2024 Best Google Ads Strategy for Small & Medium Sized Businesses

For many small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), the idea of diving into the world of Google Ads can be both exciting and overwhelming. With more than 8.5 billion searches made on Google every day, the potential to reach your target audience is massive—but so is the competition. Whether you’re just starting or have dabbled in advertising before, building a strong foundation in Google Ads is critical to ensuring that your marketing dollars are working efficiently to drive sustainable growth. Without the proper setup and strategies, you risk wasting ad spend on ineffective campaigns, attracting the wrong traffic, or even worse, missing out on high-value conversions.

At GrowthIQ Digital, we’ve spent years refining a strategic approach that has helped countless SMBs unlock the full potential of Google Ads. This is not about quick wins or overnight success—it’s about building an account that performs well for years, evolves with your business, and scales as you grow.

In this in-depth guide, we’ll walk you through the exact steps to establish and optimize a Google Ads account that delivers consistent, high-quality results. From setting up conversion tracking to mastering advanced campaign types, we’ll cover the entire process of developing the best PPC strategy. By the end of this guide, you’ll have a clear understanding of how to build a profitable Google Ads account that can handle competitive markets, scale efficiently, and adapt to evolving customer behavior.

Why Following a Structured Step-by-Step Approach Matters

In Google Ads, randomness leads to failure. An unstructured approach often results in campaigns that lack focus, poorly targeted keywords, inefficient bidding strategies, and wasted budget. When SMBs fail to see results, it’s often because they skipped over the foundational work or failed to implement data-driven optimizations.

A well-thought-out strategy, on the other hand, allows you to:

• Measure success accurately: Knowing exactly how your campaigns are performing at every step helps you allocate budget wisely and adjust strategies before they drain resources.
• Leverage data: By setting up robust conversion tracking and integrating tools like Google Tag Manager, you give yourself access to the insights that drive smarter decisions.
• Scale intelligently: Rather than launching broad campaigns and hoping for the best, a structured approach allows you to scale only what’s proven to work, step-by-step, ensuring long-term success.

1. Set Up Accurate Conversion: The Foundation of Your Google Ads Success

Before you even launch your first campaign, the most critical step in building a high-performing Google Ads account is setting up accurate and comprehensive conversion tracking. This may sound technical, but without it, you’ll be flying blind. Conversion tracking is the backbone of your Google Ads success—it provides the data needed to understand whether your ads are driving meaningful actions, such as sales or lead generation.

Google Ads is a performance-driven platform, and its algorithms thrive on data. The more precise your data, the better Google can optimize your campaigns to generate conversions and maximize your return on ad spend (ROAS). Let’s dive into why this is essential and how you can ensure your tracking is set up for success from day one.

Why Conversion Tracking is Essential

Without accurate conversion tracking, it’s impossible to measure the effectiveness of your Google Ads campaigns. Sure, you may be driving clicks to your website, but what happens after that? Are those clicks resulting in valuable actions, such as purchases, form submissions, or phone calls? This is where conversion tracking comes into play—it allows you to track every key action that occurs after a user interacts with your ad.

For example, a lead generation business needs to track how many users submit a lead form and, more importantly, how many of those leads convert into paying customers. An ecommerce business, on the other hand, needs to know how many visitors make a purchase, what they buy, and the value of those transactions. Tracking conversions allows you to tie real business outcomes to your ad spend, ensuring that your campaigns are generating real, measurable value.

Lead Generation vs. Ecommerce: Tailoring Your Conversion Tracking

Depending on your business type—whether you’re focused on lead generation or ecommerce—your conversion tracking setup will look slightly different. Let’s break down what each type of business needs to focus on.

Best Practices for Setting Up Conversion Tracking

1. Use Google Tag Manager (GTM): GTM simplifies managing tracking codes and event triggers across your website. Instead of hard-coding individual tags on each page, you can use Google Tag Manager to deploy and manage all your tags in one central location, making future edits and updates much easier.
2. Set up conversion actions for all key events: For lead gen businesses, this could include form submissions, phone calls, or booking appointments. For ecommerce, set up conversions for purchases and pass back the value of those purchases to optimize for return on ad spend (ROAS).
3. Test your tracking setup: Before launching any campaigns, test your conversion tracking thoroughly. Use tools like Google’s Tag Assistant or the Preview mode in Google Tag Manager to ensure that all events are firing correctly, and conversions are being recorded.
4. Import offline conversions for deeper insights: If your business involves a longer sales cycle (e.g., B2B or high-ticket items), consider importing offline conversions into Google Ads from CRMs like Salesforce. This means you can track not just the leads generated from your campaigns but also the actual revenue or deals closed from those leads, giving you a clearer picture of your true ROI.

