The fundamentals of Google Search & PPC marketing

TL;DR - focus on your best products/services, that's objectively unique in the marketplace, send visitors to optimized landing pages, focus on one marketing goal at a time, only market products that have pricing power, track your campaigns against their objectives with stand out creative elements, fill out all the information in your ads & ad copy and use appropriate daily budgets for your goals.

Every field has fundamentals, and Google Ads is no exception. 

Each area below is critical in activating a successful paid media campaign. These criteria go beyond the optimizations available in the interface, and it’s important to consider all factors that could lead you to success.

10 Core PPC Fundamentals

1. Product demand

   This may sound too obvious, but it’s important to ask, is there a high demand for your product or service? An emergency plumbing service for a burst pipe, assistance with car towing or help with a bail application are services that require inherent urgency and are highly suited for paid search campaigns. Every industry will have its nuances, it’s important to identify which products or services from your business will be most in demand for your paid media campaign.

2. Your offer or unique value

   Your product should be attractive in the marketplace by itself. For years, Tesla did not need to advertise because the product was so highly differentiated in the marketplace. Products or services can be enhanced by bundling it, unique ways of sourcing or by offering unique incentives. Always look for ways to provide the marketplace with as much value as possible.

3. Landing pages

   It’s best practice to always match the intent of the search by the user through a targeted landing page. Making a website visitor work more than they should will diminish your conversion rates and result in a natural drop-off. No one wants to click or dig through a new website more than they should.

4. Margins and pricing

   Focus on high value products & services. It takes the same amount of effort to market and sell inexpensive services, so instead, focus on the high value areas of your business. For e-commerce businesses it's important to not price too aggressively since you have to factor in your cost of goods, advertising fees, overheads & transaction fees.

5. Goals

   It’s a fundamental ingredient for paid search success to have clearly defined goals that are translated into KPI’s (key performance indicators). Knowing what success looks like is critical for account optimization efforts. Some marketing goals are mutually exclusive from one another.

6. Conversion tracking

   Another fundamental factor is setting up conversion tracking for your account. An account must track the key desirable outcomes to have a birds-eye view of all activity across campaigns, adgroups, keywords & ads. If your goal is to generate high quality leads then both lead quality and quantity need to be tracked.

7. Campaign structure

   There’s been much debate in PPC circles on the best way to structure an account. Given the number of changes Google has made to the way keywords work, I recommend a simplified but themed account structure.

8. Targeting

   These settings need to be carefully scrutinised in order to avoid marketing waste or spend that results in ads showing to customers a business cannot service.

9. Creatives

   Competition in the Google Search results are fierce. Ads have to stand-out and all ad extensions need to be used in order to get best results. A Googler once told me that ad extensions form part of quality score algorithm which results in you paying less for your ads per click and showing in higher ad positions.

10. Bids and budgets

    The last item on the list which a lot of ppc practitioners only focus on. It’s important but without all the other elements won’t save a struggling account. In short, we want to direct as much budget to the areas of a paid search account that’s driving the highest return for your business.

Setting up effective PPC campaigns

These components are crucial for establishing successful paid media campaigns - they all contribute to your overall success. . You should work with a marketing agency on each of these areas to position yourself for paid media success.

In summary

Focus on the fundamentals, and you’ll never have to be distracted on what to do when optimizing a Google Search campaign.

Lastly - if you’re not confident about the state of your paid media account, kindly contact me for an assessment (on the house) and I’ll dissect your account in and show you the roadmap of the work needed.