Three Things You Should Know Before Running Google Ads

Google Ads is a powerful platform that can level up your online presence tremendously when done correctly. However, if not done correctly, it can become quite expensive and may not yield the results you’re looking for. In this brief guide, I am going to go over things you should look out for when running Google Ads as part of your digital marketing strategy to ensure the best results, without overspending. 

1. Do not enable all of Google Ads' recommendations

You likely have noticed the recommendations tab, where they score your campaign based on what Google deems as “optimized”. Here they will tell you to turn on many automated features, like removing keywords, adding keywords, changing the bid strategy and more. Although Google recommends this, I strongly advise keeping these features OFF. You can see in this article that Google released, they recommend turning this on. Google wants you to spend the most amount of money; that’s its main goal, so 80% of what their “algorithm” suggests is to satisfy the main goal of getting you to spend more money. This is why you should not let Google take the reins and control your campaigns, you need a Google Ads professional who knows the strategies and how to run a successful Google Ads campaign. When it comes to Google automatically adding keywords to your account, you can not trust that it 100% understands your business, therefore, it may start adding keywords that are not relevant to your business or do not have a good intention to convert. You can see the settings in the images below, where it wants you to allow Google to add and remove various assets from your campaign. As you can see, I keep these features off.

Google's Auto-Apply Settings Page 1

Google's Auto-Apply Settings Page 2

Google ads will also tell you that you need more broad match keywords. Although this can be a good strategy when first starting a campaign, so that you can get new keyword ideas and see which is doing best, it can also show your ads for a lot of irrelevant search queries that ultimately waste your money. You then get 1000s of keywords that you now have to go through and remove the irrelevant ones, which from my experience, can be ALOT. When you do proper keyword research and frequently use the keyword planner tool, you can easily find new keyword ideas to add to your account, for free! Google reps will often tell you to add broad match keywords, to which I reply, No, thank you. 

Add Broad Match Keywords Recommendation

Another common recommendation is to expand your search campaign to also show display ads. Again, unless it’s a performance max or demand gen campaign, you do not want to mix a search campaign with display, as this messes up your data, and it will start to eat up your budget on display ads, when its only focus should be on search.

2. Quality Leads Come at a Higher Cost

As I mentioned, Google Ads is a powerful platform, but with this comes a price. Google Ads is more expensive than social media ads. Depending on the type of campaign you’re running, the industry and the competitiveness of the keywords, your cost per click could be anywhere from $1 to $5, and in some cases, even more expensive. Since Google Ads is essentially a bidding war between different companies for every user search, the more competitive it is, the higher it can be. However, there are many ways to combat this and keep the cost on the lower side with proper management. 

1. Ensure the ad strength is excellent

2. Have an extensive negative keyword list

3. Ensure the landing page is strong and relevant

   
   

There are other ways to control the cost, but these are the top 3 ways, in my opinion, to keep the cost low. Something I always tell my clients is to be prepared to spend at minimum $25 per day, as a starting point. From there, use the data to make informed decisions on budgets. There are calculations you can do to see how much impression share you are losing due to your budget, and how much more you need to spend. Most Google Ad campaigns start showing limited by budget at some point, which means your ad stops showing because you’ve already hit your budget

3. Accurate conversion tracking is key

To run successful campaigns, you first need to make sure that you have a clear conversion goal. This is essential in not just Google Ads, but for your digital marketing strategy as a whole. Whether it’s a purchase, lead form submission, phone call, map directions or traffic to the site, this needs to be set. Once you set your primary goal, you need to ensure that the tracking is set up to properly measure conversions. This is critical to your campaign's success. There are multiple ways of doing this, from website integrations to Google Analytics, or through Google Tags. It can be challenging setting this up, but with the help of a marketing professional and proper testing, you can accurately measure the success of your campaigns. Your campaign will also optimize its algorithm based on the conversions you get, so once everything is properly set, the campaign will gather data from the conversions and start showing your ads to people similar to those who converted, ultimately maximizing conversions. 

Long story short, if you want to run successful Google Ads campaigns, it’s best to have a marketing professional managing them, as you should not rely on Google’s AI and automated features to manage your campaigns. You also need to have a healthy budget, starting at $25 per day. Lastly, you need to have your conversion goals and tracking set up before running a Google campaign. When managed right and actively monitored, Google Ads can bring in excellent results that are cost-efficient. To save yourself the headache and your money, find a digital marketing expert who will set your campaigns up right, implement strategies to improve results, and actively monitor your results, ensuring you're not spending on irrelevant keywords. 

At GRO Digital, we're highly experienced in running Google Ads, along with many other digital marketing services. We actively manage dozens of Google Ads accounts with various conversion goals, such as leads, traffic and sales. Reach out to our experts today for a free consultation to start your Google Ads journey today.