Everyone, welcome to today's live stream. My name is Uzair and it is three o'clock in the afternoon on the 23rd of August 2022 in the UK. Every Tuesday and Friday I go live on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter at this time. These sessions are all about helping you with Google Ads, YouTube ads, online digital marketing, anything and everything to help you succeed with generating new leads or sales. Whether you're generating leads or for e-commerce stores, these sessions will help you in some shape or form.
These sessions, if you haven't been here before, are very informal and friendly. I'll go through today's topic, and then towards the end of the session, if there are any questions anybody wants to ask, then please ping them across in the comment box or the chat box around this video and I'll try my best to answer them for you.
So let's get started, and today I'm going to set up a Google Ads search campaign from start to finish and see how you go through setting up and creating a new search ad. So let me share my screen. Okay, I'm gonna just get this window aligned a bit more. That should work. All right, so you can see on the right hand side my Google Ads account. Okay, that's a bit better.
And first of all you go to the blue button, new campaign. Now you get a choice of objectives, whether it's sales, leads, web traffic, brand awareness and so on. We are looking for, let's go with leads. Then you get the campaign type over here, be it search, PMax, display, shopping, video, discovery. We go with search. So search campaign is where your ads will show up on the Google page. Then you would select the ways you'd like to reach your goals, whether it's website traffic, phone calls, shop visits and so on. I'm just going to click on the website and I'll put in my website address, which could be your website address or your landing page.
When you're generating leads, I would highly recommend that you create a sales funnel with a landing page and drive traffic to that page rather than sending them to your home page. So this is my landing page where we drive traffic, and then we track what is the conversion rate. Then it's going to ask you how to create the conversion rate, conversion action I should say. So you need to create the conversion action. This is my test account, so I'm going to skip this step, but you must create a conversion, track your conversions. Critical, because without that Google will not learn what is converting, what's not converting, and you'll be wasting money. You don't want to do that.
So what you do is you create your conversion action. There are lots of videos on the channel where you can just search for conversion tracking or something like that, or conversion setup, and you will be able to see that. And then I'm going to create my test campaign. I'll name that, whatever way you want to call it. I'm just gonna start new.
Okay, now Google has simplified this, and I love this setup, because before it used to be a long list of things to do. People used to get confused: oh, there's so many things. But now, as you can see, well, you can't see right now, that you have got all these. We're on the second step, which is the bidding, then campaign settings, then you will have keywords and ads, extensions, budget and then review.
Now it's going to ask me, what do I want to bid on? So because I had set up for website traffic, I'm going to get the click, so I'm gonna click on click, and then you can set up a maximum CPC bid. I'm just gonna say I want to pay no more than a pound, or you can put in whatever you want, or you can leave this blank. I'll leave it blank for now. I go next, and then you will see we have moved on to the campaign settings and we are now on the network. So I will just need to start moving things around a bit so you guys can see a bit better.
All right, now you've got two options. One is the search network, which includes the Google partners, and then the display network. Traditionally we would take this off, because display network is completely different. The intent is not quite the same as the search campaigns, so I tend to keep it in a separate campaign. If I want to run ads on the display network, I would absolutely run them separately. But having said that, Performance Max has turned things upside down, where everything is thrown in one. You've got the search, display, video, Gmail, the whole lot. So you need to decide what's best for you. Try everything, test everything. Don't listen to me or somebody else that you should do this or you should do that. This is what I do, or we do as an agency.
So I tend to keep it out. Now, if it's a local campaign and you've got limited volume, then yes, you can go ahead and keep it checked in. But if you are running a national or international campaign with low budget, then I would take this off, because I just want to show my ads on Google, and then I can split test and see what happens in a separate campaign if I have this setting on or not.
So you will get this. It's not an error or a warning, but it's just a message to say that expand your reach with Google search partners, which it will, but it may not convert. It will take your CTR down a bit and your CPA up a bit, so again, you have to test it. So you can set it up in a separate campaign, and the same one over here, that you get more conversions at a similar CPA. Try it. If it does, then let it run. If not, then you take it out.
Locations, I'm gonna keep it UK, that's where I'm based. Languages, I'm gonna keep it in English. Audience and dynamic settings, we don't need to do much for the search campaign right now, unless I'm doing like an RLSA campaign where I'm retargeting my old website visitors and so on. So I don't need to worry too much about this for the time being. And the DSA is a completely separate thing to run. Dynamic search, yes, work really, really well. We get some really good results as well, but I will go through that in a separate video.
And then you've got this more settings at the bottom, so ad rotation, start and end date. So let's start with ad rotations. Now, most of the time what we are doing is putting up a responsive search ad. Now you think about it: if you've got a small budget, let's say ten dollars or twenty dollars a day, it's not a big amount. With all due respect, ten dollars or twenty dollars, I respect, is a small amount, but, you know, I don't want to say that it's a small amount. No, it's not, because everybody has to earn it and, you know, value each and every dollar you earn. But in Google Ads terms it's a relatively small budget.
