Beginner’s Guide to First Google AdWords Search Campaign
You just started working in an agency, you want to become an incredible traffic manager, you are interested in Google AdWords, you know all of its features and you are even Google certified. And now you believe that you are ready to start your first campaign. A new client arrives and the boss gives you the assignment. He briefs you, and you are ready. Right?
WRONG.
Just because you know a lot about AdWords, doesn’t mean that you’ll know how to create a great campaign. But don’t worry, we’re here to help. So, here is the complete guide to your first Google AdWords Search campaign.
FIRST THINGS FIRST
Develop your strategy. Before you do actually create anything, you must know what you’re going to create. These are the questions you must know the answers to:
- What is your budget?
- What are your main keywords?
- What are your selling points?
BUDGET
Budget is something fixed so you can’t influence that. But you can control it and supervise it. The best thing to do, as you probably may know, is to take your whole budget and divide it by 30.4 (one month in a year). Or if not 30.4, divide it by a determined time period. This will give you your daily budget you can set in your campaign, which will come in handy.
KEYWORDS
For this, you must put yourself in customer’s shoes. You heard that before, but you will be surprised how it can be difficult.
Who are your customers? Where are they?
Which language do they speak? Male/Female? Age?
And many more questions to ask depending on your objectives.
Best thing to do is to go on Google Keyword Planner and Google Trends.
This is a must even if you know your keywords. Why? It will give you an insight into what people search for on Google, and it will give you some ideas for other keywords and what is worth bidding for.
SELLING POINTS
This, in my opinion, is the most important task. If done properly, it can do wonders. Go through your client’s website thoroughly and see which segments you can create. Segmenting your campaign into different ad groups is a must because for different ad groups you put different keywords and adjust your ads for different types of customers. Ad groups are there for a reason. After all that, you can start creating your campaign.
CAMPAIGN CREATION
Name your campaign, choose locations, language, set your daily budget and decide on your bidding strategy. If you’re going for manual CPC, check what Keyword Planner told you, and according to that and taking your budget into consideration, set your CPC. You can change that later when you create your ad groups if you don’t want the same bid for all ad groups.
Another great thing which will lower your CPC and improve your Ad Quality Score (I assume you know this term) is to use ad extensions. But be wary of this, not every ad extension is good for your campaign.
AD GROUP CREATION
Based on your segmentation you did earlier, name your ad groups and put down your keywords.
Never, EVER put the same keywords in different ad groups!
That will make your ads fighting for position in search results and that way you are bidding with yourself. That’s what other advertisers are for. And that is also another point of segmentation.
AD CREATION
Create your ads. Be creative, and remember to put your keywords in one of the headlines and in the description. More times you use it, the better. But don’t overdo it. Be classy.
OPTIMIZATION
I’m not going to write you a schedule when to check your ads, because… This is your first campaign and it would be best if you check your campaign EVERY DAY. At least at the beginning. You should make adjustments, and we’ve divided them into minor and major ones.
Minor adjustments
The first thing you should check is whether your ads are running, and if some of them aren’t approved, create another one.
Check if you are limited by budget and check your ad position. If you are limited by budget and your average ad position is 1#, then it would be a good idea to lower the bids on all keywords or top spenders. See what happens and check again tomorrow or in two days. If your position dropped, decide whether you want to be at the top of search results or you want your ads to appear more throughout the day. Make a choice based on your strategy. Then again, if your average ad position is low and you are not limited by budget, raise the bids.
Check keywords below first page bid amounts. Consider higher bidding on them based on their CTR.
Go to search terms. See what people search for and which of them are clicking on your ads. If your ad appeared for something that is not relevant to you, put them as a negative keyword. Search terms will also give you an insight into which keywords you forgot or which ones haven’t occurred to you when you started.
Major adjustments
Check your keywords and ad CTR. Low CTR -> create different ads, consider other keywords.
Check newer ads performance.
Crucial. Check your budget. If it’s going to exceed, or on the other hand, if it’s not going to be spent at all. If it’s going to exceed – narrow targeting. If it’s not going to be spent – wider targeting
CONCLUSION
This here is a very simple process of creating a smaller campaign. But it is also the foundation for every campaign no matter the size. It’s important to know that this is not a fixed process, every campaign is different and since you are a beginner, you will learn a lot from your first campaign.
That’s another thing to remember. Study and learn from your campaigns and don’t be afraid to do tests. Just remember, if you are going to do test campaigns, test ads, whatever, put down a small daily budget.
Good luck and may your CPC be low!
