Leaving traditional platforms to start marketing through digital marketing methods like SEO and PPC (Pay per click) advertising can be a big step. But, If you’re making that move then good for you! You have probably realized that you can really step up your advertising game by getting your company in the top positions of search results.
In a rush? Click here to skip to the corresponding topic!
1. Deciding to make a PPC account
But since it’s such a big step, we’ve put together a guide on how to set up an AdWords (or any PPC) account.
Investing in search platforms like Google and Bing is essential to your business’s success. There are literally MILLIONS of searches taking place a day and, if you’re not on the platform, that means there are potentially millions of customers that will never learn you exist.
A company that doesn’t invest into SEM (Search engine marketing) will get obliterated by almost any of their competitors that has an online presence.
It’s like trying to win a Nascar race by running with on own two legs. Unless you’re Superman or the Flash you’re probably not winning. No matter how hard you try, your competitors will always beat you and you’ll never make it to the top.
Sure SEO can get you results for free but it takes a lot of time and effort in order to get there. PPC is a great way to start building your online presences as it can deliver results within an hour, if not sooner! Since Google is the biggest search engine, AdWords is a great place to start if you’re debating which PPC platform to advertise on.
With AdWords you get to advertise to almost anyone you like
Since it’s Google’s premier advertising platform and everyone uses Google! Even just making an AdWords account and getting a few ad’s running will set you apart from companies that don’t invest in SEM at all.
However, many people run into problems by failing to set up their account properly and end up falling into unforeseen pitfalls leading them to waste some of their valuable marketing budget on wasted clicks.
Starting an AdWords account can be daunting.
There are so many things that can go wrong. You may wonder: “What if I start losing money and don’t know how to turn it off?”, or “How many keywords should I have in my whole campaign or in each ad group?”.
Knowing how to create an account properly can save you time, headaches, and make your SEM efforts take your company to the next level.
The Essential Prerequisites for a Good AdWords Account
Before you even start creating an AdWords account there a few things you’ll want to take care of as they will save you time and are essential if you want to be successful.
1.Goals
Start by defining your goal of your PPC efforts, the structure of your campaign, and KPI’s (Key Performance indicators). Some good KPI’s might be increasing website traffic, getting more leads, or getting more direct calls.
2.Good web design
Make sure your website is set up to make conversions easy for the customer. When you get customers to your website you want to make it as easy as possible for them to make a conversion. The slightest confusion could turn them off,lose them and lead to them abandoning the page, and losing you both marketing budget and potential profit.
- Try to only have one product, or one group of very related products, on each page. This will help increase your conversion rates. The same principle holds true if you want to try to get more calls. Try to only have one big “Call now button” that is the focus of the page. And past that any business needs a solid website to present itself appropriately.
3. Ad budget
From there, you’ll want to set aside a testing budget for the next three months or so. Most small businesses should be fine with a budget of $500-$2000. This amount will vary based on your industry and how many ad group’s you plan to have.
4.Gmail account
Quite obviously you’ll need a Google account to advertise on Google (crazy how that works). If you already have a main account for your company, you’ll want to use that as you can overlay the info and use it on other platforms like Google analytics.
A lot of prep work, it’s true, but all the prep is necessary in order to have your PPC account to stand out of all the competition. This will also give your account the strong foundation it needs for campaigns to run smoothly.
Making Your AdWords account Step By Step
To get started go to adwords.google.com and input your Google account to sign up for your AdWords account.
- First put in your company email, or email you plan to designate for the PPC account.
- Then go and put in the URL of the domain of your business/company website.
- Then you will be asked to put the amount of ad spend you want to spend per day. If you are unsure, that’s okay, you can change this amount. It is actually better to determine this amount after doing some keyword research.
- From here fill in the following prompts. If you are unsure what to put in, that’s okay as we will go over how to set up campaign settings later on. These are the settings for any campaign and can be used to help separate your account on several levels.
Once we finish the account settings we can put this campaign and ad on pause, until we configure the right settings.
Account Settings
You’ll then be taken to a new page with a few more prompts.
