PPC Guide: How to Optimize Google Ads

• By Shamsher Singh Bhullar

• 16th February 2024

Paid search marketing is one of the mightiest digital marketing tools that boost an organization’s revenue. Especially if you’re a new business organization wanting to build a brand in a competitive world, Google ad campaign is the golden ticket to enhanced success. 

80% of global businesses use Google ads for their PPC campaigns. Google Ads generated revenue of a whopping $172.647 billion in the first quarter of 2023. 
Now, you must be wondering why Google Ads is the major tool for Pay-Per-Click (PPC) marketing. This is because Google rules about 90% of the search engine market globally. To back this up, Google and Facebook search advertising generates the highest ROI of all paid channels.

• 80% of global businesses use Google ads for their PPC campaigns. 
• Google Ads generated revenue of a whopping $172.647 billion in the first quarter of 2023.
• Google rules about 90% of the search engine market globally. 

Enough talking about the theoretical part; let’s begin with the applications. If you’re a business owner or a digital marketer looking to level up your Google Ad campaigns game in 2024, this blog is the perfect resource for you! 

Note: If you’re still not familiar with paid marketing and what it is, you can check out this blog right here.

Top Tips for Running a Successful Google Ad Campaign

When you instantly want to rank on top of a search engine page for certain queries, running paid Google ad campaigns is one of the best tools to do so. The work doesn’t end after running an ad on Google. In fact, it starts right from that moment. 

If your ongoing Google ad campaigns are not performing well, chances are that your campaigns need optimization. Follow along with our best-kept tips to run successful Google ad campaigns!

Tip 1: Know What You Want

Firstly, it is crucial to identify the goal of your PPC ad campaign. Is it to generate more leads, enhance conversions, or merely get more traffic on the website? Segregate your requirements based on your needs, and voila, you’ll see a significant shift in the performance of your ads.

Your PPC ad campaign end goal can vary and lie anywhere between increasing sales and capturing leads. Some of the most common objectives of your campaign can be the following:

Let me explain this to you with an example. For instance, if you own a clothing brand and wish to enhance the sales of your products, “Drive Conversions” is the most-suited type of Google ad campaign via a video format ad. 

Note: You can learn more about how to define your objectives in Google Ads here.

Tip 2: Choose the Right Campaign Type

It is crucial to choose the type of campaign you wish to run after figuring out the objective of your PPC campaign. The best criteria to choose the right PPC campaign type for you involves the following parameters:

• Marketing goals
• Brand strategy
• How much time can you invest?

You must be aware of the different types of Google ad campaigns available and what purpose they serve. The various types of ad campaigns are as follows:

1. Search Ad Campaign

Search ads refer to text ads that show up when a user searches for a product on Google search. 

Benefits:

•  Increased sales and traffic on websites, therefore, more leads.
• Helpful in collecting leads for products/services with a longer sales cycle.

2. Display Ad Campaign

Display ads are visually engaging ads that are displayed on various websites, apps, and other Google-owned platforms such as YouTube. 

Benefits:

• Enhanced sales and leads with visually attractive CTAs (Call-toActions).
• Increased brand awareness.

3. Video Ad Campaign

You can run video ads on YouTube and other websites with video ad campaigns.

Benefits:

• Increased brand awareness as videos impact more users.
• Target people beyond the Google search engine.
• Leverage action-focused video ads by running ‘Drive Conversions’ ads.

Note: You need to upload the video on YouTube first to run video ad campaigns.

4. App Ad Campaign

This type of ad campaign helps in looking for new app users and increases sales. This type of ad is visible on YouTube, Google Play, AdMob, Discover, and mobile devices and there are 3 million apps and sites.

Benefits:

• Enhanced signups for apps on mobile devices.
• It covers all types of ads, such as Display, YouTube, Search, and Play, in a single campaign.

5. Smart Ad Campaign

As the name suggests, a smart ad campaign automatically sets up an ad campaign for you. All you need is to enter information about your business, and Google AI will find the best ad for targeting potential users.

Benefits:

• Google optimizes the ads and targets a suitable audience on its own.
• You do not need to fuss about choosing the best ad campaign.

Note: If you just made a Google Ads account, all your campaigns will be smart campaigns by default.

6. Performance Max Campaign

You can access all Google Ads inventory, such as the Search and Display network, from a single campaign. You can run text, image, video, multi-image carousel, and product listing ads with a performance max campaign.

