In case you didn’t already know, Google Ads is one of the best online marketing solutions available to business owners around the world. And it’s actually reasonably straightforward to get going. What is difficult, however, is making sure that the account is performing to the best of its ability. This means reaching an audience without wasting your money or your time. To keep your Google Ads account ticking over, there are a few things that you should be doing. After all, paid search is a great way to increase sales and boost your online visibility.
Conversion Tracking
The first step – and arguably the most important step – for any Google Ads manager, is to ensure that they have set their conversion tracking up correctly. This will help it to tick over without any hard-earned money being wasted.
You need to decide what is important to you as a business as this will help you to establish what kind of conversions you’d like to track. Some examples are:
- Checking out at the shopping cart
- Signing up to a newsletter
- Downloading content
- Making a phone call
Once set up correctly, optimisation will be able to be carried out in a more efficient manner, thus limiting the overall time spent working on the account.
Search Term Query Reports
By taking advantage of your search term query reports you’re able to add negative keywords to your account, streamline your account spend, and better utilise your money. As the saying goes, “the art is not in making money, but keeping it”. Search terms are what trigger an ad, so to keep your account ticking over, it’s best to make sure that you’re utilising the terms that perform best for you and your business.
Ad Scheduling
Looking into the best day or even time in terms of ad performance will help massively with the account. Say, for example, the account’s average cost per conversion is £4.94, you may find that it is much lower on a Tuesday at £3.82 and much higher on a Monday at £6.14. To keep the account running in a way that allows you to gain quick wins, apply a bid adjustment (either positive or negative) on these days.
Don’t be afraid to pause or get rid of non-converting keywords that you have in the account. Use the last 30 days as a good cross section to view your data and make a decision with regards to your keyword performance. This will free up your budget to be used for keywords that convert. This way you will get more from your money and not necessarily need to increase your budget. This can be done once or twice a month, freeing up your time for other things.
Broad Match Keywords
Rather than adding in every possible keyword, using broad match means that your ads automatically run on relevant variations of your keywords. This will help to attract more customers while spending less time working on keyword lists. However, this needs to be done correctly to ensure that the account keeps ticking over.
Google uses its knowledge to determine what it believes will work for your account, such as the example below:
Account Structure
Keeping things in your account well-structured and tidy is going to make sure that your account is built for the long term. Getting into using the right number of ads and keywords will make sure you’re adhering to best practices advised by Google. This will also save you time when navigating your way through the account too.
When creating ad texts, make them specific to keywords in the ad group and link them to specific landing pages too. This is considered best practice and will help improve the account’s performance. Due to it being set up correctly from the off, it will also help your account to tick over as you will not need to go in the account as often to make improvements.
Exact Match Keywords
Using exact match type keywords helps you to narrow down what you want your ads to appear for. For example, the keyword of ‘wedding rings’ will show all ads for all wedding ring types. The exact match type search term of ‘platinum wedding rings’, however, narrows down the results even further, thus saving you money if this is what you want to appear for.
Ad Text Space
It is good practice to use all your available space in the ad texts. This will mean that you’ll take up more advertising space on the search results page, limiting where your competition can appear. Doing this will mean that less time will be spent worrying about your competition and will leave you safe in the mind knowing that your account is working just fine.
Create New Ad Texts
Sometimes not all ads work straight away, so you may want to freshen up the text and pause what isn’t performing so well. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel here, just create a new variation of your current ad text and include a different unique selling point of your business.
Bid Management
Look to adjust some bids depending on the success of the keyword performance. So, if a keyword is converting well and making money, you may wish to increase the maximum bid that you are willing to pay. If the keyword has been converting well, then look to reduce the keyword bids (not by too much at first) to see if the performance can be maintained for a lower cost. Alternatively, if keywords are struggling to convert due to a low position in the auctions, look to increase keyword bids in an attempt to accrue more conversions or reduce the bids down altogether.
Device Adjustments
You’ll find that ads perform differently across various devices, so it’s imperative this is taken into consideration if you want your account to run as smooth as possible and produce quick wins in the account. For example, ads on a desktop may convert far less than what they do on mobile. If you find this is happening in your account, it’ll be worth carrying out some device adjustments.
Tick Tock
Let’s face it, running a business may mean that you simply don’t have the time to manage your account as frequently as you wish. By working on the pointers above, you should be able to keep your account going without having to check it every day. It’s not necessarily about ticking boxes to say that certain tasks have been carried out; it’s about being a smart Google Ads account manager and knowing what needs to be done and when it needs to be done. The most important thing to remember is to try and get it all set up correctly from the very beginning, ensuring your account is in the best possible position.