The first one will ask you for your target country. Take note that this is the country (or countries) you want to advertise to, not necessarily where you’re located.
If your company only provides services in the U.S. then you only have to target the U.S. If you’re a company that provides services to the U.S. and Canada, then you’ll want to target both countries.
Also make sure to put in the right time zone and billing info as these can only be set here and cannot be changed later on.
Keyword research-the foundation of every successful campaign
Now we’re gonna take a step back from the account now that we’ve got that set up and do some additional prep work before we head further. It is very tempting to go straight in and get your first ad rolling, but these ads will only be effective if you select a great group of keywords.
The keyword research stage of any AdWords campaign is the most vital step, it can make or break all of your paid advertising efforts. A poor selection of keywords will make much of your effort worthless.
On the other hand, do this step right and you’ll have potential customers flooding you. So let’s take the time to get a group of keywords that will make sure your advertisements are delivered to the right customers.
- First, we’re going to want to compile an extensive list of potential keywords that have anything to do with your company. This won’t be the final complete list so don’t worry. There will be a lot of fine tuning later to get it on the right track.
- Head into the keyword planner by clicking the wrench icon in the top right corner. Under planning, you’ll find the keyword planner.
When you arrive at this new page select the first option that says “Search for new keywords using a phrase, website or category.”
In here start dumping in keywords, or phrases that would be potential queries someone might use to find your company, product, or service.
- For example, if you have a company that sells business laptops, some potential keywords would be “Best laptop for work”, “Portable light netbook”, “latest business laptop today”, “Lenovo laptops”, or “Dell laptops”.
Within keyword ideas, you’ll find several recommendations. Jot down as many as you can or put them into an excel sheet. You can do that by clicking on the “download ideas” in the top right corner of the screen.
We won’t be using this whole list as keywords, but we can find some use for everything. There will be keywords in this list we will be filtering out but, fortunately, instead of just discarding them we can use them to our advantage.
Negative keywords
Without going too far into keyword match types (because that is its own topic that will take a lot of explaining) negative keywords are modifiers for keywords that will change the way they function.
By inserting a minus sign (-) before a keyword we can filter that specific term out of search results.
Now that we have an extensive list of keywords compiled, we can go and start taking out all the terms we don’t want and grouping them together.
This way we can make them all negative keywords and make it so that whenever people use keywords that don’t match your business, your ad’s won’t show up and you’ll be able to save money and better target the right audience.
Using our previous example, let’s say we didn’t want “Alienware gaming laptop” as a keyword since this fictional company only sells business laptops. So we will make this term a negative keyword by adding a minus sign to the term making it “–Alienware gaming laptop”. Now whenever someone searches “Alienware gaming laptop” your ads won’t show up for that term!
Organizing Keywords
Once you have an extensive list of keywords it’s time to put them to the test. You can then take your list of keywords and then get data on them and how well they tend to perform. This can help determine which keywords you would like to keep especially if you have a low-budget for your account. It’s also a good way to research which potential keywords have a chance at being your money makers.
- Head to the keyword planner by clicking on the wrench icon in the right hand corner and under planner select “Keyword planner”. Then click on “Get search volume data and trends”. You can either upload a file of keywords or enter them manually. Then you can choose which keywords you like based on their search rate and competitiveness.
- Now that you determined which keywords you want to keep, it’s time to organize them.
- The reason we want to organize our keywords is to help structure our campaign. Setting up an AdWords campaign based on strong keyword research is a good practice.
Don’t try to make separate campaigns and desperately try to find keywords for each ad group.
Ads that have a strong theme will net a good quality score and in turn will get you cheaper clicks and tend to rank higher.
Organizing your keywords based on all the different products or services you offer is one of the best ways to group your keywords. That way you will have ad groups, text ads and keywords that are all aligned and have strong coherence with each other.
Having ads that accurately describe your product and cater to customers’ needs, will net a high quality score! I recommend having 5-10 keywords that match closely to the product you are advertising for each ad group.
What good does organizing keywords do?
