ROI on Google Ads

July 7, 2021

I get $10 for every $1 spent on Google Ads. Here is how I do it, and it's not as hard as you may think.

I see many similar questions come up about Google Ads, and the surrounding confusion with implementing them.

I've talked about this before in my old newsletter but figured it would be worthwhile to address it again in a more concise manner. Consider this your “cheat sheet”!

Getting a positive ROI on your Google Ads takes time and attention. You need to be constantly monitoring your ad performance, dropping the dead-weight and increasing ad spend on the winners.

Here are some beginner tips I followed to make Google Ads work for me:

Keep keyword groups small / narrow. Don't “bundle” related keywords to create massive groups. Instead, create many small groups that are more closely related so that you can better analyze the themes that are working.
Test each ad group for one or two weeks. Don't throw a bunch of money at the group right away. Keep daily limit modest before spending a lot. Once you have some winners, ramp up the ad spend.
Implement the Google suggestions. As you create ads, Google will suggest changes to your ads. Do them! Your ad optimization scores will go up. Oh, and just because you do this once doesn't mean you're done. Google will keep making suggestions.
Set up a conversion pixel. This is slightly technical, but I was capable of doing it, and all I did was use Google's help docs. Your ads don't mean anything if you can't track conversions (i.e. money made). This is also a great metric for determining which ad groups to drop and which to keep.
Revisit every week. Google likes to see activity in the account. This doesn't mean you have to change something every time. Monitor what is working, what is not, add some of Google's keyword suggestions (you'll get these as you have ads running). Adjust the times your ads show, configure dynamic ads, create the maximum number of ad variations for each keyword group.
Monitor competitors. Google makes this easy to do with a ton of useful graphs and charts. Use a tool like SpyFu to dig deeper into the specific ads your competition is running and for which keywords. You can't exist in a silo. You need to monitor the activity of other people in your market.
Landing page score must be minimum 7 out of 10. Your landing page score (Google gives you this for your specific URLs that you put for ads) needs to be 7 or above. You're wasting your time and money if it's lower than that. If you're going after competitive keywords, it better be a 9 or a 10 out of 10 for your ad to have a chance at being shown above the fold.

#entrepreneurship