Planning a
Google Ads campaign
Learn Google Ads in five steps
Step two - campaign planning
When you first start planning a Google Search ads campaign, you need to decide what you can promote about your business which will give users a reason to choose your brand over competitors. You also need to consider what outcome you are hoping to achieve (more sales, client leads, signups etc).
Similar to Facebook Ads, the key to well performing Google Ads is having an attractive offer which gives users a reason to click. Having a thorough understanding of how your products/services provide value for customers (more than your competitors) is the first step to creating effective ads.
Creating ads which simply state ‘this is our business and this is our product, buy now’ will perform poorly as there’s no reason for users to click. Let your website and landing page explain the business and the specifications of your products or services.
The purpose of an ad is to communicate what makes your business the better choice for users (i.e. differentiation), how do your products help them solve a problem, how can your business help improve their situation etc.
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Like Facebook Ads, Google Ads are simply the communication medium for reaching consumers. The value users see in what your ads are promoting will be the deciding factor if your ads are successful or not.
Once you have a general idea of what you would like to promote (products/services), you can then decide which differentiating factors about your business will pique a user’s interest.
Focus on the customer, not the business
Imagine you run a glass repair business. When searching for ‘glass repair Melbourne’, you view the Google Search ads from competitors. These ads all promote the same thing: wide selection of glass available, 30 years of experience, multiple locations, well-known brand etc.
None of these features directly highlight how the customer will benefit from using the services of each business.
You understand what customers are actually hoping for when they use the services of a glass repair company. You know customers may be calling as they’ve had a break in and need their windows replaced quickly. You know customers are worried the new glass won’t match with their existing windows and you also understand how left-over glass can create a dangerous environment.
By using customer research and knowledge, you are able to create ads which highlight the benefit and value people receive from using your services. Your ad may look something like this:
This ad highlights that people don’t need to wait around (i.e. frustration) as the repair service can be there quickly. It also provides peace of mind for customers knowing their home will look exactly the same as before and the area around the damaged window will be safe for their family.
The ad is also written in a conversationalist tone, which customers can relate to, rather than an overly corporate sales message.
To review how competitors are promoting their businesses via paid ads, simply type a relevant keyword phrase and review the resulting ads. You can also use the Domain Overview report within SEMRush to review competitor ads (by searching for their website name).
Planning the landing page:
Once you have decided on how best to promote your business in a way which benefits customers, you can decide on planning the landing page for your ads.
A landing page is a destination page on your website which users will visit once they click on an ad. A best practice is to ensure the landing page is highly relevant to the ad it is attached to. If an ad is promoting t-shirts, you don’t want to send users to a general clothing page with multiple clothing types listed – it should be specific to the t-shirts mentioned in the ad.
Some advertisers will use existing pages on their website – such as product/service category pages whereas others will create an entirely new page just for one ad campaign. Some choose to create an entirely separate landing page off their main website which is hyper-relevant to what they are promoting. This approach means users are not distracted by other web pages or parts of a site and the landing page can focus on promoting only one thing.
Landing page builders also feature additional functionality and design options which may not be available through the CMS of the main website of an advertiser.
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Landing page experience is a key factor when Google assesses your Quality Score so you want to ensure the page is relevant to the ad (i.e. don’t send people directly to your generic homepage) and provides value (and a good experience) to the user.
Once a user is on the landing page, you need to decide what action it is you want them to take. Do you want them to fill in a form and submit their details for a call back, purchase a product, download software etc? These activities are known as conversion events and can be a measure to determine how effectively your ads are performing.
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The role of the ad is to send users to the website but it’s the landing page which will persuade the user and generate the conversion.
Your landing page needs to provide enough information and persuasion to ensure the user’s visit will result in a conversion event. If ads are performing well and sending traffic to your website but no conversion events are being achieved, the issue may not lie with the ads but with the landing page itself (or there may be a disconnect between what the ad promotes and what the landing page delivers).
When you are setting up campaigns, you can use Google Tag Manager to help Google Ads understand what is considered a conversion event on your website. These conversion events will be recorded within the Google Ads interface under reporting so you can easily view how many sales, leads, signup etc you have achieved.
