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If you’ve ever audited a Google Ads account, you know you’re likely to find a few obvious and very correctable issues – especially if you’re working from a checklist. Things like:
At the same time, you may also find tell-tale signs of things that went wrong from the beginning – things your checklist may not catch and aren’t so simple to fix.
It’s fascinating to speculate about the discussions that happened before an account was launched based on what you find during an audit.
Was the Google Ads account well thought out and planned? Or was it built in a hurry? Did the client or manager say, “Hurry up! We need leads!” or “Quickly! We need to build awareness of this new product!”?
When there isn’t sufficient pre-launch discussion and planning in PPC, it can manifest as deeper, more fundamental issues, such as:
To avoid having these fundamental problems in your Google Ads account, you need to ask yourself 10 important questions before you create your account.
Knowing what you’re trying to achieve is essential because it drives decisions about the campaign types to choose.
For example, if your goal is to build awareness of a new product, then you should look to video and display-focused campaigns.
We can whip up content for text ads, no problem. But Google Ads is about so much more than simple text ads on SERPs these days.
More marketers are embracing Google’s latest omnichannel campaign types, such as Demand Gen. These campaigns need images and video, which are harder to whip up.
What audience data do you already have that can give you a leg up?
For example, if you’re launching a new product, do you already have a list of existing customers?
Or, if you’re launching a new and improved model of an existing product, do you have a list of customers who bought the prior version?
Dig deeper: The search marketer’s new imperative: Capturing first-party data
New advertisers, especially in B2C, often struggle with highly competitive (i.e., expensive) keywords – which will impact your initial launch strategy. Because if you discover you don’t have enough budget, you might not be able to target top markets.
A more common problem in B2B is low search volume. If that’s the case, you’ll need to dedicate budget to advertising via image and/or video ads and use broad match terms matched with customer lists.
In short, the more intel you can get about the keyword landscape before you launch, the better you can plan.
Speaking of keyword costs, Google’s Keyword Planner and other tools are great, but they don’t always paint a clear picture of what your actual costs will be.
I’ve audited many accounts where the account manager is surprised that the actual click cost is much higher than what they had estimated.
So, if you have any data from existing Google Ads that can shed light on actual costs, use it.
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Try to choose realistic metrics to measure the success of your account.
Yes, performance metrics, such as leads and sales, are obviously important.
But if you’re launching a new product and need to build a foundation of brand awareness, those performance metrics might not be appropriate. You might choose to focus on engagement metrics instead.
Dig deeper: 6 tips to track and analyze PPC results
If you’re new to the market, you may need to put more trust signals (such as customer video testimonials) on your landing pages and assets.
After all, your competitor may have already built trust. If you haven’t, you’ll need to do more in this area.
Dig deeper: Using auction insights for better PPC competitor analysis
Do your landing pages (and their content) provide people with a positive, coherent experience? Or will they click through and wonder if they accidentally clicked on the wrong link?
That’s not to say your landing pages must be perfect at launch. It’s usually better to launch with a less-than-perfect landing page than not launch at all. And even your less-than-perfect landing page can provide you with valuable benchmark data.
Still, landing pages are very important. You should circle back and improve upon them as soon as you can.
Your budget might not allow you to test out all the ideas you have for the initial launch. Instead of discarding those ideas, keep track of them and map them out so you can test them in the future when you have enough budget.
For example, we put our ideas into a test-and-learn spreadsheet, filling the rows with ideas and the columns with different testing opportunities. We also use the tabs to keep track of our performance results to keep everything all together.
This point might seem obvious, but you’d be amazed at how often Google accounts come to a complete halt when a credit card expires, goes over the limit, or is declined for whatever reason.
It’s always a good idea to input a backup payment method to avoid this kind of snafu, especially when the only person who can fix the card is away on vacation.
No Google Ads account launch is ever perfect – but you can set yourself up on the right path by asking yourself these 10 questions first.
And when you go back and audit your account weeks, months or years later, you’ll see the benefits of all the hard work you did up front.
Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.
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