PPC – How To – Create a Google Ads Campaign

Purpose of this SQ How To: To understand how to create new campaigns in Google Ads, regardless of campaign type, and how to ensure good account structure to benefit optimisation and performance.

Applicable to: Social and Paid Media

Customers: All

Timescale: No set timeframe, applicable when campaigns are required.

Introduction

Within your role, you will be required to create new campaigns for both new customers (when creating an account) and also for existing customers, either for pushing a product/service or apportioning individual budgets to different keywords.

Time Allocation

The time needed for this task will be dependent on the complexity and volume of campaigns you need to create. As a rough guide, Video, Remarketing and Display Network campaigns are the quickest to create, with Search, Shopping and Dynamic Remarketing requiring longer. This time will need to be logged against the task you are assigned within the customer’s monthly contract (if applicable), or against a specific ‘setup’ task if it is a new customer.

Creating a Google Ads Account (New Customers)

Specifically for new customers, you will need to first create a new account (if they do not already have one).

To do this, simply click ‘+ Account’ and then ‘New Ads Account’.

Account Structure

Before creating new campaigns, you should have a plan in mind to build towards Google’s ‘best practices’ – Single Keyword Ad Groups for Search or Product Type campaigns/ad groups for Shopping for example.

If you need a refresher of best practices, more information can be found on Google’s support pages.

Before Creating Campaigns

Before you begin creating your campaigns, you may require assistance from other departments, below is a checklist of what you may need, and which department to communicate with. Remember – copy in the customer’s Account Manager into all communication.

Banners (Remarketing, images for Social Media etc.) – D&D
Website Changes (adding a contact form, CRO changes etc.) – D&D
Conversion Tracking – D&D
Ad Copy Ideas – DM (Content)
Google Shopping Feed – D&D/Customer’s Developers

As you can see above, you may be required to work with the customer’s developers/communicate with them via the customer if the website is hosted with another company, or another company does the development work. In this instance, ensure all communication is as thorough as possible.

Ensure you give sufficient notice to relevant departments when requesting work, and set a realistic deadline for them to meet.

Creating a Search Network Campaign

This is the campaign you will need to build most commonly.

What it is:

Bidding on Keywords in Google’s SERP
Each campaign consists of one or more ad groups
Each ad group consists of one keywords and at least 3 adverts
Best practice is to have one keyword per ad group, ensuring advert copy and landing pages are relevant to the keyword to increase Quality Score.
Best practice is to have 3 or more adverts in each ad groups
You can bulk edit in AdWords Editor or Copy + Paste within the Google Ads interface to speed up building.

How to build the campaign:

Create a new campaign – assign your location targeting, ad schedule and daily budget
Create a new ad group – within this; add a keyword (with the match type you want, more info on match types can be found here), advert and a Max Cost Per Click bid for your keyword
Create at least 3 ads in each ad group
Create new Ad Groups for each keyword you would like to advertise
Create Ad Extensions, more info on these can be found here
Create other campaigns (if applicable) for other products/services.

Things to check:

Ensure adverts comply with Google’s Editorial Practices
If you have multiple keywords in an ad group, ensure they follow a consistent theme
If you have multiple campaigns, check if the customer wants to allocate a particular budget to one product or service.

Creating a Display Network Campaign

What it is:

Utilising Google’s audience network to serve text ads or banners across third-party websites.
Each campaign consists of one or more ad groups
Each ad group consists of one or more banner adverts and an audience
Best practice is to utilise Google’s ‘top 5’ ad image sizes you can find here
You can bulk edit in AdWords Editor or Copy + Paste within the Google Ads interface to speed up building.

How to build the campaign:

Create a new campaign – assign your location targeting, ad schedule and daily budget
Create a new ad group – within this; add your targeting and banners
Create new Ad Groups for each different targeting method you have
Create other campaigns (if applicable) for other products/services.

Things to check:

Ensure adverts comply with Google’s Editorial Practices
Ensure your targeting is tailored to the message you are looking to promote, creating separate ad groups/campaigns for different audiences.
If you have multiple campaigns, check if the customer wants to allocate a particular budget to one product or service.

