15 Questions to Ask Yourself Before You Launch a Google Ads Campaign

If you’re new to using Google Ads, then it’s important to know that without a little help, you’re going to make a lot of mistakes.  

Formerly known as Google AdWords, Google Ads is a rather robust platform that can be a bit tricky to navigate without the proper checklist. It’s also not very forgiving as silly mistakes can end up costing you a ton of money if left unchecked.  

Fortunately, we’ve put together a specified checklist to get you started on your Google Ads campaign. Even if you’ve been running ads for a while, it’s still good to have something to refer to, just in case. 

These are the 15 essential questions you must ask yourself before you launch your next campaign if you want optimal results:

1. Do you know your target audience?

Arguably the most important question is who are you selling your products or services to? And the answer to that question goes much deeper than simply stating college students, parents, do-it-yourselfers, etc. 

You need to both know and understand your target audience. That means learning what they’re interested in, where they hang out, what are their pain points, where they live, what they like to do for fun, what they care about, how many hours a week they typically work, do they have families, how often do they use their phones versus their computers, what do they drive, and so on.  

It may seem a bit invasive, but you need to get into your target audience’s head and create a buyer persona if you want to attract them to your website. And, keep in mind that Google Ads allows you to choose where you want to target your ads. Therefore, knowing where your potential buyers hang out helps a lot in this department.

2. Are you targeting purchase-intent keywords?

Whenever we talk about search engine optimization (SEO) and user intent, it always comes down to those keywords. However, one of the biggest mistakes made with Google Advertising is trying to target those research/user-intent keywords. 

Here’s the thing: When your potential leads are doing research, they’re not looking to make an immediate purchase. They’re simply looking for more information, and they will carry on with these kinds of searches for a while. Don’t get us wrong, user-intent keywords are great if you want to lead people with your content and ante up in the SERPs—but that’s not what you’re doing here. 

Plus, the last thing you want to do is waste your ad budget on “research” keywords. Therefore, you need to focus on purchase-intent keywords that are used by your potential leads with the direct purpose of making a purchase.

3. How are you organizing your keywords into Ad Groups?

Organizing your tried and true keywords into Ad groups serves a much greater purpose than simply making your ad campaign look clean.  

You need to organize your keywords into similar phrases as they play a critical role in your ad campaign since Ad Group utilizes the same ad copy throughout. This means if you have different, unmatching keywords within the same Ad Group, then your ad copy won’t make any sense.

 So, make sure your Ad Group keywords are of similar meaning, value, and context, otherwise, you’ll end up with an ad that’s targeting the right people using the wrong words.

4. Are your keywords Exact, Phrase, or Broad Match?

Google Ads strikes again here as it will set your keywords to broad match by default if you’re not paying attention. In other words, your ads will be displayed on “any” keyword that Google considered relevant to your chosen keyword. 

You’d think that something as simple of a keyword as “cleaning spray” would yield ad results to run your campaign when a potential lead Googles “cleaning spray.” Unfortunately, this won’t happen unless you choose the exact match type. 

Additionally, phrase match keywords allow Google Ads to display your ads for any query that includes your keyword phrase, which works well also. However, you need to review your match types to ensure that your ads are displaying when the relevant keywords are being used in a search query.

5. Do you have any negative keywords?

This may sound counterintuitive, but you’ll need to add negative keywords to your Ad Groups. Unless of course, every single keyword is using the exact match type. 

Negative keywords allow you to specify words or phrases that you do not want to target with your ads. For example, if you add the word “open” as a negative keyword, then your ads won’t be displayed for search queries that include the word “open.”  

Using negative keywords is rather important when it comes to your ad budget, as they prevent your ads from popping up during irrelevant searches, such as the aforementioned “research” search. This prevents you from losing money on wasted clicks while creating more opportunities for your ads to display on relevant searches that could actually lead to conversions.

6. Are your ads 100% relevant for every keyword in your Ad Group?

This is a fundamental marketing strategy but it often falls flat during Google advertisements: Match your message to your market.

If your potential lead is searching for “cleaning spray”, then that’s precisely what your ad should focus on—cleaning spray specifically or cleaning products. This is also why your keyword organization is critical as they help determine whether all your ads will be completely relevant or not. 

So, take the steps to first organize your ads into Ad Groups of similar context and then you can draft the ads which closest match your keywords. It’s so simple, yet so overlooked!

7. Is the primary keyword used in your ad copy?

Another obvious yet overlooked SEO marketing strategy is don’t forget to use your primary keyword in your ad copy! 

Forgetting your primary keyword—the most necessary keyword in your ad campaign arsenal—would be like forgetting to tie your sneakers before going for a jog. It never ends well. 

