August 31, 2016

By Intrigue

AdWords, when faced head-on, can be overwhelming. There are many decisions to make when building your first AdWords campaign; from what type of ads you want to use to how much you want to spend. To help you get through building your first AdWords campaign, I will explain the five basic pillars to build a solid campaign foundation.

Define the Campaign Goal

Why have you decided to create an AdWords campaign? What is the end goal? Do you want someone to make a purchase on your site? Do you want someone to call you? Do you want to build up your brand awareness? These are great questions to ask yourself to dig deep and find the goal of your campaign. This goal will be used to make decisions about the types of ads you choose, the ad copy, the call to action, and more.

Define Your Geographies

It is best practice to include the geography you are targeting in the ad copy. For example, if you are targeting Guelph, an ideal headline for an ad promoting antiques would be “Antique Store In Guelph”. Define which geographies you want to focus on and focus the AdWords account structure on these geographies.

google-adwords-geographies-exampleFor example, if you are targeting both Guelph and London, you will want to create a separate campaign for each geography. I like to build an AdWords campaign for each city I am targeting when possible. If your business is larger, you might be targeting multiple geographies. In this case, I would either prioritize a couple cities to focus campaigns on or build a campaign targeting a larger location such as Ontario.

The budget you choose to spend each month can affect the geographies you choose to target. This is because both geography targeting and daily budget allocation is decided at the campaign level. If you choose to build campaigns for each of the cities you target (for example Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal), you have to split your daily budget between three campaigns. Which leads me to my next point…

Define Your Budget

First, decide how much you would like to spend each month. Then, set a daily budget that will keep you within your chosen monthly limit. Be sure to check on your budget every so often as AdWords keeps your credit card on file and automatically takes payments when your budget runs out. If you need help deciding on a budget, do some research on keywords using the Google Keyword Planner and see what the suggested bids are. From there, you can estimate how many clicks you will receive each day based on how much you are allocating to spend each day.

Brainstorm A Specific Call to Action

google-adwords-cta-exampleA call to action (CTA) is a phrase that gives the reader the next step. People online are bombarded with offers and advertisements. They don’t want to think about how to get what they are looking for. A good call to action provides them with the specific next step and gets you both closer to a goal completion. For example, if you are a Guelph florist whose goal is to get more phone orders, a good call to action would be “Call Us To Order Flowers In Guelph!”.

Choose Your Landing Page

AdWords performance comes down to relevance. Google wants to provide their search engine users with the best experience possible. To provide their users with the best experience, Google wants to show them results that are related to what they are searching for. If your product or service is relevant to what a user is searching for, your advertisement could show up in the search results.

How does Google AdWords know whether your ad is relevant to what the user is searching for? They look at your ad copy, the keywords you are bidding on, and the page on your website that you are sending them to (known as the landing page). These elements are measured for their relevance to the search query posed by the user. Creating a landing page that is both relevant to the keyword/ad you are bidding on with a primary focus on your call to action is best practice.

Contact the team at Intrigue today to get help with your first Adwords Campaign!

Intrigue is a Canadian digital marketing company delivering solutions to help businesses get noticed and found. Guided by a commitment to empower leaders to strengthen communities, Intrigue offers website design and development, branding, online advertising, content marketing, graphic design, video production, SEO, and analytics. Take your marketing to the next level and Get Noticed. Get Found.® intrigueme.ca

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