You can also create Goals in Google Analytics (or use existing goals) to act as conversion actions in Google Ads (under Conversions > Import > Google Analytics).
Structuring your Google Ads campaign
Now you have decided which product/service you want to promote, how you can stand out within the search results and where you will send users when they click on an ad. You can move on to thinking about how you will structure your campaign. When creating and managing Google ads (no matter the type – Search, Display, YouTube or Shopping) everything is created within the Google Ads interface (or an external tool called Ads Editor). Google Search Ads are made up of four main levels:
- Account (i.e. the advertiser – your brand)
- Campaign (e.g. a product/service category)
- Ad groups (specific versions of a product/service) (audience targeting and keywords are applied here)
- Ads (ad type, ad text, extensions, landing page etc)
At the campaign level you decide language and location targeting, bid strategy (manual or smart) and your budget.
Ad groups are the containers which hold keywords and the relevant and relatable ads. Your ads are triggered by the shared group of keywords.
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Similar to Facebook Ads, Google Ad accounts will be structured based on the type of business/products an advertiser has and the individual needs/approach of their advertising. What works well for one brand may not be a suitable approach for another.
Generally, a campaign will hold the overall category of a product/service you offer whilst ad groups can be used to separate that category into individual sections. For example, a campaign could be investment advisory services with three ad groups: property, share market and fixed income. The ‘property’ ad group would contain keywords people search for on Google when they are looking for professional advice around investing in property.
When setting up an account for the first time, the menu navigation bar of your website can provide a good indication as to the structure of an account. For a kitchen and laundry appliance brand, menu categories may be kitchen appliances and laundry appliances (two campaigns). Within the kitchen appliances category, there may be product categories including ovens, cooktops and dishwashers (ad groups).
Alternatively, dishwashers may be an entire campaign with white, stainless steel and fully integrated dishwasher categories acting as the ad groups.
The set up will depend on what is easiest and the most logical approach for the business.
Keyword planning
After deciding which product/service categories to promote (and the ad groups they could sit in), you can begin keyword research. This research helps find keywords (i.e. the words/phrases people are typing into Google) which have sufficient search volume and aren’t too competitive (i.e. expensive) to target.
Search volume refers to how many people are searching for a term over a given time period. If the search volume for a keyword is too low, your ads may send little traffic to your website (or not show at all). Competitiveness can be assessed by the amount of money other advertisers are willing to pay to receive a click on their ad (i.e. Cost per Click – CPC).
Some keywords can be quite cheap (say, $0.30) whilst others can be very expensive (say, $9 per click). Expensive keywords are generally linked to industries which can earn thousands of dollars in revenue from a single customer (such as insurance companies). This customer lifetime value figure means these companies are ‘happy’ to pay more to acquire customers.
Higher cost keywords are also generally linked to the customer journey. Purchase-intent keywords will be more expensive than keywords users are searching for when they are at the awareness stage and learning about a topic/product.
When doing keyword research, you can use the Google Keyword Planner for building keyword lists. PPC keyword research can also be approached in a similar way to SEO keyword research. For example, browsing forums and reading comments on articles can help find topics people are discussing (and possibly searching for) which aren’t yet being targeted by PPC advertisers and competitors.
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It’s important to remember, you pay for PPC keywords so you want to choose keywords which are most likely to result in a conversion/sale on the website.
SEO can focus on top (and middle)-of-funnel keywords (e.g. keywords people are searching for when they are learning about a product or showing a general interest). If Search campaigns focus on these keywords, traffic may come to your website but are these users ready to buy? Targeting intent and sales-driven keywords is generally the better approach for PPC campaigns.
Some advertisers will target more general top-of-funnel keywords as their landing page is so well optimized, they are able to achieve conversions from the first contact with customers. Other advertisers will target more generalist awareness-based keywords as they plan on retargeting to these users in future when they begin searching for lower-funnel keywords.
Online tools for conducting keyword research including:
In the Google Ads interface, under ‘tools and settings’, you will find the Keyword Planner.
Anyone can have access to a Google Ads account – you simply need to enter a Gmail address and step through the account set up process. Payment details, active campaigns etc are not required to access the Keyword Planner.
