Why Strategy & Planning is Key to Mastering Google Ads.

Planning Google Ads

Despite its awesome perks and user-friendliness, it is not all that easy to generate profits with Google Ads. Once you get familiar with the platform and its complex challenges you learn that thinking strategically and developing solid plans for your campaigns is a must to achieve your goals with Google Ads. 

In our second webinar, Jason Pittock interviews ClickGUARD Founder and CEO Ralph Perrier about Google Ads Strategy and Planning Google Ads, as a means to make your business stronger in the long term. Tune in and get your dose of practical advice for maximum success with Google Ads! 

The famous “failing to plan is planning to fail” proved true time and again in many areas of our lives. Unsurprisingly, it applies to marketers too and, when it comes to Planning Google Ads, there is very little margin for error. 

As Ralph explains, to drive profitability with Google Ads knowing the right keywords and setting up the proper account structure will never be enough. Planning Google ads is of paramount importance to master the process and to do it properly, you need to start with the ideal customer for your business, build your “avatar”.

Planning Your Google Ads Starts With - Who is My Customer?

To find your ideal customer, research your potential audience. Where are they shopping? What do they love and hate about your competitors? Read their reviews and look for cues about their needs, desires, and interests.

Once you’ve figured out your audience, you can plan the best buyer journey and be ready to optimize it, based on the audience’s most likely intent. 

Understanding User Intent Should Be Part of Planning Google Ads

Keep in mind that people use Google for research, so it might be easy to drive them in through the right keywords. However, showing up with ads is not sufficient. If you don’t plan well you will end up wasting a ton of informational intent. 

“I’m a strong believer in understanding and structuring your entire account based on information versus call-to-action keywords.” 

Diving a bit deeper into Google Ads Strategy and Google Ads Planning as marketing tools, we look into the differences between the two. 

They both serve you in achieving your marketing and sales goals. But there are very strong differences between the two:  

• Google Ads Planning is of static nature and has an executive structure. Thus, if plan A fails, you can reorganize it into plan B. 
• Google Ads Strategy, on the other hand, it’s dynamic, thus flexible. The strategy has to do with the ideas and the methods employed, and it evolves based on conditions.  

In action, they go hand in hand. First, you design your Google Ads Strategy, then you follow with Google Ads Planning to actually execute your campaigns. 

Simply put, Google Ads Planning supports a well thought out Google Ads Strategy and is essential in reaching your objectives. 

How does this translate into a real plan? Ralph advises you to plan your Google Ads campaign in six effective steps:  

• Start with measurable and quantifiable goals. 
• With those goals in mind, work on understanding your buyer persona and document your avatar. 
• Based on what you know about your audience, decide your actions and the type of Ads you will employ to target your ideal customers. Here, you need to be mindful of where your target audience is. Out of the four main campaign channels, you may want to invest in Search Network, Display Network, Shopping, or Video campaigns, to begin with.  
• Now, depending on your industry and target audience, decide how much you want and afford to spend for a Conversion. 
• Next, research your keywords and negative keywords and document them, along with volume trends. 
• Split test your copy and ads. This last step is essential to find out what level of Intent your target audience has at a given stage in their buyer journey.

Each of these steps is thoroughly explained in our downloadable Complete Google Ads Planning white sheet. You can easily customize this planner for your campaigns and learn more about specific actions and types of campaigns.

Google Ads Planning (Whitesheet)

While it is common for people to have a preference for one over the other, you might be surprised to learn that each campaign type can work for your business if you approach them the right way. How do you find the right way? Through split testing. 

This method of conducting controlled, randomized experiments provides you with data about the audience’s post-click behavior. Of course, you want to know what works best, what you need to tweak, and when it’s the right moment to optimize your campaign. All marketers operating in a dynamic environment look into that, constantly. So, as Ralph puts it, ”unless you are operating in a static or non-dynamic, non-variable environment with nothing more to learn, you should always be experimenting.” This being said, expect split testing to influence your Google Ads Strategy and be ready to adjust your Google Ads Planning accordingly. 

If there still is any shadow of a doubt about the efficiency of documenting and planning your Google Ads Strategy, we’ll let Ralph make it clear for you:

“I’m constantly amazed at the amount of data we dig into at ClickGUARD and the various odd questions that come from the data we look at. I no longer personally manage our Google Ads account but I know a large part of our success comes from building our Google Ads Strategy and supporting plans, largely on our own tools for post-click behavior and intent analysis. Looking into that data reveals the type of behavior and intent we need to invest in, to bring people to the site for easier conversion.”

While it’s easy to get caught up in the more technical aspects of Planning Google Ads, you can safely work your way around it by focusing on the strategic side of things. Start with using our Complete Google Ads Planning sheet to kickstart your campaign and you’ll soon find how getting these steps right will turn any average Google Ads campaign into a highly successful one. 

Good luck with setting up your Google Ads Strategy using the free ClickGUARD Google Ads Planning and let us know how it went!