Also you can make several campaigns to organize your product lines effectively. Let’s go back to the laptop example for a moment. Let’s say this company provides laptops that fall into two main categories, lightweight netbooks that are relatively cheap and high-end performing business laptops.
Instead of mashing both of these categories into one campaign, you could make two separate campaigns that cater to these separate categories.
Now you might be thinking: ”Well, that’s not entirely necessary, it seems more like a waste of time. This guy is probably just really nitpicky.”
It may seem like that is the case but there are a lot of campaign level features to use to our advantage that will make your PPC account a killer ad machine.
Negative keywords on a campaign level
Let’s start with campaign level negative keywords. We could use this level of keywords to filter out keywords that don’t match these categories, which is a massive time saver.
For the high end performing business laptop group we can add “-Cheap laptops” as a campaign level keyword since none of the laptops in this group would be less than $500. This way we wouldn’t have to go into each ad that’s a quality business laptop and add “-Cheap laptop” as a negative keyword.
Also differently themed s campaigns can effectively make use of the audience targeting tool.
Since these campaigns target two separate sub groups and have similar but distinct audiences, we can use the audience targeting tool to further narrow down our audience to one that will have a higher chance of being interested in the particular product we’re advertising and hopefully increase conversion rates and quality traffic.
Now that we have several strong selections of keywords and we’ve organized them into groups it’s time to head back and start setting up your first campaign, the right way.
Creating Your first Campaign
Decide what factor you want to set up a campaign with because you may want to set up campaigns based on different websites, or locations. The main thing to keep in mind is to stay consistent and organized with all of your PPC efforts.
- On the main interface click on the campaign tab and then the big red circle with the white plus sign to make a new campaign.
- Select which account you would like to run AdWords with.
1. Network settings
There are 3 different settings to choose from here.
- Google Search Network
- Google Search Network including Search Partners
- and the Google Display Network
Google Search Network
For text ads select the Search network. You may want to choose Google Search Network including search partners is you have a bit more to spend and want a bit more traffic. Personally I like just sticking with Google’s Search Network as you have more control over how your ads get displayed.
Google Display Network
For now don’t touch display ads as they can be tricky. If not done properly they can shred holes in your ad spend and show up all over the internet in seemingly random places.
If you do plan to look into the Display network make sure to invest the proper amount of time and care into it. While they should really have their own article, here are a few quick pointers: display network ads should have their own campaign, and you should consider hiring a graphic designer to make your ad’s visuals stand out.
This way you don’t have a display ad that just has text, which never get clicks since they aren’t appealing to look at. It will also be a great tool if you decide to use them for remarketing.
2. Campaign Goals
Determine your goal once people click on your ad. You can choose between…
- Conversions
- Sign ups
- Calls
- Landing on a squeeze page
- Sales
- Or just traffic
Based on your selection Google will help narrow down your options to count the metrics to record progress towards your goal.
3. Campaign Devices
This setting will show what devices your campaign will run on. As a control freak I like to make separate campaigns for each device. While you don’t have to follow my example, if you’re serious about split testing your ads then, this is the way to go as each campaign will give you the metrics you’ll need to optimize your ads to the specific devices.
If you are unsure, it’s fine to simply have your campaigns run on both mobile and desktop, without making campaigns just for one platform or the other. Regardless of whether you decide to make device specific campaigns or not, you need to make sure your ads are running for both devices or else you’re missing out on a ton of traffic!
4. Location Settings
This is when you get to decide which physical locations you want to have your ad’s running. You can select by city, state or area code.
As I mentioned before make sure to only target areas where your company provides services or products. Otherwise you would be wasting money on clicks by customers who don’t matter to your current efforts.
- If you don’t specify where you want your ad’s to be displayed, the ad’s can be shown internationally. If someone from Japan clicked on your ad, that would be a waste your money since you don’t provide services in that area. Also it would skew your data, as clicks from Japan would be data that would be throwing your campaign off.
5. Bidding options
This setting will differ on what your main goal is for this campaign. What industry you are in may also affect this setting.
