Looking for a Google Ads Management Service in your city? You are not alone. Over 80% of businesses around the world favour Google Ads for their PPC ad campaigns. It comes as no surprise, right? Most people use Google Chrome as their default search engine, you have to meet your audience where they are.
If you don’t start employing Google Ads as part of your digital marketing strategy, you’re going to fall behind. Fortunately, New Digital will guide you through some of the keys to Google Ads management. Toronto customers love us because we have the know-how to serve your local market in the GTA. Let’s go over how a successful Google Ad works.
What Is Google Ads Management?
Google Ads management involves the management of every single aspect of a Google Ad. To refresh your memory, a Google Ad is an advertisement posted at the top of Google’s search results after you conduct a search. Marketers target users that search for a term with their ads thusly.
A quick Google search for “google ads toronto” yields the above results. As you can see, the results are somewhat relevant, although they don’t mention Toronto. After reading this article, you’ll have a better understanding of why someone would do this.
To manage your Google Ads account, you need to follow a campaign structure. You adopt a hierarchy as follows:
- Google Ads account
- Google Ads campaigns
- Ad groups
- Keywords
Google Ads Account
You can’t have 2 Google Ads accounts for one domain, so tread carefully here. However, you may have multiple domains on a single ad account.
Everything in your account is managed through the Google Ads dashboard. Take some time to learn the key pieces of this platform because you’ll need them no matter what kind of analyses you’re making. Casual or detailed.
Google Ads Campaigns
The campaign is where your money goes. You could roll out multiple campaigns, but individually, each campaign is intended to be dynamic and multifaceted. For example, you can target several different keyword clusters in a single campaign. In the beginning, stick to managing a single campaign at once. You want to keep things simple.
If you’re a Google Ads novice, you might accidentally keep the default campaign settings. However, those default settings will wind up causing you problems in the future. They take away your freedom to implement your campaign your way. That’s why having a Google Ads manager with a proven track record with these things is invaluable.
Ad Groups
A Google Adwords management professional will also help you target the right ad groups. You need good ones. When you’re rolling out certain campaign types, Google will rate you based on your quality score. Failure to choose precise, accurate ad groups containing relevant keywords will penalize you down the line.
Keywords
The keyword research you do is also vital to the process. The Google Ads platform will give you insights into keyword trends and volume. However, many ad managers prefer to use third-party analytics tools to evaluate this component. That’s because there are keyword tools that are far more enriching and detailed than the Google Ads platform.
The Value Of Running A Google Ads Campaign
Getting potential customers to click on your ad is only the first step. During a Google Ads campaign, you could target all kinds of different conversions.
For instance, if you’re a local brick-and-mortar business in the Toronto area, then you might want to run your campaigns with the goal of getting more people shopping physically at your storefront. On the other hand, the right target for your business could be to grow your appointment bookings. And in the case you have an eCommerce website, you might just want to incentivize more purchases directly via the web.
What’s great about Google Ads is that the good ones respond directly to people’s search queries. It seems almost too good to be true for the customer, they run a search and then they magically get a pertinent answer. The key is to convince them with well-written ad copy and an aesthetically pleasing website.
Information Overload
These days, it’s getting harder and harder to make your brand stand out. Your average customer gets bombarded with all sorts of articles, videos, and advertisements every single day. At this point, people are used to taking the easy way out and clicking on the first thing they see.
Guess what? After entering a search term, the first thing that users see is usually a Google Ad. Your customers don’t want to spend all day researching the right product. If you can make them confident in your offerings, then they’ll prefer to purchase from you.
Google Ads Management Vs. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
These two search engine tools serve different purposes in your marketing strategy. Ultimately, you need to implement both, but SEO takes longer. Usually, it takes at least 3 to 6 months to see tangible results. Meanwhile, a successful Google Ads campaign might start producing results within the first day.
Not to mention, Google Ads are more direct and to the point. With a single ad, you could potentially target multiple similar keywords. That means that some of those low-volume keywords you might have ignored for being too competitive when planning your SEO strategy are fair game. For instance, you’ll almost certainly need to pay to rank for an ad for your nail salon in Richmond Hill. SEO in these cases is a bigger challenge.
