In this part of the PPC guide, we'll talk about what you need before launching your first PPC campaign and how to measure and track campaigns. PPC has proven to be a highly effective marketing channel for companies of all sizes and industries. However, it is also very easy to waste a lot of money. So stay tuned to find out what you need to do to optimize PPC ads.
What to prepare when setting up a Google Ads account?
Before starting your first campaign, you need to prepare a few things.
Target
As with any marketing effort, it's important to establish business goals for your campaigns first. In PPC, this is especially important because these goals often inform the structure of your campaign. Your campaign structure, for example, is based on where people are in the marketing funnel.
Find out what you want to achieve with your paid search campaigns: is it building awareness and consideration among potential customers? Generating leads? Sell products? Increase the average order value? Sell more existing customers? Loyalty increase? Drive app installs or in-app actions? Whatever your goals, map them out first.
Expenditure
If you don't have enough budget, your ads won't show as often. There are many ways to control spending on Google Ads, but limiting your budget is the worst way to do it. It also means you won't get enough clicks or conversion data to learn and optimize your campaigns, let alone achieve your business goals.
landing page
The best campaign structure, the best ads and all the optimization levers from Google Ads or any other platform won't matter if you don't have a good landing page. Since mobile is now responsible for the majority of searches and ad clicks, mobile landing page speed is an important factor. It's important to load a landing page quickly on all devices and provide a good user experience that matches the search query and provides a visual path to the action you want them to take.
In the Google Ads Landing Pages report, you will find “Mobile Optimized Clickthrough Rates” and “Valid AMP Clickthrough Rates” [Trang trên thiết bị di động được tăng tốc]”. They provide more visibility into how your landing pages are performing on mobile devices. You can also test the mobile-friendliness of your pages with Google's Mobile-Friendly Test Tool.
If your business goal is to get leads, but you don't have a lead form or clear call to action on your landing page, your campaigns may not be delivering results. Desired results or user behavior indicate a good user experience for search engines.
If your website sells baby products and your ad for the search query “baby stroller” takes users to your homepage instead of the stroller category page, most visitors won’t spend time learning how to find baby strollers at your site. Instead, the user will click back to the search results and the ad's Quality Score will be affected.
an experimental mindset
Your campaigns may not achieve their goals in the first place. Successful search campaigns require constant analysis, testing and optimization. From bidding to targeting, messaging to landing page strategy, everything plays a role in performance. And because search engines are constantly testing and introducing new features, there's a constant learning curve and opportunities to try new things.
See also: The easiest guide to register on Binance exchange
Dedicated resources (people)
The size of your budget and the complexity of your campaigns will determine how much time and talent you should spend managing, analyzing and optimizing your paid search efforts. It's easy to waste money on PPC. So putting the right talent and resources into your advertising efforts will save you money and headaches.
Creating a new paid survey account is the easy part: all you need is a primary contact and a credit card. However, before you start launching your campaign, there are a few basic steps to take to ensure you have the tracking and reporting you need to assess the performance and optimization of your campaign. This includes knowing the reporting metrics and what they indicate.
Understand reporting metrics
There are several metrics you need to understand when running and analyzing PPC campaigns.
- Impressions: The number of times your ad was served in search results.
- Clicks: The number of times a user clicked on or interacted with your ad.
- Click through rate (CTR): The percentage of people who clicked on your ad. It is calculated by dividing the number of clicks by the number of impressions. CTR is a very important metric that shows how your ads are performing.
- Average CPC: Average cost per click paid for clicks received.
- Average position: Where your ad appears on the search results page (SERP.) The better the position, the better its visibility. Average position also shows how your Ad Rank compares to other ads.
- To convert: The number of conversion actions your ad generated. The following actions are configured at the account level.
- Conversion rate: The percentage of people who clicked on your ad and ended up converting.
- Quality Score: Reported at the keyword level on a scale of 1 to 10, your quality score is an indicator of how relevant your ads, keywords and landing pages are to users. A higher Quality Score can mean a lower CPC and a better ad position.
Dozens of other reporting metrics are available in Google Ads, including the ability to create your own custom column reporting calculations.
Types of conversions that can be tracked in Google Ads
In Google Ads, you can track 4 main types of conversions:
Actions performed on your website: This is the most common method of tracking conversions, and we’ll cover it in more detail in the “Step-by-Step: Set Up Tracking Conversion Actions on Your Website” section below. Google provides the following categories for the types of website actions that can be tracked: Buy/Sell, Subscribe, Lead, View Home, Other.
App installs and in-app actions: If you are promoting an app, you can track app conversions through your app analytics platform. Not surprisingly, Google Ads natively integrates with Google's Firebase app analytics platform and Google Play app store. But it is also possible to get conversion data from a third-party app analytics platform.
Turn on: Many companies are more successful at educating prospects and closing deals over the phone than through their website. Search engines have implemented several ways to generate phone calls from search ads. There's even a Mobile Only ad format that requests a call and doesn't link to the advertiser's website. In Google Ads, you can set up phone conversion tracking for:
- Click on call extensions or ads for mobile calls only: You must use a Google forwarding number.
- Call a phone number listed on your website or landing page: after a user clicks on your ad and calls the phone number on your website. This also requires using a Google forwarding number.
- Click on the phone number listed on their mobile site. You will need to add a tag to your mobile site to track these clicks. A Google forwarding number (see below) is optional.
Import (from other data sources): This is the latest way to track Google Ads conversions collected by other data sources such as your analytics platform or customer relationship management (CRM) platform. The goal is to be able to count the conversions that happen “offline”. There are native integrations with Google Analytics, Firebase and Salesforce. Advertisers may also upload a file or conversions from other app analytics or clicks or calls from other CRM platforms.
What is a Google forwarding number?
Google uses Google forwarding numbers to track Google Ads call activity. It's a unique temporary number that Google assigns to forward to the advertiser's actual phone number. Google automatically assigns this number when call reporting is turned on. Whenever possible, the Google forwarding number will have the same area code as your business.
Tip: Before launching your first new campaign, look for a new account coupon or coupon in search engines. You can usually get your first US$ 50 or US$ 100 for free by clicking on an ad.
Conclusion
The above is what we want to share with you before setting up a PPC ad account and understanding ad performance metrics. In the next article, we'll show you step-by-step how to set up PPC ad conversion action tracking.