Creating a Remarketing Campaign

What it is:

This is actually the same as the Display Network campaign above, however it is the audience targeting that differs.
We record visitors to the website (either through the Google Ads Remarketing tag or defining audience in Google Analytics) and serve our banners back to these people to keep the brand visible and increase exposure.
You can define any variation of website visitors you would like to target, depending on your customer’s business; e-commerce customers, for example, may target all visitors, category specific viewers, product specific viewers (if the traffic is great enough), cart abandoners and previous converters.

How to build the campaign:

Follow the steps outlined for the Display Network campaign.
When it comes to choosing your audience, choose ‘Remarketing Lists’ and then select the specific audience list you are looking to target.

Things to check:

Ensure adverts comply with Google’s Editorial Practices
Ensure your targeting is segmented (separate ad groups/campaigns for different remarketing lists) but also ensure that the banner messaging fits audience you are targeting.
If you have multiple campaigns, check if the customer wants to allocate a particular budget to one product or service.

Creating a Dynamic Remarketing Campaign

What it is:

This is actually the same as the Remarketing campaign above, including utilising the same audiences for targeting, however it differs in terms of promoting previously viewed products to users as opposed to designed banners.

How to build the campaign:

Follow the steps outlined in the Display Network and Remarketing

Things to check:

Follow the steps outlined in the Display Network and Remarketing

Creating a Google Shopping Campaign

What it is:

Used to promote e-commerce products across Google’s SERP and YouTube.
Requires a Google Merchant Centre (GMC) account (use [email protected] in your LastPass account)
Requires a ‘data feed’, which will be created by developers. More info could be found here
Once your data feed has been uploaded to GMC, this will need to be imported into Google Ads
We then set a Max CPC bid on each individual product as opposed to a keyword, and Google serves adverts on a relevancy basis (how related a users’ search is to your products attributes, i.e. title and description)

How to build the campaign:

Get the developers/customer to provide the feed URL (if using XML files, if CSV upload this through GMC later)
Create your account within Google Merchant Centre for the customer
Verify the account (Analytics access is the easiest method and therefore suggested, however if this is not possible you can upload a HTML file to the website)
Add your feed to GMC, either by entering the feed URL and scheduling a fetch (recommended daily, ideally 3/4am). If you are uploading a CSV file, this will need to be done manually (selecting ‘upload input file’) and you will need to ensure this is done regularly, a minimum of once per 30 days.
Link your GMC and Google Ads accounts via the ‘Account Linking’ option under the ‘three dots’ in the top right of the GMC interface.
Create your campaigns within Google Ads, segmenting by brand/category where applicable (for example, your customer sells trainers and joggers, so have a separate campaign/ad group for each). Within your ad groups, segment those products by Item ID to allow you to set a granular, product-specific bid.

Things to check:

Ensure all products are successfully imported into GMC. You may need to consult the developers/customer to fix any disapprovals.
If you are segmenting products into different ad groups, make sure all non-applicable products are excluded from that ad group.
If you have multiple campaigns, check if the customer wants to allocate a particular budget to one brand or category.

Creating a Video Campaign

What it is:

Used to promote videos on YouTube.
Requires a YouTube account (your customer will likely already have this as they will host the videos there)
Use audience targeting (like Display Network and Remarketing) to promote your videos
Consists of True View, Video Discovery and In-Video adverts
These campaigns are usually run on a CPM (cost per thousand impressions) basis

How to build the campaign:

Link YouTube and Google Ads accounts
Create your required campaigns within Google Ads, segmenting by advert type (in-stream, discovery etc) where applicable. Also segmenting campaigns by goal type.
Set your Max Cost-Per-View bid
Set a video Overlay if applicable
Set your audience targeting

For creation reference, please see here.

Things to check:

Review the ‘Video Played to X%’ column in Google Ads – this will show you how relevant your video is to your audience, if it is too long and people are skipping it before the end.
Check that you have good ad group/campaign segmentation – you cannot mix and match video types within one ad group.
Check that you have segmented audience targeting – allows for more granular analysis of performance.

Campaign Launch

Things to check before launch:

Have a colleague review your campaign – this will allow them to quality check the build, ensuring it meets Best Practices and there are no obvious errors or missing sections.
Ad Extensions – ensure all applicable advert extensions are added to your campaigns
Conversion tracking – re-test your tracking to ensure everything is working correctly and is pulled into Google Ads
Customer signoff – speak to your customer to inform them of what has been built, what budget is allocated where and ensure they are happy for you to launch.