When using the Keyword Planner, you can either select ‘discover new keywords’ or ‘start with a website. Both options will provide a list of keywords which may be relevant for your new search campaigns.
There are many different ways to use Keyword Planner to sort through and find highly valuable keywords. Surfside PPC has a very good Keyword Planner tutorial where they cover how to use the planner, considerations when choosing keywords, adding keywords to your account etc.
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Keeping ads as relevant as possible
As outlined earlier, keywords will sit alongside ad groups (which categorise your products/services). Ads are contained within each ad group. A best practice for Google Search Ads is to ensure keywords are as relevant as possible to the ads within the ad group.
If someone searches for ‘property investment advice’, you do not want to show an ad for overall generic advice or share market investing advice. This would occur if all investment service keywords have been added to only one ad group instead of categorising everything individually.
A common practice (which is now outdated) for ensuring ad relevance to keyword searches was to use SKAG’s (Single Keyword Ad Groups). This meant only one keyword was present in an ad group and the ad was hyper-focused to just that one term. This ensured ads were relevant to the keywords users were searching for but also meant hundreds of ad groups (and resulting ads) needed to be created for campaigns.
The current best practice for setting up ad groups is to group keywords by theme. For example, the ‘property investment’ ad group could feature the keywords: investment property advice, financial adviser property, professional investment advice property etc.
You can use the Keyword Magic Tool from SEMRush to help create thematically linked ad groups. You simply need to enter one main keyword and the tool will provide options for other relevant terms.
As an ad group will hold multiple ads (linked to an overarching set of keywords), a problem arises when deciding which ad to show. Only one ad from an ad group can show in the search results at any one time. Google Ads offers an ‘ad rotation’ settings feature which can determine which ad will be shown when an ad group is triggered by keywords:
- Optimise for clicks (the default setting which will show the most popular/most clicked ad)
- Optimise for conversions (shows the ads which have performed the best in terms of achieving conversions)
- Rotate evenly (show the ads evenly over a given time period then switch to default, optimise for clicks)
- Rotate indefinitely (shows ads evenly until the setting is changed)
Generally, ad rotation settings should be set to ‘do not optimise – rotate ads indefinitely’. Google may focus on ads which are receiving many clicks but not achieving as many conversions as other ads. This can be the same issue Facebook will have if using CBO in a testing campaign ((i.e. allocating more funds to seemingly high performing ad sets, even though conversion quality may be higher in other ‘lower performing’ ad sets).
Keyword match types
Once keywords for ad groups have been decided, you can select their match type: broad, phrase or exact.
Broad match will show your ad when someone searches for any query which is somewhat related to your keyword. Phrase match will show when users enter a search query which includes the meaning of your main keyword. Exact match means the user must type in a search query which has the same meaning as your main keyword.
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Broad match will result in the greatest amount of traffic due to so many searches being potentially related to your target keyword. This traffic, however, may be low quality (i.e. there is little chance they will provide a conversion) as they may not be interested in the exact products/services you offer.
Whilst broad keywords can provide low quality traffic when targeting general users, you can use this match type when running retargeting campaigns. This audience will be made up of people who have already visited your website (i.e. they have shown an interest in your products/services).
The broad match type casts the widest net in improving the chances of reaching the retargeted group. You can also use this audience to bid on broad highly competitive/high cost keywords as this audience will now be much smaller (and hence cheaper to target).
Bidding on your own brand name
When bidding on keywords, some companies will choose to bid on their own brand name and product names. Whilst this may seem counterintuitive (i.e. if a user searches for your brand, your website should appear as the first organic result), it can be a sensible strategy.
Competitors are forced to pay a premium to bid on your brand, but the CPCs you’ll see for the same terms will be considerably cheaper.
A good example is Pizza Hut and Dominos Pizza. Dominos are bidding on the keyword ‘Pizza Hut’ so when a user searches for PH, the first result is an ad from Dominos offering a 10% off discount code. By not bidding on brand terms, you leave room for competitors (who may not be known to customers yet) to appear within the search results.
