Managing Adwords marketing campaigns can be quite a time-consuming endeavour. We know that most of you out there definitely have other things in mind besides taking care of their Adwords campaign. It doesn’t surprise us that certain small business owners only optimise their campaigns in AdWords once per month.

However, this is evidently wrong simply because setting up a functional AdWords campaign takes a lot of effort and time. You would have to do things such as creating and expanding a keywords list, setting up the ads themselves, improving your Quality Score, building a conversion-friendly landing page, etc.

Yes, that does sound like a lot to do and it kind of is. However, AdWords management is not a full-time job as long as you do it properly. And this article will show you how you can do as such.

What is AdWords management?

Setting up an AdWords campaign is an important piece of this whole puzzle, but your work doesn’t really stop there. When running Google Ads, there is really no such thing as “passive income”.

Anyone who is running or has run a successful Google ad campaign has surely put a lot of time on the backend of things, closely following the performance of their ads, trying different designs, and more. These are the steps that everyone needs to take in order to build a successful campaign that can run for months or even years after its first initiated.

Google provides its users with numerous ways to track backend aspects of their campaigns. For instance, you can set email notifications that act as live alerts for you whenever something significant happens within your campaign. You can fine-tune what makes its way to you and what doesn’t. Some people only want to be notified when something significant happens, while others might want to be up to date with the smallest of changes.

AdWords management: Managing accounts and campaigns

Step 1: Check current Google Ads performance

The first crucial step in AdWords management is properly evaluating the performance of your ads. This will help you determine what needs to be improved or changed. There are a few metrics that you can rely on in this process:

• Impressions
• Clicks
• CPC
• Conversions
• Click-Through Rate (CTR)

So, before going into how you can manage your Ad campaign, let’s first break down these metrics individually.

Impressions

An impression refers to when your ad is seen by someone on Google. The most effective way of increasing your impressions is by acquiring a bigger campaign budget. The more you are willing to pay, the more visible your ads will be. However, besides budget, Google also considers ad quality and relevance as deciding factors too.

If they decide that whatever you’re displaying isn’t relevant to the keywords you chose, chances are they won’t display it high enough, leaving you with poor performance as a result.

Clicks

Clicks are the bread and butter of every Google Ads user. Everyone wants more clicks. You would want to achieve as many clicks as humanly possible. If you notice that your ad isn’t getting enough, you should probably rethink your ad itself or your targeting preferences.

Cost

This obviously refers to the amount of money you end up spending on the campaign. AdWords is based on the cost-per-click model, also known as CPC.

People who use Google Ads efficiently can scale their ads by figuring out how much money they need to put in to get a click. In other words, if you determine that spending £3 on an ad makes you £6 per click, then you’re good to go. You spend £6, and you get £12, easy math.

However, there are other factors that come into play. Your initial bid, quality score, and rank of the ad will impact how much you truly need to spend. The bid is how much you’re willing to pay per click. Quality score refers to a rating a Google attaches to your ad, from 1 to 10. It’s based on how relevant your keywords, ad, and landing page are. Lastly, the ad rank is Google’s decision on where your ad belongs in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

Conversions

A conversion refers to the act of someone taking the action you want them to take. This happens on your landing page or website. It can be anything from a sign-up to a subscription to a purchase.

Let’s say you run a business that sells hats, and you run a Google ad for it. A conversion is basically when someone clicks on your ad and successfully purchases a hat.

Google allows you to closely track conversions.

Click-Through Rate

Your click-through rate is the right way to measure the relevance of your ad in the eyes of Google. It also allows you to get an idea of whether your ad is resonating with the audience or not. A high CTR can only mean that many people are seeing the ad, clicking it, and performing the CTAs.

However, if your ad is getting a lot of impressions and clicks but little to no conversions, chances are your ad copy is great, but the landing page or product you’re selling isn’t relevant.

In case you are wondering, CTR is a percentage based on the number of impressions and clicks. It’s basically the number of clicks/number of impressions x 100.

The standard for most people is 5%, but you can achieve a lot of things with something lower still.

Step 2: Reevaluate your Ad targeting

Adwords provides a report called the “search terms report,” which includes a list of the search terms, aka keywords, that users have used to reach your website. Depending on the matching options you’ve used when setting up the campaign, the search terms included in the report may be different from those in your keyword list.

