What are search ads?
Search ads are paid ads displayed on search engines like Google’s results page.
Google alone processes approximately 40,000 searches on average each second. That’s over 3.5 billion searches per day and 1.2 trillion per year.1
Why do you need Google AdWords search ads?
For many campaigns and companies, it is difficult to earn the search ranking needed to gain attention for popular keywords. Search ads help to grab people’s attention where organic search results lack.
While waiting for organic efforts to draw attention and clicks, Google AdWords allows you to focus on building a presence needed for important search terms.
A properly managed AdWords campaign can help your campaign or business succeed. However, since Google charges every time someone clicks an ad, you must ensure the conversion driving campaign is discovering qualified traffic – meaning, you’re finding the right people with the right message.
How do you create a successful search ad campaign?
First, make sure the landing page is meaningful.
The goal of an AdWords campaign is not the click – it’s the conversion.
When an ad on Google drives qualified leads to a specific landing page, the purpose of that page is to convert that person into a subscriber or paying customer by having them take a specific action.
As you build your landing page, make sure the message of the ad matches. Creating that seamless experience for users helps deliver the message and persuade them to complete your call to action.
Use keyword match times correctly.
AdWords is a direct attribution marketing channel that relies on keywords to help decide user intent. In the ad auction process, AdWords responds to the query entered into Google search and displays ads it believes are most relevant.
Therefore, the most important piece of a search campaign is the keywords and modifiers used. There are four types of keyword matching:
- Exact Match
The results will only show the exact search query. - Phrase Match
Keyword phrases are a string of words in quotation marks, and that phrase will only show ads when a searcher uses that phrase you specify. - Broad Match Modified
By placing a (+) sign modifier in front of keywords, this will show your ads with the target keyword in the order you decide. - Broad
This is the widest possible net you can cast which will search for keywords and synonyms in any order.
Broad will drive the most impressions, but meaningful conversions will be more expensive. Exact Match will have the least number of impressions, but the click-through rates will be higher as the ad is highly relevant to that search query.
In general, it is a good idea to start with Broad Matches for 30 days to fine-tune and understand what people are searching for in relation to your campaign or business.
Then, after 30 days, change the focus to more Exact Match or Phrase Match words, while still maintaining the best performing Broad Modifiers.
You can geo-target audiences for higher precision.
In addition to keywords, AdWords allows you to display ads to people who only live within certain geographic regions.
Setting a certain radius around a location helps further improve the likelihood that the end-user wants to interact and convert.
Next, clean up negative keywords.
An invaluable tool within AdWords allows you to define keywords that are nota good fit.
This prevents ads from showing on keyword searches that do not fit the intent of those voters, constituents or consumers who are searching.
Focusing ads on the right people will help save money and help the campaign be more effective.
Lastly, what should you do if you don’t see your own ads?
It’s important to remember that not finding your own search ad does not mean there is a problem.
If Google shows the ad has been seen a certain number of times, then you can be certain your ad is running.
If you search for your own ad and cannot find it, it may be due to your budget, the popularity of keywords, the time of day you are searching, or your geographical location.
Even seemingly obscure search terms could be searched hundreds or thousands of times, which limits the chances of you seeing the ad.
The truth is, it’s not a good idea to search for your own ads. Doing so will increase the number of impressions and, by not clicking on the ad, decrease your click-through rate.
That affects the ad’s Quality Score, which makes the ad campaign more expensive to run!
Key Takeaways
Properly managed and combined with the right keyword matching and a meaningful landing page that is focused on conversion, an AdWords campaign is an important element of an effective digital campaign.
Contact the Majority Strategies team to get started on your digital campaign today.