If you’ve ever tried to set up a Google Ads account before, you know how difficult it can be to get good results. Unfortunately, many people mess up their Google Ads account right from the beginning by trying to do it on their own. Running a successful Google Ad campaign is part art, part science. Therefore, here are three ways that the inexperienced user can mess up their Google Ads account.
Messing up keyword match types
When somebody performs a Google search for something they are interested in, Google tries to match an ad with that search term. To do this, Google crawls its database of advertisers to find someone who wants to show their ads when a user searches for that term. As an advertiser, Google gives you a ton of flexibility in the “keywords” section of the dashboard. Which is great if you know what you’re doing.
The problem is that most first-time advertisers sign up for Google Ads, create a campaign, quickly type in a bunch of keywords they want to rank for, and then watch in dismay as their ad budgets burn up.
That’s usually because keyword match types were set up incorrectly.
There are 4 keyword match types to choose from, and you have to use boolean operators to make them work. The first match type is the most inefficient match type. It’s also what most first-time Google Ads users start with. Broad match.
Broad Match
A broad match keyword signals Google to show your ad for any search term broadly related to the keyword you’ve chosen. For example:
Keyword – Diet Plan
Search terms that would trigger your ad –
Diet Plan
Low-Calorie Recipes
Diet Foods
Cat Diets
As we go down the rabbit hole, you can imagine how many strange search terms might trigger your an ad for your simple keyword. That’s the main issue with the broad match type. Somebody selling a keto diet plan wouldn’t want to pay for clicks coming from a search like, “plans for changing elementary school diets.”
The next option, broad match modifier, is a much more accurate and widely used match type.
Broad Match Modifier
Broad match modifier keywords are built by adding a plus sign before each word that must show up somewhere in the search term. For example:
Keyword – +Diet +Plan
Search terms that would trigger your ad –
Diet Plan
Plan for the best diet
Paleo Diet Plan
Planning a diet for my dog
As you can see, the results are much more specific. But you may still end up with some odd search terms like “planning a diet for my dog.” That can be fixed with negative keywords, which we will review momentarily.
Phrase Match
The third match type is phrase match. It’s a way to plan consecutive words that you would like to show up in order within a Google search. So, simply use quotation marks around a phrase to set phrase match keywords. For example:
Keyword: “Diet Plan”
Search terms that will trigger your ad –
best diet plan
diet plan for diabetes
celebrity diet plan
I need a diet plan for my boyfriend
Exact Match
The final match type is exact match. Using brackets you can set up keywords that will trigger ads only on search terms that match the keyword exactly. For example:
Keyword – [Diet Plan]
Search terms that will trigger your ad –
Diet Plan
diet plan
diet Plan
As you can see, exact matches will only deliver your ad on searches that match your keyword exactly.
There are many ways that you can combine keyword match types. For more information, you can check Google’s ad policies.
Not using negative keywords
Want to burn through your budget quickly? Ignore the negative keywords section of your campaigns. Negative keywords give you the ability to not show up for any search terms containing negative keywords that you have set. Remember our example search term above, “planning a diet for my dog”? This can be avoided by adding dog as a negative keyword for your campaign.
If you are selling a keto diet plan, it might make sense to add negative keywords such as:
dog
cat
paleo
high-carb
diabetic
free
Consider your product and all of the searches you don’t want to show up for. Add those terms to your negative keyword lists and you’ll have better-performing campaigns. In fact, it is extremely difficult to have high-performing campaigns without using negative keywords effectively.
Letting a Google employee handle your account
This one might seem counterintuitive, and I might get in some trouble for saying this, but here at Inflayt Marketing we have seen many of our brand new clients run into issues when handing their account access over to a specialist from Google. The problem is that the Google team is often more interested in increasing your ad spend than they are in increasing your ad performance. It’s very subtle, and I would never accuse Google of having ill intent like these people did. So, it’s usually a matter of mismatching a Google specialist with your business needs.
See, your business is unique. The products and services that you sell are unique. Within the Google Ads platform, there are hundreds of ways that you can make changes to your account to increase clicks, spread out your geographical reach, or target new groups of search terms. But some of the decisions that Google specialist make to help you grow don’t match your business goals.
For example, a Google specialist may suggest that you add 100 more keywords to your campaign and tell you “you’ll increase clicks to your website.” But how do you know if those clicks are good clicks? Sometimes they are. Many times they are not. This is why it’s important to either get very educated about how the Google Ads platform works or get help from an external party that is incentivized to make your ads the best they can be.
Running great ads
There are many ways to get your ads wrong. But there are also many ways to get your ads right. Here at Inflayt, we’ve helped SaaS companies win customers for $30 with a lifetime customer value of $600. We’ve helped professional services firms win $3000 monthly contracts from $200 ads. We’ve helped online product retailers sell $50 products with $15 ads. We’ve also seen clients try to do it themselves and spend thousands of dollars without a single sale.
A lot of money can be made when ads are done right. If you’d like to see how we do it, check out our Google Ads PPC page for more information.
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