One of the keys to running any successful advertising campaign, especially if it is being done on Google Ads, is effective management. Many business owners are under the misconception that a Google Ads campaign is a ‘set and forget’ exercise, but nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, if you set up a campaign, and then simply ignore it, it’s a sure-fire recipe for lots of ad spend and very little in the way of positive results.
On the other hand, with the use of effective Google Ads management and that management being an ongoing operation, the results you can see will not only be positive, but they will improve as the adjustments and actions which are implemented take effect. As with many aspects of online marketing, managing a Google Ads campaign has some essential principles which should be followed.
The first of these is to set realistic and clear goals, and then to plan for them. Although it may a well-worn phrase to the point of almost being a cliché, but the adage ‘failing to plan, is planning to fail’, applies so much to Google Ads that it could almost have been written for it. Nothing guarantees failure and wasting your advertising budget more than a Google Ads campaign with little planning, and it also having no clear objectives with which to measure it.
One of the most important aspects of planning a Google Ads campaign is understanding the metrics behind your business so that the campaign can support these. The metrics include Customer Lifetime Value, Average Purchase Price, and Profit Margins although there are others. By knowing where your business currently sits, determining what advances you wish to make, the planning for the Google Ads campaign can then begin.
As for the goals which you set for your Google Ads campaign, they may not always relate to purely increasing the number of purchases made from a website. It is the case that many websites do not have a shopping cart so any visitors to it cannot actually buy anything. These businesses may have other goals such as increasing brand awareness, or generating leads via email opt-in forms, for example.
Effective planning for your Google Ads campaign will apply not only to setting up the ads but should also focus on your website too. One of the downfalls of many a campaign is that the increase in traffic has no significant impact on the sales and profits of the business. This is caused by poor landing pages, and ineffective website development. If you use a reputable Google Ads management company, they will be able to offer this as part of their package of services.
Another principle of Google Ads management is structuring the campaign correctly. This is done not only to make the task of managing each campaign easier, but it can also help make the campaign perform better. From a practical point of view, having ad organised into groups relating to keywords, product categories or ad copy, makes the addition or removal of any element of the campaign easier.
The other benefit is that it allows tracking and measuring the performance at more specific levels, and therefore pinpointing what is working well, and what is not working well can be done, rather than looking at an entire campaign and second-guessing. This also helps to determine if any changes made are working, and if not, further changes can be made quickly.
The last paragraph touches on what is another massively important principle of Google Ads, and that is to continually measure results, and seek to optimise your campaigns. This covers not just utilising the campaign structure to adjust ads but monitoring results on the website too. Techniques such as split testing can be utilised to continually seek to make improvements, further keyword research can be undertaken, and even surveying customers can give you excellent insights towards what you should seek to improve.