Benefits:

• Easiest to set up with Google AI optimization.
• You can gain deeper insights into a campaign through the “Combinations” report under the “Insights” tab.

Note: You can run a Shopping ad campaign to promote your e-commerce business. However, you need a Google Merchant Center account for it.

Tip 3: Set Your Budget Right

Setting an optimized budget that does not burn a hole in your pocket is an indispensable practice. You need to set an average daily budget, i.e., the average amount you’re ready to pay every day. You must also set your daily spending limit (should be 2x your daily budget) and a monthly spending limit (ideally 30.4x your average daily budget).

You must note that the daily ad spend varies based on the search traffic influx. Some days, there is heavy traffic, and on other days, there can be quite minimal traffic. The above image is a perfect example of how a monthly budget spend can vary over the course of a month.

This is how you can set your daily ad budget:

You can use the following Google Ads tools to help you set an optimized budget:

• You can optimize your budget across existing campaigns through the Performance Planner tool.
• You can set the maximum amount that you’re willing to pay for a user clicking on your ad through Cost-per-Click (CPC).

 You can calculate your daily average budget using the following equation: 

Average daily budget = (Monthly budget / Average number of days per month)

Tip 4: Make Up a Bidding Strategy

It is one of the best practices to set up your bidding strategy manually. However, you can also use automated bidding strategy options, such as Target Cost Per Acquisition (CPA), Target Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), maximize conversions, target impression share, maximize clicks, etc.
One upside of using an automated bidding strategy is that you do not need to update bids for specific keywords manually. You can use smart bidding that utilizes the power of AI to allocate a target CPA according to the set cost-per-click smartly.

Tip 5: Choose the Right Targeting Options

It is crucial to opt for the best targeting options for location, age group, audience, and other demographics. It is always a better option to drill down on targeting options rather than targeting a broad spectrum of audiences. 

Some of the common forms of targeting are as follows:

• Keywords targeting to specify phrases that people tend to search for.
• Audiences targeting to target a specific audience.
• Language targeting to target audiences from various regions.
• Location targeting to target individuals from different locations comprising of potential customers.
• Device targeting to target a spectrum of different device users, such as iPhone, Android, etc.
• Remarketing leads with Google ads. You can do this by connecting Google ads with Google Analytics (GA4), which helps analyze the website visitors and then retarget them with the ads.

Tip 6: Add Assets to Ads

There is more to ads than just running a plain campaign. Adding assets to ads, such as directions, website links, or phone numbers to call, can positively impact the PPC ad campaign performance. Adding these assets enhances the clickthrough rate by many percentages.

Note: You can also add sitelinks and images to your search ads to make them more responsive.

You must also add catchy headlines and descriptions that must be unique and focus on user benefits. You can add up to 15 headlines and 4 descriptions for a responsive search ad.

Tip 7: Create Group Ads and Choose the Right Keywords

An ad group contains one or more ads that share similar targets. You set a bid, or price, to be used when an ad group’s keywords trigger an ad to appear. This is called a cost-per-click (CPC) bid. You can also set prices for individual keywords within the ad group. Use ad groups to organize your ads by a common theme, such as the types of products or services you want to advertise.

You can create an ad group of ads that share similar interests. For example, if you’re running an ad campaign for trekking shoes, you can make a carousel group ad to do so.

Keyword targeting is yet another solid strategy to do so. Make sure that you prohibit the use of negative keywords to make a spectacular ad copy and keep it keyword-focused.
Note: You must try to incorporate long-tail keywords for a better-performing adcopy.

Tip 8: Solid Conversion Tracking

Although conversion tracking is not necessary for each type of PPC campaign, it works wonders for some. You can assess the effectiveness of your ads by setting up a conversion tracking system. This way, you can track the actions of the users on your website and understand how to optimize your Google ad campaigns.

Running ads is just not enough; it is crucial to track the actions of the users after they interact with your ad. This is exactly what the tool called Conversion Tracking does. It keeps track of the following conversions:

• Whether a user signed up for a newsletter.
• Whether he added a product to the cart.
• Whether he purchased a product and much more.

Overwhelmed with Jargon? Let our Experts Handle the Technical Job

Deftsoft is the one-stop solution for running and optimizing successful Google ad campaigns for your business. We have an experienced team of PPC consultants that help you find the pain points in your ongoing ads or even better, manage Google ad campaigns for you. The search for one of the best PPC management companies ends here, as we have been an established digital marketing company for the last 18 years. 

Kickstart your journey to a vivid digital marketing experience with us.

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