Advantages of bidding on your brand name:
- Provides more ‘real estate’ in the search results page (i.e. fewer search results/ads promoting other brands)
- Protection from competitors using your brand name and appearing for your brand keywords
- Can create customised landing pages for each ad rather than the usual SEO homepage
- Cheap to do (with a higher quality score) but more expensive for competitors
Initial campaign set up and planning
When an ad group is first set up, you will be required to set up an initial ad and corresponding keyword list. You will also need to enter an initial default CPC bid for the ad set. Ad set bids help manage the amount you’re willing to pay for the ads in the ad group to show on Google. If you find certain keywords to be more valuable than others, you can override ad group bidding by setting CPC bids on each keyword instead. Keyword-level bids will always override ad-set level bids.
One important thing to remember is that your budget can only be set at the campaign level and all the ad groups within that campaign will have to share that budget (bids are set at the ad set or keyword level).
If keywords in one ad group have a lot of search volume or high bids, they could consume all the daily budget and other ad groups won’t have a chance to perform. If you find one ad group is performing particularly well, or you would like one group to have its own budget, you can split the ad group into its own campaign. A shared budget is an option which allows advertisers to use a single budget across multiple active campaigns.
Once you have determined your keywords (and their match type) for each themed ad group, you can decide the bid amount (i.e. CPC) and bidding strategy. The CPC is how much you are willing to pay for someone to click on your ad.
Bid amounts can be set at the ad group level or the keyword level (i.e. for each individual keyword). The default amount will be set by other advertisers (e.g. competitors) and market factors. If you bid too low, your ads will not show (but competitors will), if you bid too high, you may be spending unnecessary money.
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The suggested keyword bid when starting should sit mid-way between bottom-of-page and top-of-page bids.
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One of the ultimate goals of Search ads is to focus on improving quality score as this can help ads appear in first position even if your CPC is less than others.
Forecasting performance
The Google Ads Performance Planner is a forecasting tool which uses machine learning to reveal the possibilities for your Google Ads campaigns.
With this tool, you can explore forecasts (i.e. clicks and costs) for your upcoming monthly, quarterly, and annual budgets for current campaigns, while also helping to improve your return on investment.
Performance Planner determines the optimal bids and average daily budget allocations across all your campaigns to help increase the number of conversions you can achieve for any future spend scenario.
Seasonality, fluctuating auctions, and competition mean that Google Ads campaigns should be planned and optimized on at least a monthly basis. Using Performance Planner every month lets you optimize your budgets and bids so you can drive more conversions for the same investment.
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Deciding on a bidding strategy
Once keywords have been determined and budgets have been decided for campaigns, you can decide on a bidding strategy for your keywords. There are two types of strategies: standard and smart.
Standard bidding strategies:
- Manual CPC
- Enhanced CPC
Manual CPC
This is the standard and default option for bidding and simply involves setting the maximum amount you’re willing to spend on a click or have someone come to your site (e.g. $0.85)
Enhanced CPC
Enhanced CPC automatically raises and lowers bids, at the point of auction, depending on whether or not users are likely to convert for your campaigns (e.g. if mobile users have traditionally provided better CTR, Google will optimise for that group).
eCPC campaigns are a blend between a manual and smart campaign and usually result in higher CPC’s which may be above your maximum CPC. Smart bidding strategy considerations still apply with eCPC (e.g. Google needs enough conversion data to make ideal decisions – this approach is not ideal for new campaigns).
Smart bidding strategies:
Google provides Smart Bidding options which automatically detect the best amount to spend in order to achieve a click or conversion for your campaign. There are two main categories: return-on-investment based and vanity-based.
- ROI based (target CPA, target ROAS, maximise conversions, maximise conversion value)
- Vanity based (maximise clicks, target impression share)
Target CPA
This bidding strategy refers to the amount you are willing to pay to acquire a conversion (i.e. cost per acquisition). Ideal for businesses which are trying to generate leads at a certain price point.
Target ROAS
This refers to setting a target on the return-on-ad-spend you’re hoping to achieve. For example, spending $1,000 on ads and earning $3,000 in revenue/sales. Suitable mainly for eCommerce businesses.
