messages such as sales, customer sign-up forms, abandoned cart item reminders, and more. 

Email automation is easy, and can help save huge amounts of time in your marketing strategy especially if you have a large audience and are looking to grow. CRM programs essentially take away the need for you to build an individual personal relationship with every potential customer, and instead send out automated messages based on users’ behavior in order to optimize your conversion rate. 

Two of the most popular CRM marketing automation services available to business owners are HubSpot or GetResponse. Both of these websites allow you to connect and engage with leads immediately by linking your ad account and website to their automated email service.  

Lost? We’re here to help. 

If you follow the steps listed above, you can quickly improve your conversion rate in Google Ads. However do not feel discouraged if you need a helping hand. Google Ads has changed a lot over the years, so although you may have some experience with it in the past, it’s completely understandable if you feel lost with all the different features currently available. 

Lead generation can be tricky, and it’s for this reason that the Doukas Media team encourages you to reach out for help so you don’t end up wasting both your time and budget on ineffective Google ads. Send us a message to see how we can help you better optimize your Google ads to fit your business’s goals.