So if you're going to put in two responsive search ads, what's going to happen is you've got 15 headlines and four description lines. It's a lot to split test anyway. So what I would recommend is you just put up one, or what I've also seen others do is ad one will have six headlines and two descriptions, ad two will have another six, which is a bit different to the ad one, and then description two. So it's up to you how you do it, but we tend to just put in one for now, with all 15 headlines and four descriptions. So then this issue doesn't come into effect, whether I want to optimize for the best performing ad or do not optimize.
Start and end date, whether you want to put an end date, you can. We tend not to. Schedule your ads: if you don't want to run on your weekends, only Monday to Fridays, then set up your days and the times over here. And the last thing, campaign URL options, you don't need to worry too much about it. This is the advanced section. So now you will find, I'm just going to move this around a bit more, that we are over here on the ad schedule. We go next, then we go on to the keywords and the ads.
As I put in my URL, Google looked at it, looked at the page, and it knows that it's about Google Ads, so it's given me some suggestions as to what sort of keywords I should be going for. I'm going to zoom in a bit more so you guys can see it a bit better. Some of them are not too bad: ad settings Google, Google Ads campaign, ads by Google and so on. I don't know what this is, I'll take this out. Set Google ads, Google banners I don't want, I don't want this, like Google, sites like Google I don't want. So take out the keywords which you don't want, or do your own keyword research, get a set of keywords and put them in here. Google is going to give you the default broad match keywords. Now, the only options available are over here: broad, phrase and exact, right?
But having said that, phrase match and exact match are not phrase or exact anymore. They will show your ads for variants or close variants of phrase as well as exact. So you've got options. You'll be very aggressive when it comes to negative keywords. Throw them into your campaign or at the account level negative list, so that you tighten up your search terms, that you only want to show ads when it is a direct phrase match or an exact match. All right, initially it will show as to close variants, but you keep adding them in and you keep optimizing as you go along. So that's what you need to do.
What we've also found these days, I'm talking about August 2022, is that the algorithm is getting smarter and more intelligent day by day. It knows what we are looking for. It knows what the intent is of that person searching for something on Google. So what I would also recommend is you either make a separate ad group, one with phrase or exact and the other one with broad, or throw broad match in there as well. Either put them all together in one ad group or keep them as different ad groups, as exact, phrase and broad.
And you'll find the broad match will have the cheapest CPC and the most clicks as well, but you will also find that broad is converting at a really good price for you. So don't ignore or disregard the broad match keywords anymore. It's a very powerful way of getting your conversions at a lower price. So exact would be the most expensive, then phrase and then broad. So test it. Test with broad. Initially you will find lots of fairly irrelevant clicks, or clicks without any intent, but as you keep putting in the negative keywords in your account or in your campaigns, you're going to tighten up your campaigns and optimize it for better performance.
So I would then either put this in as phrase or exact or broad, however I want to. If you use Google Ads Editor, it's very quick and easy to copy, paste, change the match type and upload it. Literally takes seconds. So I would highly recommend that you have a look at Editor. It's a free tool by Google and you'll be able to speed up your workflow 10 times.
Then we come down to the ads. Now, we're getting a little warning sign over here. It says here https. All I'm going to do is put it in, and then that warning sign will disappear. When I audit accounts, very few people use this. Now have a look over here. See, this is how it is displayed: offer.sfdigital.co.uk. You can just about see my screen. I'm going to move this around a bit more, so now we can see it a bit better. If I put in Google Ads, there you go, now it has made that URL a bit bigger, because I have put in Google Ads. So you can put in anything you want. Doesn't need to be a live URL. This is why it's called display path, and if you hover over this bubble, it's going to explain it to you, right? So you can put in whatever you want. I can put in pay-per-click.
Now, the problem I get, especially because I'm promoting or running ads for Google Ads, I get into issues with trademarks, because Google is a trademark issue. So I will get limited, what's the right word? I've forgotten it. It's limited by something. It'll come in my mind. So it'll give me a warning that, you know, I'm using trademarks in my campaign, but I will get impressions. I always get impressions, clicks and conversions. So just need to be careful about the use of trademarks in your ads.
Now, as you can see, Google has already put in a few things over here, a few headlines, and now at the moment I've got my ad strength as very poor, or poor, because only the descriptions is checked off, and I need to make my headlines more unique, include popular keywords and add headlines. And you see these links over here, which is hidden behind the logo, view ideas. I'm going to click on that, and now it's going to give me some ideas. Just add them, and as I'm adding them, you can see that my ad strength has gone from poor to average. Now I've got another checkbox or tick mark against the headline.
