1. DEFINE YOUR CUSTOMER PERSONA
Who buys your product or service?
Think of your last 5 ideal customers … demographics, interests, behaviours and pain points.
What problems does your product or service solve for them?
Effective marketing is about your customer, not your product.
Where are your ideal customers located?
Use this for your campaign’s geographical targeting.
2. KEYWORD RESEARCH
I like to use Google Keyword Planner and it’s free.
Conducting keyword research gives you an idea of the volume of Google searches, keyword competition and keyword cost per click. You can use the same keyword research to pre-emptively identify irrelevant traffic that Google associates with your target market, and block irrelevant searches BEFORE it costs you money.
This will become an ongoing process, so set time aside after you set your campaigns live to make sure you’re not paying for irrelevant traffic.
3. COMPETITOR ANALYSIS
Who is your competition?
What can you learn from your competitors and do better?
Lead with your Unique Selling Points
Google again is a great tool for researching competitor content.
What keywords are your competitors bidding on?
4. LANDING PAGE
Your landing page should focus on ONE action you want your ideal customer to take.
Do you want your ideal customer to fill in a form?
Create a form on your landing page and have no distractions on the page such as a phone number, calls can be lower quality (depending on your industry) whereas form completions usually generate better-qualified leads. Pick ONE.
Ensure the page and form load fast and are responsive on mobile, desktop & tablet devices.
Align your keywords + landing page + ad messaging to make sure everything runs smoothly, avoid wasted budget and maximise enquiries.
- Include ONE strong & clear headline
- Include ONE call to action
- Include trust signals such as reviews and links to your social media channels.
5. BUDGETING & BIDDING
Use your keyword research to estimate the cost of running ads based on keyword cost-per-clicks and expected search volume and choose an automated bidding, or smart bidding strategy that aligns with your business objectives. You should probably only use manual bidding if you have a good reason to, such as a market with very low search volume.
The strategies you can use include target Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) and maximise conversions or clicks. There’s a lot to learn when it comes to choosing the right bidding strategy.
6. ADVERT CONTENT
Develop persuasive and engaging ad content, incorporate how you’ll address your prospect’s pain points, and try to include keywords that your customers are searching for in the ad content and landing page.
Most importantly highlight a clear call to action, something which clearly shows what is the next step you’d like the user to take now that you’ve grabbed their attention.
In addition to the main ad content incorporate some additional assets such as sitelinks or even images (yes, you can use images in text ads). These types of assets are rocket fuel for your campaigns, boosting click-through rates on your ads which can lead to lower cost-per-click prices.
7. TRACK YOUR LEADS
Ensure that as a minimum Google Analytics 4 is set up to track traffic, enquiries, and user behaviour. This is crucial to measure the success of your campaign.
We’d strongly suggest going further and using a CRM like HubSpot or lead tracking software to measure business metrics such as leads, converted leads, new clients and revenue.
This is increasingly important as the reliability of traditional search metrics is compromised by the decline in third party cookie usage. We wouldn’t suggest embarking on a Google Ads campaign before having a way of measuring campaign success beyond ad clicks and gut feel.
8. COMPLYING WITH GOOGLE AD POLICIES
Familiarise yourself with Google Ads rules regarding acceptable ad content & prohibited items etc.
If this sounds like too much work or you don’t have the time or knowledge let’s have a chat ☕️
You can request a FREE PPC audit from Forrest Digital by clicking this link.
If you don’t yet have a Google Ads account or would like to discuss our paid marketing service further, you can contact us through this form, or send an enquiry to hello@forrestdigital.com and one of our team will be happy to get you started on your paid marketing journey.