Ep 47: 4 Quick Wins in Google Ads

Today, I'm going to give you four quick wins that you can implement in your Google Ads account.

Hey everybody, this is Jim Lastinger. Welcome back to Marketing in 10. This week we're going to be talking a little bit about Google Ads accounts. So as you know, I audit and review dozens of Google Ads accounts every single year and I like to do that because I get to see all different kinds of strategies, account structure setups, and that gives me a good idea of what's really working, what's not working and some of the most common issues that advertisers run into.

So today I'm going to go through the lessons I've learned auditing hundreds of accounts over the last year or two, and give you four quick wins that you can look to implement in your accounts today. Okay, here we go. Quick win number one. So this is not reviewing your search terms often enough or thoroughly enough. This is a very common problem and something I see all the time. There are a decent number of advertisers out there who are paying for ads who don't know that you can actually see the search terms that users are really using. So they don't know how to look at the search terms report frequently to make sure that they're not wasting ad spend. There are lots of advertisers out there who do know what search terms are, but they don't dig deep enough or check them often enough. My recommendation is that every account owner goes through and reviews search terms every couple of weeks, every two weeks.

So you'll want to create a negative keyword list that you can apply to all the campaigns that you're running and add your negatives there. That's the simplest way to make sure that you're only spending money on worthwhile clicks. Also, when you're adding negatives, try to make sure that you use fairly broad negative keywords. If you add too many exact match negatives, then you'll likely have to add lots more negatives than you would if you're kind of focusing on the broad match negatives. So be as broad as you can.

Okay. Quick win number two, go write some new ads, go do it right now. This is something that I like to talk about all the time, but I rarely see done well enough in the accounts that I take a look at. So you need to be testing all kinds of ad copy. You never know what kind of messaging is really going to hit with your viewers and what's going to resonate. So you need to always be testing. I want to see two to three active text ads at all times in every ad group. We're kind of continuing to move down the road toward responsive search ads being the only game in town. So you'll want to go ahead and get in the habit of adding new headlines and to descriptions into the mix there and seeing how those perform. So no matter how many ads you have right now, take 30 minutes and go ahead and write some more ad copy. You'll definitely be glad you did later.

Next up quick win number three, make sure that you have all of the auto apply recommendations turned off. So I've seen these things cause countless problems in accounts over the last few months. So as a rule of thumb, we don't want Google automatically changing anything inside your ad account. The changes that are automatically recommended, more often than not, those things are going to benefit Google and not you. So keep that in mind. I have a video on my YouTube channel that shows you where to turn the auto apply recommendations off. So I'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. It can kind of be tricky to find sometimes. So make sure you take a look at that video.

And finally, quick win number four, you need to review your bid strategies. If you're using a target CPA or a target ROAS in your bid strategy, then take a few minutes to make sure those numbers are still accurate, and they still apply to you and they will allow you to be profitable. For example, if you are an e-com store and you've seen your costs rise by 10% over the last few months, then you need to account for that in your target ROAS bidding. It's important to review these every couple of months and make sure that you're not bidding yourself out of business.

Okay. So there you have it. Four quick ways that you can drive immediate improvements in your Google Ads account. As always, I'll have a show note and transcript available at Jimlastinger.com/47. If you have two minutes, please rate and review the podcast. I greatly appreciate that. It helps me grow the show and get in front of more people so that I can help more people, which is my ultimate goal.

I have a bonus for my loyal listeners. I've created a free guide that shows you exactly how to manage your Google Ads accounts in just 30 minutes a week. This is the same process that I teach all of my coaching clients. It includes everything you need to be able to run a profitable ad account and be able to keep it profitable for the foreseeable future. It has all the good processes that I used to put in place everywhere. You can download it for free at Jimlastinger.com/guide that's Jimlastinger.com/guide and I'll have a link to this in the show notes as well.

That's it for this week's episode. I'll be back soon with another episode of Marketing in 10. Until then, have a great day. Take care.