Maximise conversions
Google will endeavour to achieve as many conversions as possible from your ads. This objective may result in CPC rising significantly as Google has free reign to achieve as many conversions as possible, at any price.
Maximise conversion value
Similar to target ROAS, Google will optimise to generate the greatest amount of revenue compared to ad spend
Maximise clicks
Google will try to get as many people to your website as possible. This strategy may result in low quality traffic with poor conversion potential. Possibly a worthwhile strategy when starting out (to gather data) or when dealing with keywords with low search volume – not a sensible long term strategy.
Target impression share
This strategy automatically sets bids with the goal of showing your ad at a certain location on the page of Google Search results. Use this bidding strategy if your marketing objective is to drive brand awareness and you want your ads to show on the results page a certain percentage of the time.
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Similar to Facebook, Google Ads works best when it has as much data as possible to learn from. Ideally, you want to achieve around 60 conversions in a campaign before you move on to using smart bidding.
Google follows a similar campaign optimization approach to Facebook. For example, if you select ‘maximise conversions’ bidding type, Google will show your ads to users who have a demonstrated history of converting online (e.g. purchasing, submitting their details in a contact form etc).
Whilst smart bidding can provide potentially better results and a ‘hands off’ approach, this strategy relies heavily on data and Google’s AI system. Smart bidding can fall short due to:
- Campaigns not running long enough
- Not enough conversion data (ideally minimum 50 – 60 per month, depending on conversion type)
- Too few keywords (i.e. not enough search volume)
- Too many and too frequent changes to the account (Google’s AI needs time to learn and adapt, changes will mean the system needs to start learning again)
When starting out, you ideally want to maintain manual control so you can develop a good understanding of how much conversions typically cost, which keywords are effective, which audiences to target etc.
You can adjust bidding based on the profitability/conversion rate of certain keywords (e.g. CPC + 10%). Bid adjustments allow you to decide when a click or impression is worth more to you. For example, if users are searching for comparison-based keywords (e.g. vs, reviews, pros and cons etc), you can bid higher for these users as they are further on their purchasing journey and are more likely to convert.
You can also review Google Analytics to better understand the characteristics of people who visit your website. For example, if traffic is mostly from mobile, you can set a bid adjustment to target users who are searching on mobile.
When creating a campaign, two options are available for managing how quickly Google will spend the budget. Standard ad delivery means Google will show your ads evenly throughout the day whilst accelerated delivery will result in Google showing ads as frequently as possible. Accelerated delivery will result in your budget being exhausted faster.
Audience targeting
Once budgets and CPC figures have been determined, you can move on to deciding audience targeting for your ad groups.
Whilst you can show your ads to anyone who is searching on Google, you also have the opportunity to target people who are in certain audiences based on their interests and behaviours (similar to Facebook targeting).
These audience targeting options are known as affinity and in-market audiences.
Affinity audiences contain people who have demonstrated a broad interest in a particular topic (based on their browsing history and search behaviour). This group is best suited to brand awareness campaigns as they are a relevant, interested market but have not yet demonstrated an interest in purchasing.
In-market audiences contain people who are actively searching for products/services and are looking to buy (also based on their search history and behaviour). These users are best suited to mid and bottom funnel Search ad campaigns.
Facebook ads are able to provide broad level targeting as well as retargeting options (for those who have already visited your website), but Google Ads are better suited to target users who are looking to buy (i.e. they are demonstrating their purchase intent through keywords when searching on Google).
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When you look through Google Analytics, you can see the affinity and in-market audiences your current website visitors fall into.
Google can also make use of retargeting and target users who have already visited your website. These audiences are set up in Google Analytics and can be linked to the Google Ads account.
If you are running a retargeting campaign, it’s recommended you first select ‘Observation’ (rather than direct targeting) as your targeting setting. This will allow for the addition of audience lists with no change in overall reach or cost of your original audience.
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Several other audience types are available within Google Search Ads and can be tied to the customer purchasing journey:
Awareness
Detailed Demographics and Affinity Audience targeting. These users have demonstrated a strong interest in a topic and are in the same demographic category as your existing website users (e.g. age, location, interests etc).
Consideration/Purchase
In-Market audience targeting. These users are actively searching for certain products or services.
