Introduction
Google Ads can be a powerful tool for driving online sales. If you’re just starting out, or if your company has never used Google Ads before, the sheer number of features and settings can be overwhelming. But with some basic knowledge of how it works and by paying attention to the right metrics, you can make sure your campaigns are as successful as they can be. In this post we’ll show you how to maximize your budget through basic optimization techniques like keyword match types, location targeting, and ad scheduling.
Ad Scheduling
Ad Scheduling is an automated tool that allows you to schedule your ads to run at specific times. This feature is useful for targeting different times of day, or even different days of the week. For example, if you’re running an ad campaign for a fitness studio that offers classes at night, Ad Scheduling will allow you to target users who are searching for “gym” or “fitness” during those hours.
Ad Scheduling works by setting up a series of rules based on when and where people are searching for similar keywords in Google Search queries (or other search engines). For example:
- If someone searches on Google between 6 p.m.-8 p., then I want them see my ad
- If someone searches on Bing from 9:30AM-12PM EST, then show an ad
Location Targeting
Location targeting is a powerful tool to help you reach the right audience. It allows you to target by city, state, country or even radius around your business. You can also use language filters to tailor ads for specific languages. For example:
- If you’re selling an English-language book on Amazon but want to promote it only in Canada, just select “Canada” from the drop-down menu below “Country/Territory” in Google Ads and then add that filter into your ad group’s location targeting settings (more on how how here).
- If someone from Germany visits one of my websites and searches for something related to my topic area–like say someone looking up how to build an app–I’ll want them see one of my sponsored listings so they’ll learn more about what I do! With this example we’re going make sure any searches coming from Germany appear as sponsored results only when they include words like “app development”. The easiest way would be adding those words directly into our keyword list but since I don’t have any data yet (and therefore no keywords), let’s try another approach:
Keyword Match Types
- Exact Match: This is the most specific type of keyword and will only show your ad to people who search for the exact phrase you’ve specified.
- Phrase Match: This option allows you to specify a group of words (such as “dog training”) rather than an individual word or phrase (such as “dog training”).
- Broad Match Modifier: With this option, Google shows your ads to more people by expanding the potential reach for some words in your keywords list. For example, if one of your keywords is “hotels” but there are many other ways that people might search for hotels–including “hotel deals,” “cheap hotels,” etc.–then broad match modifier allows those variations on terms so that more potential customers can see your ad in their results page.
- Broad Match: The broadest option available allows Google Ads find relevant users based on synonyms, misspellings and other similar phrases related to what was originally entered into their system when creating ads through AdWords Editor or via API calls into AdWords API service; this means if someone searches for something like “hotel” then even though they don’t specifically use those two words together (i..e., they didn’t type out exactly what’s contained within quotation marks), there may still be value here because these variations could still lead back towards one another!
Convert Website Traffic into Leads
Conversions are a key metric for any business, and Google Ads can help you track them. A conversion is anything that indicates a visitor has taken an action on your website or app–it could be signing up for your email list, purchasing something from your store, or clicking on an ad to visit another site.
Conversion tracking works by inserting special code into the pages of your website or app (this is called “tagging”). This code tells Google Ads when someone does something like sign up for an email list or makes an online purchase so that we can credit those conversions back to their source: namely, ads running on Google Search and/or Display Network.
Use Conversion Tracking
You’re not just paying Google to show your ads to people who are interested in what you have to offer. You’re also paying them for the results of those ads, so it makes sense that you’d want to track how well they’re working.
Google Ads offers conversion tracking, which means that when someone clicks an ad and goes through a specified action on your website (like buying something), Google will record this as a conversion for you. You can then see how many conversions each ad is generating and adjust accordingly based on what works best for your business model and audience.
Create a Budget Based on Historical Data
Once you have your campaigns set up, it’s time to start thinking about a budget. If you’re just getting started with Google Ads and don’t have historical data to use as a guide, that’s okay! You can always start small and work your way up as things progress.
Once again, we recommend using historical campaign data to help set a budget for each of your campaigns. While this may seem like an obvious thing to do at first glance, many advertisers forget about this step or don’t think about using their own numbers when making decisions about what they can afford per month (and why).
In addition to looking at how much money they’ve spent in the past on ads with similar goals as their current ones–like signing up new customers or increasing engagement among existing users–some advertisers also consider their company’s financial situation when trying to figure out what kind of ad spend makes sense for them right now: Does my business have enough capital available? How much does this cost per customer acquisition? Is there room left over from last year’s profits after paying taxes?
With these tips, you can get the most out of your Google Ads budget
- Plan your budget:
- Use ad scheduling
- Use location targeting
- Use keyword match types
- Convert website traffic into leads
- Use conversion tracking and create a budget based on historical data
Conclusion
Now that we’ve covered some of the basics, let’s get started! We know that it can be overwhelming to jump into a new platform like Google Ads, but if you take these tips to heart and keep them in mind as you’re building out your campaigns, then you’ll find yourself feeling more confident and prepared for success in no time at all.