So you’ve just had a Google Ads account set up for you and have been tasked with creating the first campaign. It can be pretty daunting to not only run a PPC campaign, but also do it on Google’s platform.
Here are some basic tips that will get your foot in the door of utilising Google AdWords to grow your business:
1) Set Up Conversion Tracking –
This is probably one of the most important things we need to know before we spend money on any marketing effort. We need to see if our ads and keywords convert into actual customers or sales in order for this all to make sense in terms of ROI (return on investment).
2) Get Familiar With Bidding & Pricing –
Once you start your first campaign, you’ll notice that Google has 3 options for bidding; CPM (cost per thousand impressions), CPC (cost-per-click) and CPA (cost per acquisition). I wouldn’t recommend getting familiar with CPM right off the bat. Instead, learn the other two types of bids.
CPC is typically more expensive but also can convert better on some keywords/ad groups. When your ad gets clicked on, it costs money to show up on a search results page or website depending on what kind of ad it is.
CPA is typically cheaper because you’re only paying when someone takes an action on your site following their click through from AdWords. So if you set up a landing page saying “20% Off for New Customers” and someone clicks on the ad to get to that page, you’ll be charged if they make an online purchase.
3) Learning The Google AdWords Interface –
Take some time out of your day (it can be easy to spend hours here) and really go through everything; look at all the options, tabs, sub-tabs, etc. Get familiar with where everything is located because once you start running hundreds/thousands of keywords/ads/ad groups it can take a while just doing this alone.
4) Create Your First Campaign And Focus On One Area At A Time –
Don’t try to create five campaigns all at one time or have fifteen ad groups in one campaign. Start simple so you can understand everything that’s going on. Once you have a better understanding of everything, then it might be time to move onto more complex structures.
5) Take Advantage Of Negative Keywords –
Keywords are an essential part of your ads and Google is pretty smart with all the different targeting options they give us. BUT my only recommendation is to utilise negative keywords because if someone is searching for “blue widgets” but your ad says “red widgets”, chances are they’re not going to click on it.
6) Start Smaller Than You Think You Should –
When I first started with AdWords I had no idea what was involved or how much work it would entail. So my online marketing agency recommended that we start off running $10/day until I got used to the whole thing.
7) Track Everything –
Write down everything, every keyword, ad group/campaign, clicks, impressions, average position and cost per day. This way you can see if anything is working well or poorly early on so you don’t waste money running something that’s not converting at all.
8) Use Google Analytics –
Another very important tool for marketers nowadays is to use Google Analytics . I’m not going to explain how to set this up because there are tons of articles out there that do a great job explaining it. The basic idea though is that you can see where all your traffic is coming from whether it be PPC ads, organic search results or direct visits (and much more).
9) Go Into AdWords And “Play Around” –
This one is probably the most important. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes, change things around and do whatever you need to do in order to learn how everything works. It can take time but you’ll get there eventually if you keep at it! However, if you want to save yourself from all the hassle you can hire a Google Ads Ecommerce Agency to overlook and optimise all your ads.
Are Google Ads Good for E-Commerce?
Google is often touted as the best way to market on the web. For online shops, it’s possible that Google ads are more trouble than they’re worth.
Recently on Quora , I saw a question about whether Google Ads were effective for e-commerce stores. The answer was… not especially . One user said:
“I am an online retail store manager and we don’t use Adwords because our experience with them has always been horrible. We used them in the past when we only had one product category but then stopped using them completely.”
Another user chimed in with similar complaints:
“It’s simply not worth it compared to SEO/organic traffic. Their quality score system makes it so you can’t manually optimise, so you have to rely on the bidding system. It’s a numbers game and eventually you will get what you pay for.”
In general, Google ads are best for products that are easy to understand and well defined. The more specific your product is, the better. But when it comes to things like clothing or furniture, which can be easily compared in size and style (and thus lead to price comparisons), people tend not to click on Google ads.
However, e-commerce stores with multiple categories of products may find that Google ads do work for them after all . The reason? When users go from browsing one type of product directly into another category (e.g., nesting dress images within the pants category), Google Adwords will pick up the change and send the user directly to that new category page.
Google ads can work well for e-commerce stores selling multiple categories of products if you’re willing to put in the necessary time to maintain your ad campaigns. While it may not be as effective as using Google Adwords exclusively, maintaining a strong SEO presence is still worthwhile if it means that you’ll get better results than you would from just doing search engine optimization.