So I can add more as well if I want to, and I would recommend that you use all of it, because why not? You've got the opportunity to fill your boots. Google is giving you all these headlines to test. So I'm going to just put these in. It won't harm, although I will write it properly. It also gives you call to action phrases: order online, book, sign up now and so on, and promotion phrases as well. It's getting better and better, because if you struggle with writing ads, this is a great way to get ideas, and then you can say, ah, huge range of products. If you were running an e-commerce website: browse our inventory, wide range available. So you can use these in headlines as well as in description lines and so on.
Locations, these are all new. I've not seen these before. I haven't gone in here for a long time, so this is pretty good. Again, the delivery: next day, we ship worldwide. It's giving you all these options, plus 13 more things. So all I need to do is to include more popular keywords in the ads and I will get excellent ad strength, but good is pretty good. Now, I find this really frustrating, because no matter what I do, sometimes I can never go to excellent. So it's kind of like a lottery, because Google doesn't tell me what I need to put in. So it does to a certain extent over here, all these headlines and stuff, but good is good enough for this video.
And you've got one more description line which you can then add in. You've got your ad tracking templates. You don't need to worry too much about it. This is again for advanced tracking and so on. And then you click on next. Then it's going to take you to setting up your sitelinks, callout extensions. You can't see right now. Okay, so now we are here: extensions. We've got sitelink extensions, callouts and call extension. Then you just put in your budget, review, and job done.
So it doesn't take long to set up a campaign. If you've got all the information to hand, it's even more quicker. But to write all of these, you need to just think a little bit as to what is the right message, which sitelink you want to send the traffic to, and put in the descriptions. I would highly recommend that you do set up sitelinks. Put in the effort, because it makes your ads a bit bigger, a lot bigger, if Google shows four sitelinks and callouts and all these extensions. So your ad is going to stand out far more. As per Google's best practices, you get the best or the highest quality score for using all these things and utilizing these. So overall it's worth spending a bit of time over here.
And then you've got at the bottom callout extensions, which are quite handy as well, because what you can do is you can think of things like free parking, free delivery or shipping, 24/7 customer service. All those kind of callouts you can add, and you can also add your phone number to track your calls. Then we have our calls format set up as a call conversion. You set it up, you save it. Then you can go under more extensions. You've got your app, if it's an app one, but structured snippets I would also recommend that you do. Lead forms, we haven't tried a lot with lead forms, to be honest with you. Some of my friends have used it with great effect, but we haven't. Price extensions is also really good, and the promotions.
Why wouldn't you make your ads bigger? This is what I don't understand. Whenever I see or audit an account, none of these are set up. You know, structured snippet is so easy. So if I was, let's say, I'm doing Google Ads, YouTube ads, landing pages, I can add more value over here: email marketing, content creation or whatever you want to call, whatever your services are. You can put them by one of these categories. So I've created a service catalog for myself or my business, and I save it. It took me literally two minutes, and again, this will make my ad a lot bigger.
Price extensions, if I want to put in price. So what you can do, this is not only for e-commerce, but let's say you are a service category. Okay, I'm doing here, I'm gonna put in, where is my pounds, GBP, and then you can put in from, right? Google Ads management. I can put in whatever I want, and then you've got a description, you know, we manage your ads and more, or whatever you want to do, get more leads and sales and all that.
But you've got 25 characters to do so. You can put it like this, so people can see. If they can't afford 100, or whatever your price is, they're highly unlikely to click, because they will find that, okay, it's too expensive for me. I would highly recommend you test this out, because a lot of the time price is such a thing where you will always have a debate. The debate's like Mac versus PC, Nikon versus Canon and so on, yeah, Apple versus Samsung and so on.
Price is something where most people say, I don't want to show my price on my website, my competitors are going to copy it, or they will know how much I charge. Well, if I want to find somebody's pricing, there are a million ways I can get their pricing, right? So don't think along those ways. Just think, okay, is that price extension going to add value to my ad, give more information to the person who's looking for my service? And I would say yes, because why wouldn't you, if you want to pre-qualify that click? And if your pricing starts from, let's say, a thousand, and I see your ad and I say, yeah, I can have 4,000 or 500 or whatever, I'm going to click it, yeah, this is reasonable. Then you start to get the relevant click. So I would highly recommend you do that as well.
And then the last one is the promotions extension. If you have got any offers going on, then you can have the monetary discount, percent discount and so on, and then you can put in Black Friday offer, New Year's sale, a Christmas offer or whatever. But do put these in, and you can also run them at, you know, like if you are running a Valentine's campaign just from January till Feb, then you just put those start and end dates, so then after the 14th or the 15th of Feb the Valentine's promotion does not show up.