You can also use Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RSLA) for those who have already visited your website.
Similar Audiences are Google’s version of a Facebook lookalike audience. Google will use a remarketing list to understand the characteristics (such as search behaviour) of users and will then find new users who share the same behaviours.
Loyalty
Customer Match audience targeting can be used to reach users who have already become customers and are likely to purchase from you again (i.e. they are aware of your brand, products etc). Similar to a Facebook custom audience, this audience type is created by uploading a customer list.
Creating ads:
Now you have considered your ad groups, your keywords, your budgets/CPC and possible audience targeting. You can move on to writing ads.
As outlined earlier, success for Google Search Ads (and online ads in general) is based on the value a user perceives from the ad.
If an ad describes no benefit to the user (i.e. solving a problem, improving a situation, helping them with something etc), there’s no reason for them to click. The key to creating high-performing ads is to firstly understand the needs of your customer, how your business fills that need and then it is the role of the ad to communicate that benefit.
Many brands spend time creating the perfect campaign structure and conducting thorough keyword research to then go and create bland boring ads. These ads, despite being highly targeted and relevant, end up with few results (even with large budgets attached) as people have no interest in clicking as they see no benefit for themselves.
Google Search results are a cluttered mix of ads, organic results, structured snippets, local listings, video results etc. You need to ensure your ad stands out – many users simply glide over paid ad results as they all look the same and say the same thing.
By looking at online reviews of competing brands, you can create a list of positive and negative aspects of their businesses.
For example, a positive customer review may state they really enjoyed receiving personalized attention and they weren’t treated like just another number. A negative review may state a customer felt confused as staff spoke in confusing industry jargon or pressured the customer for a sale.
Using these insights can form the basis for what you include in your ads. Use the positive aspects of online reviews to highlight how your business provides these outcomes to customers (such as individual attention, fast shipping etc).
Also use negative reviews to develop key points which can promote your business. Negative reviews may highlight customers are put off by jargon, so your ad could promote how your staff speak in plain English and take the time to clearly explain everything in simple, easy-to-understand terms.
Examples of online customer reviews which can be integrated in to Search ad copy:
You can use the Market Analysis reports within the Advertising Dashboard of SEMRush to discover how much competitors are spending on paid ads, their ad copy, ad type (e.g. Search or Display), targeted keywords, ad performance and more.
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Ad formats:
Google Search ads are available in a range of formats including expanded text ads, responsive search ads and dynamic search ads.. Ideally, ad groups will feature a range of ads in different formats. Try to have at least three ads in each ad group so you find which ad performs the best with your audience (similar to creatives within Facebook ad sets).
Ads are made up of headlines, descriptions and final URLs (i.e. the destination page a user visits once they click on your ad). There are character limits for headlines (30 characters) and descriptions (90 characters).
Expanded Text Ads
Note: This ad format is currently being phased out by Google and will no longer be available to create (or edit) after June 30, 2022. Existing expanded text ads will still continue to show within Search results. Some advertisers are finding they no longer have the option to create ETA’s within their accounts.
These ads can have 3 headlines, a second description and up to 90 characters for each description.
When writing expanded text ads, ensure any key information is in the first headline and first description. Google will not always show headline #2 and #3 or description #2.
Responsive search ads
This ad format lets you create ads that adapt to show more relevant messages to customers.
All you need to do is supply the headlines, descriptions and URLs for the ads (similar to dynamic creatives for Facebook). The more headlines and descriptions you enter, the more Google Ads can test and serve ad variations that match users’ search terms — which can improve ad performance.
After you enter headlines and descriptions, Google Ads assembles the text into multiple ad combinations in a way that avoids redundancy. Over time, Google will test the most promising ad combinations, and will learn which ones are the most relevant for customers.
Up to 15 headlines and four descriptions can be included for a single responsive search ad – Google Ads will automatically show different combinations depending on the search query.
It’s usually best practice to create at least one responsive search ad for each ad group, and to include at least two expanded text ads in that group. Expanded text ads consist of up to three headlines, up to two descriptions, a final URL, and a display URL.
