Five Tips for a Great First Google Ads Campaign Experience
Google Ads is ubiquitous
It makes sense, since Google is one of the biggest and most profitable companies in the world. I see ads for Google Ads all the time on TV, on YouTube, and other places.
But yet…
According to Demandsage, only 45% of small businesses have a paid search strategy, and less than 2/3 (65%) of small to mid-sized businesses use Google Ads for their pay per click (PPC) campaigns.
This means that many small businesses have never tested running a Google Ads campaign. In talking with Kristi Mitchell recently on her UNF*DGE Your Marketing podcast, we sussed out that solopreneurs’ and micro business owners’ hesitation is often due to not wanting to take on a new technology learning curve and/or wanting to lean on other, already proven marketing channels.
On that podcast episode, the first topic we discussed was two lessons learned when I ran a Google Ads campaign at the time that I launched Harbeke Marketing in mid-2023. As we ran out of time to share more lessons I had ready to talk about, I wanted to share here all five tips I prepared to help solopreneurs and micro business owners have a successful first experience using Google Ads to promote their products and services.
Here’s what I recommend you keep in mind when you run your first Google Ads campaign:
In terms of the priority of Google Ads (and paid ad campaigns in general) relative to other marketing strategies, you should push it down on your list in favor of first spending your time and money on SEO (organic search), social media, email, and even physical media campaigns like letters, brochures, and postcards. I say this for two reasons: (a) it often takes 3+ months to measure the effectiveness of paid ad campaigns and (b) substantial time is needed to both launch campaigns, and to optimize past campaigns for future launches in order to improve what didn’t work as well.
If you have one or more really compelling videos, I recommend you try a video ad on Google before you try setting up a text or text + image ad. This is because the campaign setup process is much simpler and quicker for video ads. For any version of text ads, you will need to budget in a lot of time to add many variations of Headlines and Descriptions, as well as website Extensions to make your ad perform optimally. I’ve sometimes needed to spend 30+ minutes on Headlines and Descriptions alone, because Google won’t let you go to the next stage of campaign approval until your overall % of content gets to a certain threshold of completeness, as well as uniqueness compared to other current campaigns.
When setting up text or text + image campaigns, you will be asked to set keyword matches as one of three types: broad match, phrase match, or exact match. You want to stay away from broad match for keywords. I’ve experienced, and heard from many others, that this match type almost always wastes your budget because the related searches don’t match closely enough to what you’re offering — leading to less clicks as well as much lower time on page (or just immediate bounces) from people who see your ads (impressions).
When setting up your campaign, you will see an option to check a box to also run your ads on an “extended network” or “partner network.” I’ve found — and also heard this from others — that you will waste your budget by checking this box and thinking that you’re getting a better deal. In my own experience, looking at the associated visitor domains for related clicks and page views, it’s hard to argue that these “extended networks” aren’t simply click farms. Regardless, if you choose this option, you will likely find that these contacts don’t align with the need that you say you fulfill.
Finally, let’s talk about your ad landing page on your website. It needs to be set up really well in order for you to get the best Google Ads ROI. This means you need to have a clear offer, written in plain language. (If you’re a tech company, don’t get muddled in the language that often pervades that industry.) You also don’t want to make the page potentially confusing to leads by having more than one next step call to action — instead, point visitors to take only one action that aligns with the promise from your ad.
Bonus tip:
Expanding on #5 above, consider having your ad landing page be a squeeze page, where you have no top menu navigation or footer menu. This will get more ad clickers into your marketing funnel because they’re not prompted to poke around on your website, where they could leave or take an action outside of the one to which your ad directs them.
Organic digital marketing + paid ads = a proven combo for brand awareness and sales
I mentioned my podcast episode with Kristi Mitchell above. We’ve exchanged blog posts, and you can read her guest blog on mastering organic digital marketing for sustainable business growth here.