Hire A Google Ads Agency
You can begin to see that Google Ads management is a rather complex process. If you choose to take this adventure alone, you’ll need to balance hours of research and writing with keyword and budget management. When you’re not used to it, it can take you days to roll out even a faulty ad campaign. That’s valuable time you could have spent running and improving your business. Time is your enemy, so hire a competent Google Ads agency to help you manage it.
How An Effective Google Ads Campaign Works
If you’re a small or medium-sized business, you probably don’t have the funds to run your own marketing department. Therefore, you should gain a relatively detailed understanding of how a Google Ads campaign works so that you can evaluate your progress with a clear mind. You don’t want to waste your money on the wrong keywords, or worse, on a bad agency that drains your money dry.
Start With Keyword Research
Any properly run Google Ads campaign starts with keyword research. You want to pick keywords with the highest search intent. For example, “buy ice cream near me” has a clearer purpose than “different ice cream flavours”.
Of course, when you have a small budget and you’re just starting out, you’ll want to target less competitive keywords as well. That way, you can rank faster and build up your reputation in the algorithm before gunning for the high-intent, high-competition keywords.
Write Tantalizing Ad Copy
One of the intangible things that Google ends up ranking your ad on is the quality of the copy. They determine this by how well it converts.
Therefore, your headline and meta description copy need to be on-point. Your headline must be so enticing that customers can’t help but click. You could even be a bit controversial with it if you like. The call to action (CTA) in your ad copy should be perfect as well. The body of your ad copy shouldn’t be long, but the process of writing the perfect copy is.
Group Your Ad Campaigns
You must group your ad campaigns to target users better. An obvious example of this is targeting one ad group towards people from Toronto and another one towards people from Ottawa.
Generally speaking, you want to create 3 different groups for your ads. Each of these groups should have its own landing page. In fact, you might want to create multiple landing pages for a single ad group simply to split test which style of copy works. Each landing page should target the ad group’s unique needs. Someone searching for leather shoes doesn’t want to hear anything about sandals. Although, you could reuse a bit of the copy where relevant.
Target The Best Locations
Wherever your customers live is the place you should target. That won’t necessarily mean you should target your surrounding neighbourhood. Maybe if you run a sporting goods store downtown, you should target the suburbs too. Whoever runs your campaigns will learn about your target audience and where they live to optimize your campaigns as best they can.
Choose A Bidding Strategy
When you choose a bidding strategy, there are so many different aspects of it that you need to consider. The right bidding strategy is different for everyone. That said, we prefer to use ROAS (return on ad spend) because this is what maximizes the returns of the client’s money. On the other hand, optimizing for clicks is a legitimate strategy if you’re just trying to increase brand awareness. You have to figure out your intentions before committing to a particular strategy.
During each bid, there is usually a minimum and maximum cost per click for that keyword. You can set your own limits if you wish so that you keep your costs low. However, Google will automatically set limits for you depending on which type of bidding strategy you select.
Return On Ad Spend
Return on ad spend gauges the return for every dollar spent on the advertisement. Evidently, you want this number to be greater than 1. However, Google can only optimize your campaign based on how good your ad copy is. You can still lose money if people don’t like what you’re offering.
Clicks
Maximizing clicks is helpful when you have a limited budget. Furthermore, it can be helpful if you have a limited search volume and aren’t sure whether there are people to click on your ads in the first place.
Be warned that Google will set your cost per click (CPC) automatically in this case. So you’ll have a daily budget and then stick to it. If you aren’t getting many clicks, this could end up becoming wasteful.
Cost Per Click
Cost-per-click campaigns mean that you set a maximum cost per click and don’t go beyond it. Then, you can pay based on how many clicks you receive. The algorithm will work in the background to optimize this. If the CPC is too high, then Google won’t bid for you automatically. By having a maximum CPC you can stay well under budget.
Conversions
Optimizing your budget for the most possible conversions sounds great. That said, how does it work? All you do is set a daily budget and Google’s machine learning algorithms figure out the rest. Google says that they draw a lot from contextual signals at the time of your campaign to dynamically calculate your bids. With this strategy, you’ll need high-converting copy.
Conversion Value
To maximize conversion value, set a target ROAS. Afterwards, Google does the rest to rank your campaign appropriately. That means you’ll need to provide specific conversion values for each type of transaction so that Google can do its work properly.