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Dynamic Search Ads
These ads can help increase the reach of Search campaigns. Instead of creating ads for specific pages on your website (with attached keywords), DSA’s use Google’s understanding of your site to customise and target your ads. Using Google’s web crawling technology, Dynamic Search Ads index your website and use that index list to ultimately determine if a customer’s search is relevant to your brand.
If the user’s search term matches the index, Dynamic Search Ads will automatically create a headline and a destination URL customised to the search term. You only need to create the description in a template beforehand — everything else is automatic and based on the customer’s search term.
A headline will be created from the content on your website which matches with the search phrase of the user.
These ads can be quick to create but can be difficult to manage and optimize (i.e. understanding which keywords and copy performs the best). As customer value and ad relevance are so critical to ad performance, DSA’s can fall short due to their generic approach to ad creation.
Ad extensions
Once ad type selection has been considered, you can further enhance your ads by adding ad extensions.
Ad extensions enrich text ads by showing extra information about your business or products. Google Ads automatically serves the ad extensions that are predicted to have a positive impact on ad performance. Ad extensions typically improve click-through rate and take up more space in the search results (i.e. pushing competitors down) so always try to include these.
When reviewing what your ads are promoting, consider if the below extensions could help provide more information or value to a user.
These are links to other relevant pages on your website. For example, if you are promoting an electronic product range, site links can be to TV, PC, gaming console pages etc. You can have 8 - 10 links per campaign.
These outline aspects which can enhance the user experience when interacting with your business. For example, free shipping, 365 day returns, no checkout lines, zero-waste policy. These can be up to 25 characters long and focus on highlighting what makes your business unique or different to competitors.
These highlight specific features of products/services and what makes them unique. For example, the different colours and styles a t-shirt is available in or the services offered for an accounting practice.
These extensions will show your business address, phone number, and a map marker.
This extends ads with a phone number so users can contact your business directly from the ad.
This allows you to add the prices of products/services directly in the ad.
Highlights any current sales or discounts with an icon and discount details (e.g. save 40% on home appliances).
This can be suitable if you have retail partner locations. You can set higher bids for users who are close to retailer locations to ensure they see your ad. This can be done via the Advanced Locations Settings in Google Ads.
You should always try to have at least three site extensions enabled, but it’s highly recommended to have four since in any given auction, an ad can show a maximum of four ad extensions.
At a minimum, always enable sitelinks, structured snippets, and callouts. Even if you don’t manually create ad extensions, Google Ads will serve dynamic ad extensions when the system believes this will have a positive impact on performance (sitelinks, structured snippets and callouts).
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You can add site link extensions at the campaign or ad group level. Different types of extensions (e.g. structured snippets and site link extensions) can show on one ad.
One best practice when creating ads is to have your ads as relevant to the user and their search query as possible. Ad group extensions are the preferred set up method as they allow you to tailor the extensions to individual ad groups (rather than a campaign as a whole).
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Automated extensions won’t show if you already have pre-created ad extensions in place (e.g. sitelinks, location extensions, callouts etc).
There are many other features of Google Ads which can help your ads be as relevant to your business as possible. For example, the ad scheduling option allows you to select specific times (such as hours during the day or specific days only) to run your ads. This can be useful to show ads only during business hours.
Attribution modeling:
People will generally see and click on several ads before they finally make a purchase or conversion. Google Ads provide attribution models to help decide which ad was responsible for making a conversion. Data driven attribution is preferred with last click being the second best.
There are six attribution types:
Data driven
Uses data from your account to determine which campaigns, keywords and ads result in conversions. This method also considers how people engage with your ads and interact with your landing page. You can only use this approach if you have enough conversion data in your account.
Last click
The last ad a user clicks receives 100% of the credit for making a conversion.
First click
The opposite of last click.
Linear
Each ad receives equal credit.
Time decay
More credit is provided to the ads which were closest to the conversion event.
Position based
40% credit to the first and last clicks with the remaining distributed between other ads.
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This concludes step two of learning Google Ads (planning a campaign). In step three (running a campaign), we’ll cover how to use the Google Ads Interface and Ads Editor to create and run live campaigns.
Learn digital marketing in five steps
