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The Rules for Creating a Google AdWords Campaign

If you’d like to generate traffic quickly, Google Ads might be the answer to your problem.

According to a recent survey, there is an $8 return for every $1 invested in Google Ads. Done right, it can boost traffic, showcase a new product or promotion, and generate more leads in general.

With all these benefits in mind, you might be wondering how you can start creating your own Google AdWords campaign.

In this blog post, we’re going to discuss the rules you need to keep in mind to create a Google AdWords campaign that gets tangible results.

Let’s get started.

What is Google Ads?

Before we proceed, let’s define a few terms first.

PPC or Pay-Per-CliCk marketing is a type of advertising that charges you based on the number of people who click on your ads.

There are plenty of PPC platforms online. The most popular ones include Google AdWords, Bings Ads, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Pinterest.

Undoubtedly, Google AdWords is the top PPC platform. Studies show that Google dominated the competition with a 73% market share in search marketing. With this in mind, it would be wise to begin or to continue advertising on the platform.

The platform does it best to convince businesses to continue advertising on it. You can customise your ads based on location, time zone, budget, and a host of other factors.

It also has an excellent tracking and reporting dashboard. You can see exactly which ads are working and how much you should or shouldn’t be spending. Armed with the right information, you can tweak your ads for optimum results.

In the following sections, we’re going to discuss several rules we recommend you follow for better results.

Aim for a higher quality score.

According to Google, Quality Score “is an estimate of the quality of your ads, keywords, and landing pages.” A high Quality Score is a must, because Google wants to show users the best links for both ads and organic search results.

Businesses also benefit from improving their Quality Scores. They get charged less for clicks, and their ads are shown in better positions.

Your Quality Score can be anything between 1 and 10. If you already have existing Google AdWords, you can go to Keywords, select Modify columns, and add Quality Score to your add group table.

For more information, you can also add Quality Score (hist.) to your table. It will show your Quality score during a specific period. You can even see daily results, allowing you to measure if any changes to your ads have been beneficial or harmful.

The following rules we’re about to discuss can all help you improve your Quality Score.

Have an ideal customer in mind.

No matter what type of content you’re creating, you need to have an ideal customer in mind before creating it.

If you try to appeal to everybody, you might end up failing to resonate with anyone. It would be better to appeal to a specific group of people. Your audience may become narrower, but you improve your chances of success.

Keep in mind that different things appeal to different people. What resonates with a thirty-something father may not resonate with a millennial who’s job-hunting for the first time. You need to use a different vocabulary, colours, tone, and overall marketing strategies to attract either one.

Get to know your target audience by answering the following questions.

• How old is your ideal customer?
• Where does he reside?
• Where does he spend most of his time online and offline?
• Where takes up the largest portion of his budget?
• What are his likes?
• What are his dislikes?
• What are his pain points?
• How does your product or service help resolve those pain points?

Once you’ve finished answering the above questions, an ideal customer persona will begin to emerge. It will serve as a guide when you’re creating content for your marketing materials.

Even if the same product can be used by different types of people, you’ll need to use different marketing strategies for each one.

For example, if you’re trying to appeal to a small business owner in his mid-50s, you will most likely use more formal language and choose photos with subdued colour schemes. If you’re trying to reach a single woman in her 20s, you may want to choose more informal language and use more vibrant colours.

Keep your ideal customer persona in mind when creating your Google AdWords ads.

Maximise ad extensions.

Ad extensions provide extra information about your ads, improving your chances of converting a user. They often appear under your main Google AdWords ads and come in different forms.

Sitelinks

Sitelinks are links that appear underneath your ad along with a line or two of text. You could use them to direct users to pages related to your landing page. For example, if you’re selling a type of product. You could add sitelinks to bestselling models and a gift guide.

Callouts

Callouts are extensions that allow you to add extra text to your ad. You can highlight additional details that no longer fit in your ads, like delivery guidelines, sales, discounts, etc.

Structured Snippets

Structured snippets feature product details you’d like users to know about in a header. They usually list categories for different products and services. For example, if you’re selling women’s shoes, you could list sneakers, heels, sandals, and so forth in your structured snippets.

Calls

Call extensions appear as phone numbers underneath your ad. If users click on them, they will be prompted to make a call to the said phone number. This greatly lessens the number of steps users have to take before they find your contact information and encourages them to contact you faster.

Location

Location extensions show users your business address. If they click on the address, they will be directed to Google Maps and given directions. This extension is especially helpful if you’d like to encourage more people to go to your physical location.

App

App extensions direct users to Google Play, making it easier for them to download your business’s ad.

Craft an effective landing page.

Your landing page is the page that visitors see after clicking on your ad. Their main goal is usually to convince users to perform a specific action. This could be subscribing to a newsletter, signing up for a free trial, downloading an ebook, and more.

Before you even launch your Google AdWords campaign, you need to determine what your landing page’s main goal is. Once you do that, you can create a streamlined campaign designed for success.

Headlines

Use headlines to grab users’ attention. A large number of users don’t read most of the copy on a webpage anymore. Instead, they scan the headlines to get the information they need. They only start reading the rest of the copy once a headline captures their attention.

When writing your copy, make sure to answer one question: What’s in it for me?

Features and Benefits

This is where features and benefits come in. Features are the characteristics of a product or service. Benefits are how the said feature can benefit a customer.

For example, one feature of a hybrid car is that it consumes less gas. Consumers can benefit from this, because they would save on gas costs and spend the money on other things like groceries, vacations, etc.

Call to Action

Your call to action is the action you want users to perform after visiting your landing page.

A successful call to action should be two things: visible and clear.

It should be visible enough for visitors to notice as soon as they click on your landing page. If not, they might fail to notice it, rendering all the effort you’ve put into your ads and landing page useless.

Next, it should be clear enough to be understood by users right away. Complicating your call to action will only make convincing users perform it more difficult. You would be giving them a chance to think twice and leave your website. Explain what you need them to do and how they should do it in clear, concise words.

Conclusion

Advertising on Google AdWords is one of the fastest ways to appear in search engine results and drive traffic to your website. Get your money’s worth by crafting a streamlined campaign designed to reach your ideal customer.

Aim for a higher quality score by first determining where your ads currently stand.

Create an ideal customer persona. It can serve as a guiding light when you’re writing ad copy.

Maximise ad extensions. Choose the ones that will propel you closer to your ad campaign’s main goal.

Don’t forget to put a lot of thought and effort into your landing page. It needs to do half of the work after visitors clicks on your ads.

Need help launching your Google AdWords campaign? Contact Cornerstone Digital at (02) 8211 0668 or email us at info@cornerstone-digital.com.au. We’d be glad to discuss this with you.

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Darlyn Herradura

A self-professed book and digital marketing nerd, Darlyn Herradura focuses on building trust between customers and businesses with the written word. She understands that creating valuable content is the best way to get found online and happily spends her time doing that.