The last 6 months have been a steep learning curve for me at Superfly, I’ve been getting stuck in to Google Ads campaigns since day 1 and in that time I’ve learnt a great deal about them. I may still have much more to learn in the ever-changing world of Google Ads but I thought I’d share some of my top tips with you.
- Rise of smartphones
Nowadays you’ll probably find yourself using your mobile phone a lot more than your computer, and you wouldn’t be alone with mobiles accounting for over 60% of all online traffic and still rising. Last year almost 62% of paid search clicks were on a mobile device and it is predicted to reach over 70% this year. All this means that it is crucial to make sure you optimise for mobile in order to reach out to the biggest audience possible, that’s not to say forget about desktop just yet though.
- The bigger the better
One of the best ways to get your ad noticed is to make it bigger, as big as possible. The more room an ad takes up the more people are going to notice it. Google ads have recently updated their text ads allowing you to fit in much more text, almost twice as much in fact. Before this update you were able to fit 140 characters into an ad however now you have room for 270 characters.
Another great way to beef up your ads is to make full use of extensions. Add plenty of callouts and site links to your ads, even if you feel like the extension itself isn’t completely necessary, it will still increase the size of your ads and make them more noticeable.
- First impressions
First impressions count. Yes, Google ads will enable you to bring traffic to your site but that’s only half the battle. It’s important that your ads bring your audience to a well-designed, user friendly web page that functions well, this is what will turn them clicks into conversions. It’s all very well having x number of users clicking on your ads but it’s all money wasted if they don’t lead to new clients and opportunities for your business. This is where good landing pages come in – it’s the first real impression your audience will get of your company / brand so make sure it’s a good one.
- Break it up, be specific
When managing your campaigns, it’s important that you have a lot of control over what areas and audiences you are reaching. You need to make sure you’re always reaching out to your specific target market. Breaking down campaigns into smaller separate campaigns can give you a great amount of control over specific areas. Each campaign can then be individually tailored to a specific audience in order to optimise your return.
- Content, Content, Content
Probably the single most important part of Google Ads is the ad text itself. Your rankings, landing pages and mobile optimisation won’t mean anything if you don’t have some good, compelling ads that draw your audience in. I’ve found that an effective structure for writing ads its to focus on solving the user’s problems, highlight how you can help them, and then try and sell your product or service with a call to action such as ‘buy now’ or ‘call us today’.
I’ve also found it beneficial to always A/B test your ads, this gives you an efficient way to monitor your ad’s performance and helps you continuously improve. An easy process to follow is simply run multiple ads at once and at regular intervals replace the worst performing ad with a new one.
So, there you have it. You’ve read my top 5 tips, I hope they’ve helped someone out there. Let us know your top tips for creating Google Ads in the comments below!
