Whether or not a campaign is successful depends, of course, on the objective you have at the time you want to create a campaign. Depending on the objective, you then choose the campaign type that matches it, e.g. search, shopping, pMax, YouTube or Display. So how do we know when we are successful?  

Setting goals 

To get off to a good start, it is important to set clear goals in advance. In most cases, you naturally want to use Google search to target conversions. Find out for yourself which conversion targets are interesting and calculate what each conversion is worth to you. In the case of lead generation, an e-mail subscription will yield less than a request for a quotation. Therefore, it also makes sense to set your own CPA target for each conversion action. Make sure you have a nice mix between macro and micro conversions with their own values.  

In the case of e-commerce, you want to chart your break-even ROAS. You can set that ROAS target as a dot on the horizon and slowly work towards it, or even eventually improve it.  

Research  

Once the goals have been mapped out, you can start your keyword and competition research. You use the keyword research to add interesting keywords to your campaigns. You can also rule out negative keywords in advance. Think for instance of terms combined with ''free'', ''used'', ''failure'', ''manual'' etc. In most cases, these will be terms you don't want to be matched to. By ruling this out before going live, you can save quite a few euros.  

 You use the competition survey in particular to test your own propositions and map out USPs on that basis (if you have not already done so). Of course, things like pricing and delivery conditions are also very interesting to take stock of. If the competition is cheaper, can deliver faster and has more favourable return conditions, it could mean that you will have to change tack. 

Feed management 

Should you be a retailer driving e-commerce purchases, it is important to optimise your feed properly for Google shopping and any other price comparison sites. Make sure you optimise at least all mandatory fields and try to enrich your feed with optional fields as much as possible so that you stand out in the SERP in the best possible way, thereby increasing the chances of a higher click-through rate. 

Conversion tracking 

Conversion settings are essential today to get good results. With the right inputs, you put Google's algorithm to work well for you and lead to good output.  

 Make sure you create conversions using the Google tag. So don't drive on imported goals from Universal (duuh), but preferably not from GA4 either. By the way, GA4 goals are fine to run secondary alongside. In general, we see on average around 20% difference in conversion data the advantage of Google Ads goals over imports from GA4 or UA.  

Changing rules around cookie policies are making it increasingly difficult to get data into platforms properly. There are some solutions to this: 

1. Server Side Tagging  

Server-side tagging is a new method of collecting data from website visitors where data is sent to third-party platforms like GA4 & Google Ads via the intervention of a server.  

By loading analytics and tracking scripts from your own (sub)domain, you only use cookies placed in a first-party context. This has the advantage of allowing you to bypass adblockers, thus making the data more accurate and reliable.  

In addition, server-side tagging can help reduce the amount of client-side code on a website or app, improving your website's load time and giving you control over what privacy-sensitive data is or is not shared with third parties. 

2. Consent mode 

Consent mode in Google Ads is a solution designed to help advertisers deal with the challenges of increasingly stringent privacy regulations and the implementation of GDPR and CCPA. 

Consent mode offers advertisers a way to optimise their ad performance while meeting users' privacy requirements. This is achieved by collecting data on users' consent level for collecting their personal data.  

When a user consents to the collection of their personal data, Consent mode can use this information to show more relevant ads and optimise for conversions. However, when a user does not consent to the collection of their personal data, the data is anonymised and Consent mode can still perform ad optimisation without collecting personal data. 

3. Improved Conversions  

Enhanced Conversions is a feature within Google Ads to securely send customer data to Google. This works as soon as a user makes a purchase or request on your website. This involves sending customer data such as email address, name, phone number and address, among others, encrypted (hashed) to Google. This data is then linked to the Google account of this logged-in user. This makes it possible to improve the accuracy of conversion data without the intervention of third-party cookies. Subsequently, this conversion data can be used as input when optimising automatic bidding strategies ('Target CPA' and 'Target ROAS').  

In short, enhanced conversions is a privacy-friendly and future-proof feature within Google Ads for more efficient and effective campaigns. 

4. Campaign building 

The keywords from the research can now be used for the campaigns. There are various campaign structures you can employ. Depending on your offering, you can choose to segment by various services, products, margins or brands you offer. This applies to search, standard shopping as well as pMax. Just make sure not to split the campaigns too far in the beginning, so that sufficient conversion data can be built up at campaign level.

So start with a consolidated structure first, later you can break it down further based on data if necessary.  

You can target very specifically with Google ads, so in addition to the keywords you buy, you have control over where and when you want an ad to be shown, among other things. So, for example, you can choose to be visible only locally and during certain days and hours. 

Relevance is key 

It is important to set up your campaigns so that your ad text is relevant to the keywords it is linked to. So make sure your keyword is always reflected in your ad text. After that, your landing page should be as relevant as possible. Never let someone searching for cast floors end up on the homepage; it sounds exaggerated, but 1 extra click people have to make to visit the right page can mean the difference between a new customer or no new customer. 

Bid strategy 

In the beginning, opt for a manual bidding strategy so that you get some feel for the data. The moment you have sufficient data, you can move to an automated bidding strategy. Depending on your objective, you then choose conversion (value) maximisation possibly with a target CPA or Target ROAS.  

Campaign analysis 

When your campaigns have been running for a while, it is important to target a number of metrics in search: 

• Display percentage 
• Quality score 
• CTR 
• Conversions 
• Conversion value 
• Conversion rate 
• CPC 
• ROAS 
• CPA 
• AOV 

 In addition, regularly analyse the keyword report to see which keywords are matched to in your account. Interesting terms you then add to your existing structure and non-interesting terms you naturally exclude. Repeat this process regularly to get the best results. 

Need help setting up a Google Ads campaign, or implementing Server Side Tagging?  

Our specialists are at your service.