Google Ads Checklist: How To Set Up Google Ads For Profitable PPC Campaigns 

Imagine waking up every day to dozens, or even hundreds, of new leads and customers coming directly from targeted, profitable, Google Ad campaigns. 

How awesome would that be?

If you are about to or thinking of launching your Google search campaign, these are the elements you’ll want to check to set yourself up for success.

We’ll discuss how you can build a strong presence on the internet using Google Ads and how to use google ads to give more exposure and visibility to your business. Plus, we’ve attached our Google Ads Checklist at the end for you to download!

Let’s get started!

Create A New Google Ads Account

If you haven’t created an account yet, you should create one. You can create your Google Ads account at: https://ads.google.com/home/

Google has a very well-detailed setup where you answer questions like your website and email address that you’ll be sending your ads to. It also allows you to set your time zone, country, and currency.

Once you follow the instructions and create your google ads account, you can import the same thing into your other ads account as well such as Bing Ads account.

Choose Your Keywords

Keyword research is the process of using data to decide which keywords to target.

 Here are 3 strategies you can use to 10x your keyword research.

Tactic #1: Use third-party tools

The keyword planner is a great free tool, but studies have found that it provides 67.9% fewer keyword suggestions than other paid tools.

Tactic #2: Spy on your competitors

You can (and should) also use third-party tools to spy on the keywords your competitors are targeting.

Tactic #3: Use the search terms report 

“Every year, somewhere between 16% and 20% of Google searches are new—they’ve never been searched before.”

Even if you spent hours doing keyword research, there will be new keywords popping up all the time. The search terms report helps you discover new ways people are searching and finding your products.

Keyword Match Types

Once you’ve chosen your keywords, it’s time to choose keyword match types. Match types are ways to have more control over when your ads should and shouldn’t be displayed.

Let’s say you run a store that sells audio equipment and are targeting this keyword:

beats by Dre Bluetooth headphones

You might want to avoid showing your ads for searches like:

That’s where match types come into play.

With phrase match, you’ll reach more people and pay less for clicks than with an exact match, but you’ll generally get a lower conversion rate.

Phrase match allows you to discover some keywords you might’ve missed with an exact match.

With broad match keywords, your ads will show for a large number of searches (including some irrelevant ones) and pay less for clicks, but you’ll generally get a lower conversion rate.

Broad match allows you to discover a lot of new keywords you didn’t think about when doing keyword research. You can use this when you have a larger budget or want to scale your campaigns.

If you’re launching broad match campaigns, you should couple it with negative keywords to discard completely irrelevant searches.

On top of match types, you can also use negative keywords to get even more control.

Negative keywords allow you to exclude completely irrelevant terms.

Bulletproof sells high-end coffee products. They might want to advertise on searches like

dark roast coffee. But they want to avoid searches like instant dark roast coffee.

So they can add instant as a negative keyword.

Landing Pages Optimization

Most people spend all of their time creating ads but don’t pay enough attention to the landing page. The landing page is where users will complete the desired action (sign up, download, purchase) after clicking on your ads.

Some tactics to improve the conversion rate of your landing page include:

• Keeping consistency between the ad and the landing page (i.e. same message, same offer, same language)
• Avoid having too many CTAs on your landing page, stick to a single CTA 
• Improve trust by including social proof (logos, testimonials, etc)
• Reduce friction to complete the action (fewer clicks, fewer form fields, etc)
• Add urgency with countdowns or deadlines
• Overcome possible objections with trust signals or guarantees

Set Your Bid Strategy & Budget

Once you’ve done your keyword research and defined your matching strategy, it’s time to define the keyword bids and daily budget for your search campaign

We can’t give you a specific number that works for everyone

Average cost per click (CPC) is $1 – $2

But high-end keywords cost upwards of $50 per click!

(i.e. auto insurance)

Monthly paid search budgets can range from $500 to $5,000,000+ per month

First, you’ll need to figure out a few things (check Analytics, your financials, industry benchmarks, etc) 

1. Profit margin: how much money do you make after costs?

2. Average purchase value/lifetime value: how much revenue does each customer generate?

3. Conversion rate: what percentage of visitors perform the desired action? (from other sources of traffic like organic, social, referrals, etc)

Organize Your Account

Let’s learn how to structure your Google Ads campaign in a strategic way to boost your sales funnel.

First, let’s talk about mapping out your campaigns.

A simple way to do this is to follow these general rules:

Always create separate campaigns for:

• Different goals / objectives
• Different languages
• Different location targeting
• Different funnels /products

If you want to go further, you can also split them by:

• Product/service category
• Match type*
• Branded vs non-branded*

Let’s look at a few examples:

Brick-and-mortar: Italian Homemade

Italian homemade could focus on the bottom of the funnel and map their campaigns by location and offer.

Ecommerce: Perfect Keto 

Perfect Keto could map their campaigns by stage of the funnel:

Creating Your Google Ads

Now that you have defined your campaigns and ad groups, it’s time to create your ads.

Search ads are fairly simple compared to other advertising platforms.

Remember, you can also spy on your competitor’s ads to get inspiration for your own.

Setting Up Conversion Tracking

Step 0: Installing Google Tag Manager (GTM)

Google Tag Manager is a tool that allows you to easily deploy tracking snippets without having to touch your website’s code.

Step 1: Installing the Google Ads remarketing tag

Step 2: Setting up the conversion linker tag

Step 3: Tracking conversion using page views

The easiest conversions to track are those that generate a thank you page when the user performs the conversion.

Step 4: Tracking conversion using clicks and click-through-rate

In some cases, you might want to track a conversion that doesn’t generate a thank you page.

In those cases, you can track clicks instead.

Connect Your Account To Google Analytics

Your work doesn’t end after you launch a campaign. Analyzing the performance of your ads is just as important as everything you’ve done so far.

First, start at the top: impressions

Are enough people seeing your ads?

Next, review the engagement of your campaign: clicks and CTR

Are enough people clicking on your ads?

Is the CPC below your target?

Finally, check the most important thing: conversions and ROAS

Are you getting enough conversions?

Are your ads profitable?

Establish a schedule to check on your campaigns. If your campaigns are new, check them at least daily. For more mature campaigns, you can be more flexible.

Aside from the analysis, you can do it directly in the Google Ads dashboard, you can also connect Google Ads to Google Analytics.

Google Analytics can give you deeper insights into what people do once they’ve clicked on your ads and landed on your website.

Decide Which Devices To Show Up On

Once your ad sets are performing well, you can split them further into smaller audiences to try and find your most valuable segments (e.g. mobile devices vs desktop, newsfeed vs Instagram, etc).

Good work! You are now ready to start your campaigns. You can download our Google AdWords checklist to refer back anytime you need to launch your new ad campaigns.