Setting up accurate conversion tracking is non-negotiable for a high-performing Google Ads account. It’s the foundation upon which all your future campaigns will be built. With precise tracking, you can move beyond superficial metrics like clicks and impressions and focus on the conversions that really matter for your business—whether that’s new customers, sales, or leads that turn into revenue.

Next, let’s look at an increasingly important tactic in today’s privacy-conscious world: Enhanced Conversions.

2. Setup Enhanced Conversions for Cookieless Tracking

With the rise of privacy regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), along with the increasing prevalence of ad blockers and cookie-consent opt-outs, tracking users and conversions has become more challenging than ever. As businesses face growing limitations in their ability to track user behavior through traditional means, Enhanced Conversions offer a solution to mitigate these data gaps.

Enhanced Conversions allow advertisers to send first-party customer data to Google in a privacy-safe way, helping to improve conversion measurement even when standard cookie-based tracking fails. By hashing user data (like email addresses or phone numbers), Enhanced Conversions enable you to provide more reliable data signals to Google Ads, helping the platform optimize better and provide you with more accurate reporting.

Why Enhanced Conversions Are Critical for Modern Advertising

The increasing number of users who decline cookie consent or use ad blockers can significantly impact your Google Ads performance by reducing the accuracy of your conversion data. In this privacy-first landscape, Enhanced Conversions are not just a nice-to-have feature—they are essential for maintaining effective campaign performance. Here’s why:

1. Filling Gaps in Data Loss: When users opt out of cookies or use browsers with enhanced privacy settings, it becomes harder to track their actions across your website. This directly impacts the accuracy of your conversion data, making it more difficult to optimize your campaigns. Enhanced Conversions help fill this gap by sending user-provided information back to Google for better attribution, even when cookies aren’t available.
2. Improving Match Rates for Conversions: Enhanced Conversions use hashed user data (such as email addresses or phone numbers) to improve match rates between ad interactions and conversions. This improves Google’s ability to attribute conversions accurately, leading to better optimization and reporting.
3. Maintaining Compliance: Enhanced Conversions are fully compliant with privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA, as the data is hashed and anonymized before being sent to Google. This ensures that your advertising efforts remain effective without compromising on data privacy.

Key Data to Capture for Enhanced Conversions

To implement Enhanced Conversions, you’ll need to capture key user data during conversion events and send it to Google Ads. The data is hashed (using SHA256 encryption) before being sent, ensuring privacy is maintained.

Here’s the data you should consider sending:

• Email address: The most commonly used identifier, this helps Google attribute conversions even if cookies are blocked.
• Phone number: Adding a phone number can further improve match rates, particularly for businesses with a strong customer support or sales interaction element.
• First and last name: For lead gen and ecommerce, sending both first and last names can help increase the accuracy of Google’s matching algorithms.
• Postal address: This includes data like street address, city, and zip code. Though less commonly used, it can be valuable in specific industries, such as local services or ecommerce businesses with shipping options.
• Country and region: Including geographical information such as the country and region (state or province) of the user can help refine attribution and improve the accuracy of reported conversions.

The more data you provide, the more Google Ads can match conversions to ad interactions, even in situations where tracking might otherwise fail due to privacy settings.

How to Set Up Enhanced Conversions

Enhanced Conversions can help you recover lost conversion data by sending hashed user data to Google Ads, improving the match rate between ad interactions and conversions. Below is a detailed step-by-step guide to setting up Enhanced Conversions using Google Tag Manager (GTM) and the Data Layer.

Prerequisites:

• Google Ads account: Ensure you have conversion tracking set up in Google Ads.
• Google Tag Manager account: Ensure your website is integrated with GTM.
• Data Layer: Your website must push relevant customer data (email, phone number, etc.) to the Data Layer during the conversion process.

