If you’re investing in Google Ads, you’re surely focused on getting better results on the platform: increasing your return on investment, improving your CTRs, optimizing your CPCs, reaching your ideal customer as efficiently as possible, getting more sales or more leads, and so on.
There are many factors that determine the performance of your Ads campaigns, and at Trilogi, as a Google Partner Premier agency, we know which ones matter most. In this post we’ll look at how to build a successful Google Ads campaign and some of the factors that directly improve your results.
Conversion tracking in Google Ads campaigns
You always need to make sure poor technical implementation isn’t keeping you from reaching your goals.
It’s very important to check that Google Ads is recording all our leads or sales with the correct values, since the system bases its actions mainly on conversion goals, and if they aren’t properly implemented, it’s virtually impossible to achieve optimal campaign performance.
It’s also a good idea to implement micro-conversions that help the system understand who our potential customer is, such as calls, in-store sales, newsletter sign-ups, etc. Even so, it’s best to focus campaign goals on sales or qualified leads.
Optimize your ad groups in Google Ads
In standard search campaigns, the winning option is, without a doubt, responsive search ads.
Ideally, always have 3 ads in each ad group and aim for an Excellent ad strength rating, which you achieve by adding keywords to headlines, using strong calls to action and adding the maximum number of headlines and descriptions, as well as images or videos when the ad type allows it.
Something basic but very important is choosing the right landing page for your ads: the more closely it relates to the terms users search for, the better your performance will be.
Keep your recommendations and optimization score at 100%
It’s good practice to keep the optimization score of all campaigns at 100%. To do so, follow Google Ads’ own recommendations: most will be on target and should be implemented. Others, however, we know won’t improve performance or will raise costs more than we’re willing to accept; in those cases, dismiss them, but even declining them matters for the system’s learning.
Choose campaign types and ad groups
Choosing the right campaign type can make a big difference to your results.
It’s a great idea to complement standard search campaigns with dynamic ones, always with well-defined dynamic ad targets and audiences.
Smart versions of display and shopping campaigns usually perform better than their classic alternatives, since they automatically implement remarketing audiences, as well as prospecting ones, in a well-balanced way.
Choose the best keyword match types and search terms
Keywords should almost always use broad match: the system is better than we are at deciding which exact terms to use, and it does it really well. We can filter out its mistakes through search terms and negative keywords.
Use as many ad extensions as possible
Ad extensions help us guide users and give them additional information, while taking up more space on SERPs and improving our CTR.
Sitelink and callout extensions are great for giving users extra information. The call extension is essential for lead generation, and the location extension is very useful when you have a physical store or in-office service. Price and promotion extensions are practically a must in eCommerce.
Google Ads bidding strategy: smart bidding
Smart bidding strategies, where the system decides which CPCs to use in each session, are highly recommended. The system has a huge amount of data backing its decisions and, as a rule, will always set bids better than we can.
Among smart bidding strategies, we highlight Maximize conversions and Maximize conversion value, capped by CPA and ROAS respectively. These caps must be realistic, balancing what you need against the actual results your campaign has achieved over the last 30 days.
Filter your audience to target your Google Ads better
The audience we target with our ads can be filtered in several ways: by audience, demographics, ad placement, geographic location, and so on.
Depending on each campaign’s goal, we may want, for example, to stop showing ads to a particular age range or gender, exclude a region that isn’t performing as expected, or any number of similar combinations.
We can also increase or decrease bids based on the same criteria: we can give an audience of our customers from the last 3 months a 50% higher bid than the rest to boost the CTR of that high-performing user segment. We can also take actions like lowering the bid for that dynamic ad target with such a high average CPC.
As you can see, the possibilities are wide-ranging, and with these tools you can significantly change an account’s performance.
Keep an eye on the competition
Review auction insights to see who you’re sharing search results with and how often they appear above you. This information can be very useful for advanced bid adjustments.
Keep optimizing campaigns based on results
In the end, one of the most important things is to react to the performance reports as they come in. If ROAS is too high or CPAs too low, we may be missing many sales opportunities by targeting only audiences that already know us, or for other reasons. If, on the other hand, our ROAS or CPA is very poor, we may need to consider lowering investment and rebalancing audiences.
If CTRs are too low, our ads may not be effective enough, or we could create more ad extensions, segment the locations we target or raise CPCs for certain audiences.
Making decisions based on results is always the key to success.
