How to set up an Adwords campaign

by | Jul 29, 2017 | How-to

set up AdWords campaign

How to set up an Adwords Campaign?

The Adwords platform can be a little daunting at first for many users but mastering it and getting a return from it is not hard. I am going to go into how to set up an AdWords search campaign in this blog post. There are many different ways of setting up a campaign: from the simple to the more complicated SKAG (Single Keyword Ad Group) formation. No matter the method, your end goal should be to increase the conversion rate on your website.

 

What should you know before you set up an Adwords Campaign?

Before you set up an AdWords campaign, decide on your objective first. This is a very important step and should not be skipped or looked over as something that is obvious. If you don’t have a very clearly defined objective for your campaign, you won’t know if your campaign is doing well and what you can tweak to make that campaign do better.

You will also want to make it something actionable on your website. For example, you may own a local boutique clothing store and winter is coming so you want to create a campaign for the new stock of jackets and scarves that you have on sale. Your goal for this campaign would be the online sale of jackets and scarves.

Knowing that alone is not enough. You will also have to track this through Google Analytics and Adwords. You will then know how people are going through the process and tweak your campaigns and website accordingly.

Now that you have that in your mind we are going to start in Adwords. Log in to your AdWords account. If you don’t have an account, just go to the Google Adwords website and sign up. Having an account doesn’t cost you anything. It will only cost you when you have a campaign running and people are clicking on your adverts.

Now that you are logged in and ready to set an Adwords campaign for your business. Let’s take a look at the process:

 

Step-by-step Guide to setting up an AdWords Campaign

Step 1

Sign in to your Google Ads account. Once you are done, you’ll be on the overview page where you can keep track of your funds/credits, and the campaigns you are running. For now, we will focus on creating a new campaign.

Step 2

On the left-hand menu bar, you want to click on the ‘Campaigns’ tab. Once it opens, click on the + button, and select New Campaign.

Step 3

Now you are going to be asked what kind of AdWords Campaign you want to set. In this example, we are going to be creating a Search Network campaign only. Select ‘Search Network’.

Step 4

You are now going to be asked the outcome you want from the campaign. For this example, I am selecting Website Traffic but your outcome could be different. Choose accordingly!

Step 5

Now that we have selected web traffic as the goal for our campaign, you will be asked to enter your web address. I am just using www.test.com for this post but you should put in your web address.

Step 6

Select a descriptive name for your campaign. For reference, I will name my campaign ‘Winter Sale’. In the Networks block, you get asked which networks you would like your advert to show on. We have selected a search campaign but you can extend your advert with Display Select. As a rule, if I am running a search campaign I only select the search network. This will create a separate display campaign for the winter campaign I am running. With this, I can observe the effectiveness of each campaign in isolation and set budgets and bids accordingly.

You would want to leave the setting to show on all devices. Unless you have a specific reason not to show on a device, you would not want to change those settings. You can make bid adjustments once you have actionable data from your campaign.

The location is completely dependent on your business. Select your location based on the prior research you have conducted. Understand where you want to target and what kind of audience you want to target, and select accordingly.

Step 7

When setting your language preferences, it’s important to remember that it’s the language that people have set in their Google interface. If your customers Google interface language is set to German but they search in English and you have set your language to English, your advert will not show up. Having your advert set to all languages is not necessarily good. If your keywords are the same in two languages, your advert could show for someone who does not speak your language. For this example, we are only going to select English.

In the bidding block, I will select Manual CPC and selected Enable Enhanced CPC. This means that Google will adjust your bid slightly to try and maximise conversions on your campaign.

Your daily budget is what you are willing to spend each day for the duration of your campaign. For this example, I am only setting mine to R10, but you would want to have a realistic daily budget.

If you have an end date you can select the End Date block.

We are going to add the extensions a step further down.

Step 8

We are now going to set up our ad groups. Each ad group that we set up is going to contain a set of keywords and a set of adverts. The ad group that I have set up above is for winter jackets and contains keywords that represent winter jackets. You would want to create more than one ad group. For example, I could have another ad group for winter socks, and another one for winter gloves. Each of those would contain keywords related to the ad group. You can get ideas of keywords by adding your landing page to the block on the right-hand side. Google will have a look at your landing page and suggest keywords.

Google has different match types that you can have. The match types are broad match, +broad +match +modified, “phrase match”, [exact match], and -negative keyword matches. I have added a guide below to what each of these match types means. You can use these in your keywords to make sure that people see exactly what you want them to see.

Broad match

Broad match is the default match type that all your keywords are assigned. Ads may show on searches that include misspellings, synonyms, related searches, and other relevant variations.

  • Example keyword: women’s hats
  • Example search: buy ladies hats
Broad match modifier

Ads may show on searches that contain the modified term (or close variations, but not synonyms), in any order.

  • Symbol: +keyword
  • Example keyword: +women’s +hats
  • Example search: hats for women
Phrase match

Ads may show on searches that match a phrase or are close variations of that phrase, with additional words before or after. Ads won’t show, however, if a word is added to the middle of the phrase, or if words in the phrase are reordered in any way.

  • Symbol: “keyword“
  • Example keyword: “women’s hats“
  • Example search: buy women’s hats
Exact match

Ads may show on searches that match the exact term or are close variations of that exact term. Close variations here may also include a reordering of words if it doesn’t change the meaning, and the addition or removal of function words (prepositions, conjunctions, articles, and other words that don’t impact the intent of a search).

  • Symbol: [keyword]
  • Example keyword: [women’s hats]
  • Example search: hats for women
Negative match

Ads may show on searches without the term.

  • Symbol: –keyword
  • Example keyword: –women
  • Example search: baseball hats

(Source: Keyword Matching Options)

Step 9

We are almost done setting up the campaign. Now, we are now going to set up adverts for the ad group Winter Coats. If you have more than one ad group (which you should) you will need to add a set of adverts for each group.

Step 10

The advert text should be selected carefully to represent the keywords you have put in your ad group. The landing page should also be representative of the keywords and ad copy that you have written. If someone searches ”warm winter jackets” and you have selected the keyword ”warm winter jackets” your ad copy should say something about warm winter jackets (like my example above) and when the person clicks on your advert they should be taken to a page containing warm winter jackets. Don’t just add your home page as your final URL.

Your ad copy should be enticing and encourage people to click on your ad.

Step 11

We are now going to add the extensions. These are important and should not be skipped. These extensions give you an opportunity to link to other pages on your site that people may be interested in. You are going to want to add 4 site-link extensions.

Step 12

Callout extensions give you the opportunity to add facts about your business that may assist people in making the decision on what service to go for. The example that I have added below is 24-hour support. Your customers will know that they can find exactly what they are looking for. If they need to call you at 03h00 because of a freak petrol fight accident that left them without a jacket, they know that they are able to.

Step 13

You are going to want to add 3 callout extensions that are specifically related to your business.

Step 14

A call extension is the number of your business. This will allow people to see your number in their search on their desktop. If they are searching on their mobile device, they will be able to call you by clicking on the call button next to your advert.

Step 15

Once you have clicked ‘save and continue’ you are done and your advert is live. You must now keep monitoring your advert to make sure that people are finding your advert correctly and your ad copy is optimised and your customer are converting.

 

Need help in Digital Marketing? We can help!

Digital Lime Green offers full campaign management. So, if this process is a bit daunting and you would like the professionals to take over this process for you, feel free to contact us. If you would just like some advice on a campaign you are currently running we would be more than happy to offer some free advice.

We wish you good luck in your advertising efforts!