So, how is that useful when it comes to Adwords management?

Well, using the report, you can see how your campaigns and ads have performed when triggered by searches made by real users. The report tells you how close the search terms people used are to the keywords within your keyword list. In other words, it will help you understand which match types are working.

Using that priceless piece of insight, you can refine match types for all your keywords so that only the right terms will trigger your ad to show up on the search network. That will both increase conversions and decrease your ad spend.

Here are some tips for using the search terms report to your advantage:

• Include the high-performing search terms in your keyword list. Remember to adjust your bid as well. After all, those search terms are already bringing in traffic, so you wouldn’t notice a big difference if you don’t edit the bid, ad text or both.
• Add search terms that aren’t relevant to your products or services as negative keywords since they’re eating up your budget without actually bringing new customers or generating revenue.

Step 3: A/B Test the Ad copy and design

The third and perhaps most crucial step in your AdWords management journey is testing your ad copy and design, which are composed of the following elements:

• The offer
• The headline
• The description
• The URL

One or many (rarely) of these factors can hurt the overall performance of your ad. If they do, make sure to test them up against something else, a different version, basically. Keep in mind, however, that you only want to change one thing at a time.

Why?

Because that’s the only way of knowing which segment is the culprit.

For example, you might find yourself getting numerous impressions but little to no conversions. The cause of such a problem is most likely the headline, perhaps because it isn’t enticing enough for people to bother clicking.

A different situation might arise where you would get a lot of clicks but no conversions. This might be the result of an irrelevant offer.

A great work around this is dynamic ads since they pull content directly from your website, which ensures that the headline and description are always relevant to the offer.

Step 4: Dig into negative keywords

Negative keywords are basically the keywords that you don’t want to display your ad for. There are a number of reasons as to why someone would rely on negative keywords, the main one being your ability to set up your ad as you see fit instead of letting Google do the work for you.

To add negative keywords, simply go to the Google Ads campaign manager, select keywords, Negatives, and add them. Negative keywords include competitors, brand names, and such, which you don’t want to relate to.

Step 5: Optimise your landing pages

Another key step when it comes to AdWords management is having a well-polished landing page. If the ad you’re running is getting a lot of impressions and clicks but little to no conversions, chances are your landing page isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. We recommend that you remedy this problem as soon as possible before Google takes notice and drops your ad lower in SERPs due to low relevance.

When optimising a landing page, you need to look at the offer, the headline, the structure of the whole page, the placement of the different buttons and Calls to Action (CTAs), and more. The best way of identifying the source of the problem is through A/B tests.

For example, if you think that your landing page is lacking when it comes to the number of CTA buttons, create a duplicate, then add a few more and observe what happens. Such a task usually needs a good landing page builder and optimisation tools such as Convert.com or Unbounce. Convert is a very good tool for A/B testing, and it allows you to pinpoint the different steps that need to be taken in order to perform the performance of your landing page.

Step 6: Consider switching to automated bidding

The sixth and last step in AdWords management is choosing the kind of bidding you want to go with. When creating a Google ad, you get two choices: automated or manual bidding. Each of these modes has its pros and cons.

Automated bidding enables Google to decide how much you are going to pay per click based on a few of their metrics.

• Increase visits: If your aim is to increase the number of visitors to your site, you should optimise your ad based on clicks.
• Increase visibility: Bid more in order for your ad to show as high on the page as possible. You might end up getting fewer clicks than you want, but you will quickly gain a much-needed boost of brand recognition.
• Increase conversions: if you want more conversions, then you’d need to optimise your target cost-per-action. Yes, you might find yourself having to pay more per conversion, but you will convert more users this way.
• Target ROAS: If you wish to meet a certain return on your marketing spend, you can allow Google to choose what it thinks you should pay based on how valuable a single conversion is for you.

Manual bidding, on the other hand, means that you would need to figure all of these aspects out by yourself. In other words, you won’t have the luxury of picking a goal and having Google do the work for you. Still, however, manual bidding does give you a lot more control if you’re into that sort of thing.

Looking for help with AdWords Management?

Google Ads are an excellent way to drive traffic and sales, but they can prove to be hard to handle and time-consuming. If you need help with Adwords management, do not hesitate to contact us.

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