Definition of the Google Ads campaign goal
After the entire account installation preparations, you can already start the first campaign. To do this, first think about what the exact goal of the campaign is.
Awareness campaigns
Do you want to increase awareness? Then you work with the GDN (Google Display Network) and create image banners and text ads, which are distributed throughout Google’s display network close to the target group. In short, a digital billboard campaign, simply cheaper and more effective.
Sales and acquisition
If the service or product is already known to a certain extent, this means that there is a higher search query in the Google search. Of course, you want to be found here in order to address and win potential customers.
Campaign settings
After you have decided which goal your campaign should pursue, you can now make the basic settings using a search network campaign as an example. To do this, click on the button “+ CAMPAIGN” and open a new campaign. You will receive a campaign list with the different functions:
- Search network with display selection
- Search network only
- Display network only
- Shopping
- Online video
As already mentioned, you will now open a sample campaign in the search network. After you have clicked on “Search network only”, a new screen appears containing all campaign properties.
Campaign name
Choose a suitable campaign name so that you can later distinguish which ad group can be found in which campaign. You can compare the campaign name with a book title. This also contains sub-chapters.
Type
The campaign type distinguishes the functionality of the campaigns and their use. The following functions are available to you:
- Standard – Keyword-related text ads in Google search results
- All functions – All functions and options available for the search network
- App install ads – ads that allow users to download your app.
- App interaction ads – ads that encourage users to take actions in your app.
- Dynamic search ads – ad targeting based on your website content
- Call only – ads that prompt users to call your business
To activate all functions and thus ensure a larger range, select the second position “All functions”. This allows you to add further ad groups with different functions at a later date.
If a campaign already exists and these functions are to be adopted, this can easily be copied by loading settings from existing campaigns – see “or Load setting from → Existing campaign”.
Advertising networks
In addition to Google Search, search queries can also be linked to Google Search on other search networks of partner programmes, such as GMX and other providers. This means that customers can use Google Search and the network on different pages to find what they are looking for.
I recommend activating this function, otherwise you will lose potential customers.
Devices
With this targeting, you can define on which devices your ads should be displayed and on which they should not. This function is needed when experience data is available and you notice that certain devices such as mobile, tablet or PC are not successful. In this way, you can exclude the desired devices and focus only on the successful devices.
For this, I recommend using all units first to generate empirical values.
Locations
This setting allows you to define the targeting of your campaign to your exact location. If you run a local business, you can narrow down the exact target area in which you want to be found. This reduces wastage and costs.
If Switzerland is part of your delivery area, I recommend that you also consider Liechtenstein, as this area is also supplied by Swiss Post.
In addition to countries, you can also enter cantons, cities and villages and define them as target areas. At a later stage, you can prioritise the individual areas differently by adjusting the budget.
Use the “Advanced search” function to define, for example, a radius-related focus (e.g. 30 km around Lucerne). In addition, your target group can be narrowed down according to location groups and characteristics such as demographic features (household income level) or interesting locations such as airports, commercial centres or universities. You can define up to 1000 locations in one campaign.
The location options allow you to define the target region and users exactly by location. This way you can decide whether a user from New York who searches for a Swiss product on Google.ch will also see this ad or whether only a user with the location Switzerland should see this.
Primarily, we leave the default settings and only adjust this function later, after experience values are available.
Language
The language always defines the user’s search setting on Google. So you have to consider which languages your customers speak. It may be that a user from Switzerland searches with the language setting English, but still speaks German.
In Switzerland, this function needs to be tested again more, because we speak four languages and every customer uses a different language setting again.
Google Search
For such campaigns, I recommend using a campaign in the search network. With this campaign, your text ads only appear when a customer explicitly searches for the keywords you have booked (such as product name or other properties).
Bidding strategy
With the bidding strategy, you define the auction function and the associated bids. The default setting is Google’s manual bid setting. This means that you have to define the bid for each keyword individually. Individual keywords can be adjusted separately.
I only recommend this setting if you have a campaign with few ad groups (max. two) and few keywords. Such campaigns are only recommended if you absolutely want to be in first place with certain keywords and thus shoot up the bid.
Otherwise, set the automatic bid adjustment and let Google carry out the bid auctions. To do this, click on “Auto-optimised CPC”. This function allows you to get the maximum number of high-quality visitors from the given budget.
To be on the safe side, we define a CPC bid limit in which we set an upper cost limit and thus say how much a click may cost at most. Thus, in addition to the daily budget, we also have a click cost limit so that certain keywords do not generate unplanned high costs.
In addition, we enable the “Enable Auto-Optimised CPC” feature to optimise by conversion tracking data and bids by conversion.
Budget
In the “Budget” field, you define the daily budget for the ad groups. I recommend starting with at least CHF 10.00 (for Switzerland) to gain experience. You will then quickly find out how high the costs per sale will be and whether it is worth increasing or reducing the daily budget.
Delivery method
The delivery method ensures that the budget is distributed throughout the day. In this way, you avoid exhausting your budget right at the beginning of the day.
At the beginning of a campaign, I recommend that you set the setting to Standard. This will give you the information when your ad groups perform best in terms of time. Depending on your budget and priority, you can also select the “Accelerated” function. The delivery of ads is not optimised. As a result, the budget is used up more quickly and may already be used up before the end of the day. Before a thorough analysis, however, I recommend using the standard setting.