And once you've done this, you save it, and pretty much you then put in your budget. Oh, it has... let me go, whatever it is, and I go next. Review the whole lot from the start, then your campaign is pretty much up and running. There you go, it's showing me everything. It's telling me add sitelinks, which I didn't do, add callouts and so on. So you have not entered the campaign budget. I'm gonna go there, put in one pound, and next. So now you need to enter a valid... okay, well, I don't know why it is doing that. It is giving me a minimum budget. It never used to do that. Can you see over here: commonly use a budget of at least 12 pounds per day. Okay, I'm going to put in 15. So this is something new. They keep changing things around.
So now it's going to give me a warning: this does not have a conversion tracking set up. So please, always, before you start any campaign, set up your conversion tracking and then come here and set up your campaign, and then all you do is publish, the publish campaign button.
Okay, so I'm gonna go to questions. If you have got any, I will try my best to answer them for you, and please don't wait until the very last second, because there is a delay in the transmission, so I may not see your comment or your question before ending this live stream.
Okay, let's go. We have a campaign that is currently with a budget of 20 pounds and CPA of 9.30, and we have got quite good conversions lately, but still not up to our expectations. Okay, I think it's a two-part. Therefore, should we raise it to 30 and CPA 14.30, or is it possible just to raise budget to 35 and then leave CPA as 9.30?
All right, so Construction Guidance, thank you for your question. So I'm going back to your first comment, when you say we have got quite good conversions lately but still not up to your expectations. I don't know what your expectation is. Are you expecting 10 leads a day? If so, then you will need to up your budget, because you see, the thing is, you need to look at it this way. You've got a budget of 20 pounds a day and you're saying you're getting good leads and conversions, so why wouldn't you raise it? Unless you cannot cope up with the amount of leads you can generate, or work you can generate, then I can understand. But I don't understand what you mean by still not up to our expectations. Is it too expensive, those lead costs, or not enough leads?
If it's not enough leads, then you need to increase your budget. I would recommend that if you are running target CPA campaigns, at least have five times, minimum 3x but 5x, your target CPA. So if your CPA is, let's say, 10 pounds, my daily budget minimum would be at least 50, or at least 30 pounds, because at least with 50 pounds I can potentially get up to five leads per day, whereas over here I would get no more than a couple of leads.
So going back to your second comment, should we raise it to 30 pounds? Yes, if you want to get more leads and give Google a bit more leeway and be more aggressive in your bidding, then absolutely raise your budget. And if you increase your bid as well, that means you are going to be very aggressive with your bidding. You're going to outrank your competitors and get more leads. Going to 14.30 CPA does not mean Google is going to charge you that. It's going to outrank, and you will outbid your competitors for sure.
And I do this quite often. I sometimes go double. If it's within my KPIs, I would go double the target CPA, because I don't want to lose that impression or that click, because I know my conversion rate is good, my CPA is good, I want to get as much traffic as possible. So it's entirely up to you how you would want to play this, whether you're raising the budget and get more leads, or sticking to that same budget and letting the campaign tick along. But you'll need to put in a comment as to why then the campaign is not up to your expectations.
Okay, Mr G Man, thank you for being here and thanks for your comment, I appreciate that, my friend. So Gareth is from Digital Market here, and if you want to learn digital marketing, that is one of the best portals out there, and the content they have is just unbelievable and the community is next to none. So if you go to Gareth and tell him Uzair sent me, he'll give you a coupon code or some special offers.
Okay, Swift Propel, hi. Okay, I'm not sure what was your first comment. In this case, can I run ads using a different Google Ads account or other subdomains? The impact of suspension is on the subdomain or the main domain? Okay, I really don't understand what your question is. What I can think of is you've got a www domain, which is the main one, and then a subdomain. Are you trying to ask, should I run the subdomain separately to the main domain?
If it's a different offer or something completely different with different target CPAs, I tend to keep them in separate accounts. But if you want to keep things simple and it is a fairly small budget or small account, keep them in one, because you run separate campaigns, one to the main domain, one to the subdomain. So both, either or, will work. Unless you've got different departments with different budgets and so on, to keep things simple for everybody, then you have separate accounts. But for small accounts, keep them in the same place.
Suspension won't come into play, because why would you get suspended for using a subdomain? We use subdomains all day long. In fact, it's a good example, what you just asked me. We have our main campaign, our brand campaigns, going to our main website, www, and our landing pages are on our subdomain and they go to our subdomains. But both of these campaigns, which are separate campaigns, run from the same account.
What is the price of the mentorship program? It's priceless, because it's the best out there, but it starts at six thousand US dollars per year. You get two coaching calls per week in our private community. So yeah, by all means go to this website, where is it gone, over here, and you'll find the link to our landing page from there. Cool.
Okay, let's see what we've got. Brilliant. Okay, I think I've run out of time today. I've got another call to hop on to, so thank you so much, everyone, for being here. I truly appreciate it. I'll be back here on Friday, same place, same time. So till then, stay safe and have a great week. Bye for now.