Take the time to review each of your ads to ensure that your primary keyword or phrase that you’re targeting within the Ad Group is also in your actual ads. Without it, your relevance score will drop and so will your quality score, and in that case, you can just say goodbye to your click-through rates.  

And your money.

8. Do your ads include a compelling offer and an urgent call to action?

Ads aren’t just meant to sit on a page and be admired. They’re meant to invoke some emotion within your target audience and provoke them to take action, i.e., clicking on the ad and purchasing your products or services.

 But they’re not going to do that if you don’t entice them with a little something. Put yourself in your audience’s shoes for a moment and think about the type of ads you would click on, based purely on the ad copy.  

Take a peek at what your competitors are offering, and find out how to make your CTA more urgent.

9. Do you have all the appropriate ad extensions ready to go?

Ad extensions are essential because they can increase your click-through rate, which in turn leads to higher quality scores. Higher quality scores mean better ad positioning for less money. 

All you need to do is double-check and see if you have all the following ad extensions set up and ready to go:

●    Location

●    Call

●    Sitelink

●    Callout

●    Structured snippets

These extensions are easily found on the menu page of Google Ads under Ads & Extensions. Just click on the drop-down menu and select your extensions.

10. Do you have a landing page?

First of all, if your advertisements are geared towards attracting visitors to your homepage, then you need to make sure you have a dedicated landing page before you put out an ad for it.  

You’re probably wondering what’s the difference anyway? Well, the difference is that you need a page for the visitor intake that will lead them right through your sales funnel. Your homepage or your about page will have too many distractions, and they may not like what they read or see. 

Let’s face it, how many times do you really click on the about page when you’re looking to purchase a product or a service? 

You don’t need to give your potential leads any reason not to make a purchase, so make sure you’ve created a landing page that gently guides them towards inputting their information and clicking “confirm purchase.”.

11. Does the offer on the landing page match ads’ offer?

More often than not, companies will put out an ad campaign offering discounts, free subscriptions, this and that, only to come up empty when their leads click on the ad and see that they’ve been had. 

Either the initial offer is nowhere to be found, or the offer on the landing page doesn’t match the offer listed in the ad. 

Mistakes like this are critical because they can create distrust among your audience, deterring them away from your products and services and right into the arms of a different company. Remember, honesty is the best policy here, so make sure your ads are telling the truth!

12. Are you using separate Search vs. Display campaigns?

Before launching your ad campaign you need to make sure you're targeting both the search and display network. Utilizing both allows you to reach more potential leads, however, they behave differently while also requiring that you run a separate campaign for each to fully optimize your ads.  

The main difference between the two is that display ads are considered to be “push” advertising as they’re disruptive while search ads are considered as “pull” advertising as they’re displayed in the background. You can learn more about the two channels here.

13. Are you using a mobile landing page to target your mobile traffic?

Most people use their mobile devices to conduct searches nowadays, and we all know that websites are displayed differently on phones versus computers. Luckily, by default, Google will enable all of your ads to target mobile devices. 

The issue that your business website may not be mobile-friendly, which means you could be wasting a lot of ad dollars sending potential leads to a landing page that isn’t usable. That’s why you need to turn off your mobile targeting until you’ve created a mobile-friendly website!

14. Is the conversion tracking set up appropriately?

It doesn’t matter how well you’ve set up your ad campaign, you’ll still need to tweak things here and there to keep everything running up to snuff.  

That means you’ll need to set up conversion tracking. If you don’t you won’t be able to optimize your ad campaign appropriately because you’ll have no idea what’s working and what isn’t working.

Here’s the shortlist of what you need to get set up:

●    Webform conversion tracking. This measures how many forms are submitted on your website as a direct result of your ads

●    Website call conversion tracking. This is to measure how many phone calls generated via your website thanks to your ads

●    Ad call conversion tracking. This measures the number of calls generated from the number on your ads

●    GCLID conversion tracking. This measures your offline sales from phone calls or even in-person sales as a direct result of your ads

15. What are your competitors doing?

You don’t just need to get to know your target audience here. You also need to get to know as much as possible about your competitors—especially what’s working for them and what their weaknesses are. 

There are plenty of tools you can use to check out which ads your competition is running, as well as when they run them and how well their ads are performing. If you notice that your competitor is running a specific ad a lot and that it’s tracking well, then it’s worth looking into—you may learn a thing or two.

 Additionally, if your competitors have been successfully running ads it means they’ve likely been running tests as well. You’ll save a lot of time and effort by following their lead and implementing something similar. 

Remember, it’s the little mistakes that end up costing you big time in the end. So, make sure you run through this checklist as you put together your ad campaign to ensure smooth sailing once you launch your ads. 

Need some help optimizing your ads? Connect with me on LinkedIn to find out more about how I can help you with your Google Ads.