Cost Per Acquisition
Cost per acquisition (CPA) is a great strategy when you are merely trying to acquire more leads. This way, you can value how much each acquisition is worth to you instead of going by clicks. It might be helpful if you already have an internal valuation of how much a lead is worth to you.
impression share targeting
Sometimes, you just want to dominate a particular search term. Impression share targeting is great for boosting brand awareness. Essentially, it won’t matter what your cost per click is, Google sets that itself. Instead, you will try to rank for a certain percentage of searches for the ad. For instance, you might want your ad to appear 40% of the time. Google will then determine the price at the margin and go from there.
Monitor And Re-evaluate
You want to be able to tell if your keyword performance is working. Therefore, you need to familiarize yourself with Google Analytics to understand if your marketing strategy is working. Don’t fret if you don’t see high conversions right away. Google Ads are perfect for experimentation. You can lean on the keywords that demonstrate the most success in your campaign and remove the keywords that aren’t yielding major results.
You should also take some time to search if the ad is showing up in the right places. Otherwise, your money will be going to waste.
10 Advantages To Working With A Digital Marketing Agency
After reading through our guide to Google Ads, you can probably tell that running an ad campaign involves a lot of moving pieces. On average, a reputable digital marketing agency like New Digital will offer you a far higher return on your money than you would with ads you run on your own.
Save Time
As a business owner, your life is challenging enough without trying to handle your own Google Ads campaigns. Purchasing expert google ads management is an investment in your company. Once you find an agency you can trust, growth is almost sure to follow. And even if your Google Ads campaigns did work on their own, how would you have the time to accommodate new customers? After all, you’ll be busy running the Google Ads campaign yourself.
Local PPC Campaigns For The Toronto Market
If you’re a local business such as a law firm or a dentist, nearly all your clients will come from your general vicinity. In the case of Toronto, that means they will mostly come from the GTA. That requires you to run locally-specialized PPC campaigns or even local SEO campaigns. Your best bet, in this case, is to choose a firm that has a history of success in your market. They’ll know what your prospective clients will respond to best.
Monitor And Track Your Campaigns Properly
Google Analytics tracks over 200 metrics. For a beginner, learning the platform and figuring out which ones to track can be daunting. Not to mention, you don’t have the requisite experience to identify some of the hidden insights behind your Google metrics.
Your first campaigns won’t always do so well. Monitoring and subsequent optimization is the only way to get better. Google Analytics uses tracking cookies to follow your audience and collect more data about their interests. This will help you in future campaigns. Everything is on the table here, from improving your keyword selection to improving your landing pages.
Split Testing
Not sure which style of visual assets you should use? Confused about which landing page copy your audience will respond to best? You don’t need to make a choice right away. A Google Ads agency will help you choose correctly by writing multiple types of copy and comparing their performance with split testing. Only an agency has the time to do this.
Keep Up To Date With The Latest Trends
Competitor research is a huge part of any Google Ads campaign. A digital marketing firm must constantly keep track of what the best in the business are doing and take notes from them. Not to belabour the point, but you simply don’t have time for such endeavours. A digital marketer will read select publications and see what your rival businesses are doing to find you an edge.
Avoid Common Marketing Errors
Many who are new to Google Ads, and digital marketing in general, make several common mistakes. Any agency worth their salt knows to avoid these errors entirely.
Creating A Single Landing Page For Several Ad Groups
You can’t just recycle all your landing pages for every ad group you target. You must consider search intent too. Each ad group will be curated specifically because it has a certain keyword intent. Ad groups shouldn’t overlap too much and should all be created with a purpose.
If you go it on your own, you might be tempted to write only a single piece of landing page copy. The effects could be disastrous if you don’t know what you’re doing. You might waste a lot of money just fooling around with your ad groups. You could have put your money to better use elsewhere.
Forgetting to put your phone number and other details
With certain ads, you want to have your phone number readily available on Google’s search results. In the case of businesses that help with emergencies, such as plumbers, some people will just call the first number that they see. Therefore, you should make it easy for them to do so.
Not using negative keywords
Negative keywords help keep your campaign focused. With these, you are selecting keywords that you don’t want Google to rank you for. A common negative keyword example is any search term that includes the word “free”. It’s quite evident that such users have little intention of actually buying something, so it makes no sense to pay to rank for this keyword.