Manual Bidding is the safest option as you have full control of how much you spend on your ads. This is also the best option if you are a hardcore split tester and only want to see results based on your adjustments.
If you’re just starting out and not sure what to do enhanced CPC is a good way to go. Google’s auto optimization is smart and this is a great way to take advantage of it. Google does its best to give you the optimal bid amount to try to maximize your conversions without burning through your budget.
- Target CPA and Target ROAS are other parts of Google’s Smart Bidding Strategy settings that are also great to take advantage on once you get a better feel for what your campaign needs.
The settings below are just ones I do not recommend. These options tend to not be as effective as the others and should never be used unless you really know what you’re doing and have a niche objective.
- Target outranking share
- Target ROAS
- Maximize conversions
- Maximize clicks
Maximize conversions and clicks are particularly bad, as those setting will burn through their daily spend the moment your ads are enabled. Your ad spend may even be used up within the first hour of the day and will not be eligible to show until the next morning.
Ad group creation
This step will be fairly simple as we have done all of our homework in terms of keyword research. For each group of keywords you made focused around a certain service or product you will make an ad group. You will want to make 2-3 ad’s that focus on that service or product and why your customer should buy from you and not a similar company.
Once you have a tightly themed ad group you are all set to get your ads up and running.
Time to get your Ads Out There
From here your first account is completely done preparing its time for the takeoff. In order to get your ads finally running you are going to have to put in your billing information.
On your account overview click on the gear icon in the top right hand corner and go to billing and payments. Go put in your payment method, fill out the necessary info and your ads are now eligible to start running!
Advanced settings
There’s one more thing to take care of to finally get your killer ad machine going. Within advanced setting there is an ad rotation option. Ad rotation is what determines how often certain ads within an ad group are shown compared to the others.
Which ad rotation setting you should use
For starters
If you want to try to have your ad’s optimized for conversions then stick with optimize for conversions as Google will try to optimize to have your best ads showing.
For experienced split testers
If your going for split testing then you will want your ad’s to rotate indefinitely as each ad will get the same amount of screen time and you will be able to determine what to cut and what to keep or modify.
Organization, the definition of a good PPC account
Setting up an AdWords campaign is not difficult, although admittedly can be a bit daunting at first.
It’s like your kid coming to ask you: “How do I do my homework?”. Actually sitting down and doing the homework isn’t the problem. It’s just a matter of just doing it and knowing how to do it properly.
Your child could scribble all over their math worksheet and say they ”Did their homework.” but that’s not the proper way to do it, similarly how some people don’t set up an AdWords account the right way.
Signing up for an account is easy. The real problem is knowing how to create an effective PPC account. Google has a bunch of easy pitfalls that can make you lose a bunch of money, like offering you a ton of spammy keywords or offering to automate bids on keywords for you.
The one thing all successful PPC accounts have in common is ORGANIZATION. Organizing your campaign is vital. A well set up account will give you full control over your options and you can see what works and what doesn’t.
You are able to optimize your best keywords.
You don’t waste as much money as other people do on keywords that don’t matter.
You will be able to track where every penny goes and make necessary adjustment when needed.
Congrats on making a solid AdWords account, you have the foundation for a successful path for your business. From here there are many ways to keep your campaigns healthy and there are always areas where your account can improve.
The process isn’t over, but you’ve got liftoff.
Why Mack Media group?
Too many amateurs just make their account and leave it to rot, wonder why they aren’t getting results like their competitors. Others just don’t have the time or manpower to constantly update and manage their campaigns for optimal results. These campaigns languish in mediocrity, pulling in occasional leads but never reaching their potential.
There are so many ways to optimize and leverage PPC advertising. Knowing how to effectively use all the different match types, create eye catching ads with stellar ad copy, and connecting your AdWords and Google Analytics accounts can really help your campaign stand out from those of your competitors. Course all these techniques require a fair bit of time, dedication, and learning.
Our professional teams has just the experience and insight that you need to make your PPC campaigns generate lead after lead. By putting care and investing time into your paid search efforts, we will be able to bring your business to a whole new level. If you’re interested you can reach out to us on our website by clicking here.
