Google Ads account set-up

Setting up a Google Ads account is relatively straightforward.

The hierarchy of an account goes Campaign > Ad Group > Keywords, where each Campaign is divided into different Ad Groups. Each Ad Group has its own set of keywords and ads.

So, for example, let’s say you sell skate wear online. You could set up your account by product type and within that have the various brands. So you’d have the campaigns Skate Shoes, Skateboards and Hoodies, and have the brands of each sit within those.

You may find it’s more natural to set up campaigns by brands, especially if you have a larger site. Or you may find it’s better to organise your campaign by location. Whatever you choose, you need to set it up in a way that gives you a concise and clear way to look at your account at a glance.

How to set a budget and bids

The budget for your PPC campaigns are set on a daily basis, which can be frustrating. You need to take your monthly budget and divide it by 30.4, which is the average amount of days in a calendar month. Very frustrating, I know. Bids are set at the keyword level, so you will need to set the bids within each ad group.

Within each ad group, you have the keywords that you bid on. These will then trigger ads, with copy that you create. To find out the specific keywords that your customers use, you need to do keyword research and then set them to the various match types that you think are best.

Optimise your ad copy

For ad copy, try to have at least 2 variations of your ads per ad group. This will show you which is better performing and makes your customers click. I recommend reviewing ad copy about once a month in order to make comparisons.

Ongoing campaign management

Once the campaign has been set up properly, you need to make iterative changes to make it better. This will probably need to happen daily when the campaign first goes live, but can probably decrease to weekly after a few months if you have limited time to run the campaign or if you are operating in a less competitive niche. The key metrics to look at are:

Impressions: These should hopefully be in line with what your keyword research has told you. If not, there’s a chance you’ve not set up your keywords correctly or you are not bidding enough to get high rankings for your ads.

Clicks and CTR: These should hopefully also be in line with your keyword research. As a good rule of thumb, a 2% CTR is a good benchmark for your CTR for generic terms.

Avg. pos: This metric tells you the average position your ads had over the time period. If this is low, it stands to reason that you have a low level of impressions and clicks. This is an indication you need to bid higher to obtain more traffic. Typically I like an average position between 1 and 2, as this gives a good level of exposure while somewhat limiting your cost per click.

Conversions: In order to track conversions, the easiest thing to do, if you use Google Analytics on your site, is to connect the two accounts and set up goals within Analytics. If you don’t use Google Analytics, you can create conversion tags within Google Ads, but these then need to be added to your pages. I find it’s easier, where possible, to connect to Google Analytics instead.

What is a good conversion rate? Well, it depends on the goal you’re tracking, and the level of consideration it takes for the visitor to become one of your customers. It really needs to be looked at within the context of your industry. The average conversion rate is likely to be somewhere between 2 and 10%, but that does not mean you should settle for just that.

Focus your efforts on optimising your campaign by changing the landing page, changing the offer, focusing your budget on the best performing campaigns and don’t forget that conversions are not purely about quantity, but also about quality. In industries where enquiries and leads are more likely than spur of the moment purchases, it is better to drive quality leads than more conversions for conversions’ sake.