Creating campaigns in Google Ads is easy: automated workflows are everywhere, and the user platform can guide you through the whole process. However, there are few details that can misspend your budget and the best opportunity to grow your business.
Some of our coworkers have worked at Google, so we are really aware of its workarounds, complications and uncomfortable situations that you might face once you start using Google Ads dashboard (for both beginners and expert users!).
We want to help you with that. Below, you will find a few TO-DO tips before you start running new campaigns.
If you want to avoid these situations, you could always contact us!
1 – User in your location vs. users interested in your location
While creating your campaign, there are some hidden options, only visible with not so easy to find dropdown menus. It is normal that our main goal is to set up our budget, keywords, locations and ads. Having said that, you will find in one of the dropdown menus, the following options:
By default, the first option will be selected: Presence and Interest. What does it means? Basically, if a user is located in another country or city and he/she looks for related content of your line of business (keyword + location), your ads could be shown. In some industries like hotels, this feature could be useful and necessary, as we would like to reach people outside of our country. However, there are certain businesses were, while having it activated, there is a high probability that your budget will be misspend. Do you really want people to look for your restaurant or cosmetic salon?
That is why we highly recommend you select the “Only presence” option. You will be sure that your targeted users are nearby, according to your location settings. You don’t want unnecessary clicks from other countries, right? Pay attention to your Spanish and English campaigns, those are languages spoken in many places in the World.
2 – Campaigns are automatically active when created
Can you believe that? Many users are not aware of it when they start using the dashboard. So, what happens next? You thought that you had it prepared for the launch day but it seems it has been running for a few days now.
Sometimes it is just a matter of change the dates, but we can assure you that we have seen ads in the browser like:
“This is just a teeeeeest”.
This is why, if you still need to change or to optimize your campaign, remember to pause it right after you create your first ad.
3 – Error 404: Not found
In theory, Google Ads detects when a landing page is not working properly and, once it is detected, your ads should be automatically disapproved. This workflow has two goals: on the one hand, save time to the users; on the other hand, avoid wasting your budget for clicks leading to a not-working landing page. This is possible thanks to Google bots checking your website constantly.
Anyway, we could be in a really interesting position. In many occasions, those errors are not detected -or not detected on time-, so your money is being wasted for ads leading nowhere. Be aware that your customers are not happy with false/fake expectations.
So, our recommendation is: always review your landing page before launching your ads.
4 – You can be your own competitor
Are you thinking about creating an additional campaign? If your campaigns are targeting the same geographic locations, always remember to review your keywords beforehand. If you are using similar keywords for both campaigns, it is possible that your clicks will increase their price and your activity could decrease since you are your own competitor. Remember: campaigns could compete between themselves.
We hope that these recommendations could be useful if you are decided to run Google Ads campaigns. We would like to remind you also that Google uses complex algorithms needed for time and optimization. It is quite easy to join the platform and activate your new campaign. What is complicated is to get results based on your industry, location or budget. We don’t recommend you running campaigns if you have no experience, especially with high budgets.
If you want to succeed with your marketing campaigns, ¡click the button below and we will arrange a meeting to solve all your doubts!
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