Step 1: Enable Enhanced Conversions in Google Ads

1. Log in to your Google Ads account.
2. Navigate to Tools & Settings (the wrench icon) in the top menu.
3. Select Conversions under the “Measurement” section.
4. Click on the Conversion Action you want to enhance or create a new one.
5. In the Conversion settings, scroll down and toggle Enhanced Conversions to “on.”
6. Select Google Tag Manager as your setup method.

Step 2: Prepare Your Data Layer to Capture Conversion Data

To send Enhanced Conversions data (e.g., email addresses, phone numbers, postal addresses) to Google Ads, ensure that the relevant data is pushed to the Data Layer during the conversion event. Below is an example of how to push user data into the Data Layer at the conversion point (e.g., a form submission or purchase).

window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
window.dataLayer.push({
  'event': 'purchase',
  'email': 'customer@example.com',
  'phone_number': '+1234567890',
  'first_name': 'John',
  'last_name': 'Doe',
  'address': {
    'street': '123 Main St',
    'city': 'Los Angeles',
    'region': 'CA',
    'postal_code': '90001',
    'country': 'US'
  }
});

Ensure the data is pushed correctly into the Data Layer upon a successful conversion event. The Data Layer must capture the customer data at the time the conversion is completed.

Step 3: Create a Variable for Each Piece of Data in Google Tag Manager

To pass the data to Google Ads, you need to create GTM variables that pull information from the Data Layer. Here’s how to do this:

1. Log in to Google Tag Manager and select your container.
2. Navigate to the Variables section in the GTM dashboard.
3. Click New and select Data Layer Variable.
4. Set up variables for each piece of information you want to pass to Google Ads. For example:
   • Email Variable:
     • Name: DL - Email
     • Data Layer Variable Name: email
   • Phone Number Variable:
     • Name: DL - Phone Number
     • Data Layer Variable Name: phone_number
   • First Name Variable:
     • Name: DL - First Name
     • Data Layer Variable Name: first_name
   • Address Variables: Set up Data Layer Variables for street, city, postal code, etc., in a similar way.
5. Save each variable after creation.
6. Lastly, navigate back to the Variables section and click New and select User Provided Data.
7. Name the variable EC Data and Map each of your Data Layer variables to their appropriate fields and click Save.

Step 4: Modify Your Google Ads Conversion Tag to Include Enhanced Conversions

Now that you’ve set up variables to capture the necessary data, modify your existing Google Ads conversion tag to use these variables for Enhanced Conversions.

1. Go to Tags in the Google Tag Manager dashboard.
2. Find the Google Ads Conversion Tracking Tag that you’ve already set up (or create a new one).
3. In the Tag Configuration section, click on Enable Enhanced Conversions.
4. Select the User Provided Data Variable you created earlier named EC Data.
5. Google Ads will automatically hash the data using the SHA256 algorithm before it’s sent, so you don’t need to handle the hashing manually.

Step 5: Set Up the Trigger

Ensure that the tag fires only when a conversion event occurs.

1. In the Triggering section of your tag, set the trigger to fire when the conversion happens. For example, if you’re using a Form Submission or Purchase event, create or select the appropriate trigger for that event.
2. If you’re using a Data Layer event (like the example purchase event from Step 2), you can set the tag to trigger on that event:
   • Trigger Type: Custom Event
   • Event Name: purchase
3. Save the trigger.

Step 6: Test Your Setup

Before publishing your changes, always test the setup to ensure the Enhanced Conversions are working properly.

1. In Google Tag Manager, click Preview to enter Debug Mode.
2. Perform a test conversion on your website (e.g., submit a form or complete a purchase).
3. Verify that the Data Layer is capturing the correct data and that your Google Ads Conversion Tag is firing as expected. Use Google’s Tag Assistant or Chrome Developer Tools to inspect the Data Layer and check the tag firing.
4. Check the Network tab in Chrome Developer Tools to ensure the hashed data is being sent to Google.

Step 7: Publish Your Google Tag Manager Container

Once you’ve tested everything and ensured that Enhanced Conversions are firing correctly, publish your GTM container:

1. In the Google Tag Manager dashboard, click Submit.
2. Add a description of the changes (e.g., “Added Enhanced Conversions setup”) and hit Publish.

