How to set up your Google Search Campaign correctly

It’s most likely the first page that appears when an internet browser like ‘Edge’, ‘Chrome’ or ‘Safari’ is opened for the first time; it introduces the user to an avenue of curiosity, of what they want to find on that particular day.

A Search Campaign on Google is the most prevalent factor in making sure that your best efforts will be seen on a wide variety of sites and search results, so it’s important to make sure that it’s as refined as possible to have an outreach for many users.

With that, here are some tips on how to correctly set a Google Search Campaign up.

Keywords

The most essential part of any campaign. Without these, no ads can run and ideally should act as your starting point.

This area can be a rabbit-hole if focused on for too long, so it helps to have a clear and concise plan for any campaign, for which keywords will be brought into the Search Campaign.

You should make sure to have a set amount of keywords that will be relevant to the task at hand, alongside adding negative keywords to better appeal to the audience at hand.

It’s also very important to make sure that the keywords are included in any copy or landing page that is a part of this campaign, otherwise, any visibility may be severely hampered.

You need to make sure that this is being monitored constantly. Outside-factors such as viral posts and ongoing-events in the world could bring certain words from out the depths and into relevancy, so always have an eye on what could relate to the campaign.

Audiences

This is another important attribute to any campaign. The audience is an important factor to consider as they will be spotting the ad and interacting with it, so it’s incredibly important to correctly configure the Search Campaign to who you’re targeting and hoping to have an impact upon.

If this is your first campaign, it may be beneficial to select the ‘Observation’ option, as this can give a greater understanding as to who has interacted with the live ads, to better refine the campaign for the next audience.

If you spot for example, that 90% of the audience that ends up converting to your end goal is from a specific group, you can adjust your bids accordingly to engage with those people specifically. For example, a very broad advert for financial services aimed at young professionals is mainly striking a chord with those in service industries or around an even more specific age group or profession, you could attack by creating a more specific ad and ramping up the ad spend to try and capitalise on what you have learned.

Lock-On to a Location

Dependent on what the campaign is trying to aim for, it’s incredibly important to choose the right locations for your business. 

Certain places can generate a higher CPC, which can depend on the relevance of what your campaign will be about, so make sure that you select a few that can best make the impressions and engagement. You should also be aware that the content of whatever the advertising may be, needs to conform to the tastes and interests of the chosen locations, otherwise the copy may lose all meaning in a short space of time.

There’s also an opportunity for people outside the target area to discover the advertising by selecting the ‘People in, or who show interest in, your targeted locations’. This way, Google can try to show the ads to other groups that may have previously not been one to factor into the desired audience, so it’s all there for the taking.

Networks

The ‘Google Search Network’ is a way of companies working with Google to display ads on their own sites; it’s a fantastic method to have a great outreach for your advertising, which can be displayed on sites that primarily, or even faintly, relate to the topic at hand.

Once the clicks are purchased through here, they can then be displayed on certain sites such as:

• Internal Search Results such as Amazon and eBay.
• Site Directory Pages
• Google Search sites such as ‘Maps’, ‘Images’, ‘Shopping’ and many more.
• Search Results pages

There is also the option of using Google Search Partners as a way to expand, this means that you are able to buy clicks elsewhere within the network and can be really useful if you have the time to spend. It is advisable to closely monitor this though, as it can be an intensive way to manage your campaign.

Because of how Google’s systems can show how a campaign is doing in great detail, you can in effect, have this feature left on, and measure over a period of a month to see just how, where and when the campaign is reaching these networks, so you can better tailor it and improve upon the CPC rate when needed.

Bid Strategy

This is another important factor when carrying out a campaign, as you need to make sure that the CPC fits your budget while making sure that you know what the end-goal is for this campaign.

Budget and focus are important headways in having a consistent bid strategy for a campaign, so once one is established, Google will also build up an automated bidding strategy to help you along with this if needed.

To help Google know what works and what doesn’t for your campaigns, it’s often easier to start out by setting your own CPCs and seeing what works best for you. Then you can develop this by automating elements of your campaign, safe in the knowledge that previous data can be utilised.

There are a few strategies to keep in mind when creating a bid strategy, such as:

• Maximising Conversions
• Targeting cost per action (CPA)

These can help increase any potential conversions while being able to optimise them to better target the audience you’re focusing on. The system of Google Search Campaigns really helps here to give you a better insight as to how to focus those CPC, and having a focus on these points, alongside impressions can really help maximise the visibility of the advertisement.

Overall, attention is the overarching theme of any campaign. Any advertising needs to be nurtured and cared for, and eventually, it will be able to make an impression on that target audience.

Automated features can be useful, but if left alone for too long, there’s a possibility that it could skew the audience you’re aiming for, while reducing the CPC amount that you have set a target for.

However, as long as you have a clear goal in mind, with a timeframe and a focus on how the campaign will improve the client at hand, then you can revel in the CPC engagement.

That is, at least until the next campaign comes along!