At first, setting up a Google AdWords campaign may appear extremely daunting. It is actually pretty simple to do but also very easily configurable to simply, and quickly relieve you of your ad budget whilst reaching some random people, sometime, somewhere.

Clearly, the trick is to reach the right people, in the right places, at the right time, and for the right price.

Here are 5 pointers for making sure your campaign does what its supposed to:

 

1. Structure Your Campaigns

There is merit to setting up earlcony campaigns for your business en masse i.e. to all people in all areas. Most business will have an idea of what they want to sell, to whom, how, and where, however. It is such decisions that will guide you in how best to structure your AdWords campaign, for instance if you sell a product to customers in two different time zones then it would offer more control and be advisable to create two separate campaigns. Similarly, if you wish to manage the allocated spend between mobile and desktop campaigns then two campaigns would allow you to do so with greater control. Whilst you may end up with several more campaigns than you first anticipated it will be better in the long run, so consider carefully in the planning phase.

 

2. Configure Your Conversions

What return do you expect on your digital advertising? Unless you’re running a pure awareness campaign, its critical to track your conversions to measure the ROI of your digital campaigns – it is what advertising in business is really all about right? Firstly, make sure you have configured Goals in Google Analytics to identify when a customer has performed a desired (hopefully revenue generating) action on your website. Once setup, you can import the Goal data into Google AdWords which will track goal completions as Conversions.

 

3. Test Your Creative

Digital adverts are no different to landing pages or emails, performing A/B testing even with two slightly different types of copy or graphics can give you a huge insight into what works for your audience and what doesn’t. The slightest tweak can make all the difference to your conversions.

 

4. Monitor & Optimise

There is always an air of excitement when you first setup your digital ads, its similar to when you’ve posted the best joke ever on social media and waiting for the lofty acknowledgements to roll in. This is business however and there’s myriad of insightful KPIs and statistics to keep track of. Despite all the wonderful analysis and reports that Analytics and AdWords produce, it is still extremely valuable to keep your own daily report on the key numbers relating to your campaign objectve. Once you have recorded, digested and found some patterns in your data it’s time to start optimising – tinkering really. From making minor changes in anything from your CPC bid, interest targeting, geographic targeting or just creative changes, these alterations can have enormous impact to the success of your campaign. It’s important to remember that if you don’t try things then you are unlikely to make mistakes that you could learn from! Don’t forget though, always record the changes you made so that you or your colleagues can instantly see what was done to create such a profitable uplift!

 

5. Give It Time

Most changes you make in AdWords can take up to 24 hours to really take effect and be reflected in your reporting – unless its to do with your budget! Until you really know the ebbs and flows of your audiences it really is best to let changes run for at least a week to see variations in behaviour from hour to hour, day to day, and over the course of the week/weekend and even month/year.

Need help with your digital advertising campaigns? Drop us an email at info@socialcoregroup.com today and we will be happy to discuss where we can help you.