A digital ad agency will outline negative keywords ahead of time. They will do proper research to ensure that they are eliminating the right keywords.
Bidding on irrelevant keywords
A lot of newbies try bidding on just about every keyword in the hopes they will get lucky. This is a terrible strategy. In most cases, you’re just going to annoy potential customers. Moreover, Google is going to notice that nobody is clicking on your ads and decide to punish you in its algorithm.
Once again, your time and money are precious. Writing landing pages for these irrelevant pages is also quite costly. Having a professional choose the highest-conversion keywords for you is the best way to go.
Another way that people err with keyword targeting is by selecting broadly relevant keywords. This is fine when you’re first researching, but you want to only select keywords in the cluster that are closely relevant to your business while eliminating those that are not.
Not setting an ad spend limit
If your Google Ads are burning a hole in your wallet it’s probably because you haven’t set an ad spend limit. Tons of novices seem to forget this step. You might only want to spend a certain amount of money on certain keywords because you’re not sure if they’re going to be fruitful. Remedy this by setting a budget that you can afford.
Hire New Digital For Your Next Google Ad Campaigns
Many businesses spin their wheels for months trying to optimize for clicks. It’s not uncommon for businesses to spend tens of thousands of dollars on ads with an irresponsible agency.
By contrast, New Digital optimizes for return on ad spend because we’re oriented towards quality results.
There are so many moving parts in a Google Ads campaign. Managing one is practically a full-time job. So why not trust the people who make it their job to get you the best bang for your buck? We know all the common pitfalls when running PPC campaigns. Not to mention, we already have processes in place to find keywords and write the best possible copy to target them.
We’ve already worked with over 150 companies on 450 different projects as of 2021. We’ve seen it all by now. Just take a look at some of the former businesses we’ve worked with.
- Law firms
- Accounting firms
- Home improvement businesses including HVAC, Paving, Roofing, and Junk Removal
- Car dealers
- Funded startups
- Non-profit organizations
- Construction and real estate
- SaaS firms
Get started by contacting us today. Book a call so we can discuss the best course of action for your Google Ads campaigns.
Frequently Asked Questions About Google Ads Management
How Much Does It Cost To Have Someone Manage Your Google Ads?
This depends a lot on whichever firm you choose to work with. Marketing experts place the range between $250 and $5,000 per month. You can evaluate the agency to determine whether it’s worth it to you.
At New Digital, we offer the following pricing plans for our Google Ads management. We believe in transparent pricing. However, you should note that certain cases are a little more complex and might incur more fees. We’ll let you know in our initial calls if that might be the case.
How Do I Manage Google Ads?
We went over this at length in the article. In brief, your first step is to sign up for a Google Ads account for your domain. Then, you can create your first campaign. Select the proper ad groups that include clusters of keywords relevant to your business and customers. This research process will take a few hours.
Afterwards, you can begin writing ad copy for the different keyword clusters you select. Make sure to target the unique needs of each user in these cases rather than trying to go for a one-size-fits-all approach.
Finally, you can release your Google Ad to the world. Remember to monitor it using Google Analytics and optimize based on which keywords and landing pages perform the best. If this sounds like a lot of work to you, then you should pay for a Google Ads agency.
What Is The Difference Between Google Ads And Google Ad Manager?
To put it simply, Google Ads is for brands and businesses trying to advertise their products or services. Meanwhile, Google Ad Manager is geared towards publishers who want to monitor the performance of their ads across a multitude of platforms, including television and live streams. It goes far beyond search ads.
Can I Do Google Ads Myself?
Nothing is stopping you from doing Google Ads by yourself. That said, we tend to caution you against it. You might get good at writing ads and running campaigns eventually, but starting will be difficult.
Should I Pay Someone To Do My Google Ads?
Our answer is a resounding yes! You’re going to pay a lot of money for your Google Ads anyway. Instead of wasting money on ad outlay just trying to learn the ropes, you might as well go with a firm like New Digital that already knows how to optimize your ad spend efficiently. Treat your payment like an investment. An investment in both the agency and most importantly, your business.
Is Google AdWords And Google Ads the same?
Yes, in July 2018, Google Adwords underwent a rebrand. Now, all the former Google Adwords Campaigns are placed under the umbrella of Google Ads.
