Here we look at the 6 most critical questions to ask before starting with Google Ads for your business. These can save you time, money, and frustration.
These questions are tailored towards Ad Agencies and questions that they should be asking you as the client to ensure not only a successful campaign but also a long term relationship.
1. What is the Objective for the Campaign?
Defining the objective of your campaign is critical, without this there will be no way for you or the agency you work with to determine or measure success. Some potential goals of the campaign could be:
- Increasing e-commerce sales by X%
- Increasing website conversion rate by X%
- Increasing brand awareness (but get specific on this)
- Increasing signups to a newsletter
2. Who is the Target Audience?
The beauty of Google Ads is how much you can narrow your audience down. This can range from gender, age, location, income, occupation, history of website searches, and much more. Painting a picture of your ideal customer(s) will allow you to narrow the funnel to target the highest likely converting prospects.
3. What Makes Your Business Unique?
You must have a value proposition. Something that makes you unique or stands out from a sea of hungry competitors. Maybe you are the fastest. The cheapest. The most years of experience. Highest ranked. Whatever that is, make sure it is clear in the headline and copy of your ads, as well as within the landing page the user clicks into. This will greatly increase your Click Through Rate or CTR and increase your conversion rate or new leads as well.
4. What Keywords do you Want you Ads to Display for?
Defining which keywords you wish to have your ads display is vital to a successful campaign. It also assists in building out potential ad groups for your campaigns that are targeted towards those keyword themes. You should also suggest keywords that you do not wish your ads to display. In Google, these are called negative keywords. There are some amazing tools to perform research on keywords including Google's own Keyword Research Tool as well as ones like SpyFu that allow you to perform extensive research on ideal keywords, which ones your competitors are targeting and how much to expect to pay per click.
5. What Locations are you Trying to Target?
Defining the locations you wish to target can have a giant impact on the campaign. If you go to wide (like the entire United States), you may not have enough monthly budget in order for your ads to display without getting spread too thin. If you go to narrow down to just one zip code, depending on the area, you may not get enough impressions to generate any potential clicks. Pick your locations wisely, but remember like most settings, you can adjust them as needed.
Pro tip: select the option for "Users in or regularly in my location" when you are setting up location targeting. Otherwise, you will end up getting clicks from all over the world. Depending on your campaign goals, that may be far from ideal!
6. What is Your Budget?
The million-dollar question. Well, hopefully not a million dollars! We are asked this question all of the time and the honest truth is every industry is different and every business is different. Because Google Ads is an auction system and advertisers are allowed to pick how much they are willing to pay for certain keywords, this means the cost per click is not decided by Google or even an Ad Agency, but by your competitors! You can, of course, define a maximum budget though. In Google Ads, you must select a Daily Spend. Google will go within about 10-15% above or below that on a daily basis but typically evens out at the end of the month. An initial way to determine what your budget should be is to use a tool like SpyFu to determine what the rough cost per click on certain keywords are. From there, determine how many leads or conversions you need to receive on a monthly basis. From there, estimate how many daily clicks you think you may need to generate a conversion. Then take that daily number of clicks, multiple it times the average cost per click, and multiply that by 30 days. That will give you a rough idea of what your monthly budget will need to be. Then determine how many of those clicks need to generate a converted customer so to ensure a return on investment or ROI.
Extra Credit
Below are some questions we at Eternity specifically ask our clients as it helps to ensure a solid match for a long term relationship:
- Past Campaigns - Have you ran a Google Ads campaign in the past? Was it with an agency or DIY? Was it successful? What did you learn from that experience?
- Past Experience - Tell me about an experience you had with your previous ad agency that was far from ideal and what you learned from it.
- Retain - What would have kept you with your previous ad agency?
- Success - How are you going to measure success with this campaign?
- Lottery - If you won a 350 million dollar lottery, what would you do?
- Joke - Tell me your favorite joke. If we can not laugh together, this is not going to be a good relationship.
- Fun - What do you like to do for fun?
- Gift - What is the best gift you ever received?
- Magic Wand - If you could wave a magic wand, what problem in the world would you solve and why?
Conclusion
Google Ads is a purposely confusing conundrum wrapped within an enigma. Whether you are deciding to work with an agency or attempting to DIY your Google Ads campaign, make sure these questions are answered so as to increase your chances of online success!
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to email me directly at: mike@eternitymarketing.com