Step 8: Monitor Enhanced Conversions in Google Ads

After enabling Enhanced Conversions, it may take a few days for data to start appearing in your Google Ads account. Monitor the Conversions section in your Google Ads account to ensure that the Enhanced Conversion data is being recorded and improving your attribution accuracy.

1. Log in to Google Ads and navigate to Goals > Conversions.
2. Check for Enhanced Conversions metrics under the specific conversion actions you’ve configured.

Benefits of Enhanced Conversions

1. Improved Campaign Optimization: With more complete data, Google’s algorithms can optimize your campaigns more effectively, increasing conversions and lowering costs. This is particularly useful for automated bidding strategies like Max Conversions or Target ROAS, which rely heavily on conversion data to function properly.
2. Better Reporting Accuracy: Enhanced Conversions provide more accurate insights into which campaigns, ad groups, and keywords are driving results. This is especially crucial in industries where data gaps caused by privacy settings can skew performance metrics.
3. Greater Flexibility in a Privacy-First World: As the digital advertising landscape continues to shift toward greater user privacy, Enhanced Conversions offer businesses a way to maintain effective tracking and optimization without sacrificing compliance.

Enhanced Conversions are a vital tool for any business looking to stay competitive in today’s privacy-first environment. By filling in the data gaps created by cookie restrictions and ad blockers, they ensure your campaigns continue to deliver results, even as tracking becomes more challenging. Once your conversion tracking and Enhanced Conversions are properly set up, your campaigns will be armed with the data they need to optimize effectively and drive long-term growth.

In the next section, we’ll explore the importance of manual control over your campaigns and why turning off Google’s auto-apply settings can help safeguard your account performance.

3. Disable Google’s Auto-Apply Settings and Create Remarketing Audiences

When setting up a new Google Ads account, one of the most crucial early steps is to make sure you turn off Google’s auto-apply recommendations. While these settings are designed to help streamline the process for newer advertisers, they often prioritize Google’s automated preferences, which may not always align with your business goals. For small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), these auto-applied recommendations can lead to poor performance, wasted budget, and lack of control over key decisions.

In this section, we’ll explain why it’s important to disable auto-apply settings and how manual control will help you build a more successful, data-driven Google Ads account.

Why Auto-Apply Recommendations Can Hurt Your Campaigns

Google offers various auto-apply settings that enable the platform to make decisions for you, such as adjusting bids, adding keywords, or changing ad creatives. While this might sound convenient, here’s why you should be cautious:

1. Lack of Customization: Auto-applied changes are designed to work across a broad spectrum of advertisers, meaning they often don’t take into account the nuances of your specific business, audience, or goals. For example, Google might apply broad match keywords or switch to automated bidding strategies without understanding the importance of tight control over costs or targeting.
2. Budget Waste: Google’s suggestions often push for more clicks, regardless of conversion quality. Auto-apply settings can expand your campaigns in ways that may increase traffic but not necessarily lead to higher conversions. This can result in overspending on clicks that don’t bring value to your business.
3. Limited Insight: When Google automatically applies recommendations, you lose insight into the “why” behind each change. This limits your ability to learn from the data, understand what works best for your audience, and optimize based on performance. Manual control forces you to dive deeper into the analytics and understand your campaigns on a more granular level.
4. Keyword Misalignment: Auto-applied recommendations might introduce new keywords to your campaigns, many of which may be irrelevant or too broad. This can lead to your ads being shown to users who aren’t part of your target audience, resulting in a higher cost per acquisition (CPA) and lower return on ad spend (ROAS).

What Should You Disable?

Here are some of the specific auto-apply features you should consider disabling when setting up your Google Ads account:

• Auto-Apply Keyword Suggestions: Google often recommends and auto-applies new keywords to your campaigns. These suggestions can broaden your keyword targeting, but they may not align with your goals. Manual keyword research and testing should always take precedence over Google’s automated suggestions.
• Automated Bidding Adjustments: Google’s bidding automation, like Maximize Clicks or Maximize Conversions, can be useful, but only after you’ve gathered enough data to understand your audience’s behavior. If you allow Google to automatically set your bids early on, it may push for volume over quality, potentially wasting budget. Start with manual bidding or Enhanced CPC (Enhanced Cost Per Click) until you have a clear understanding of how your campaigns perform.
• Ad Creative Adjustments: Auto-applied ad suggestions may change your headlines, descriptions, or extensions without your approval. These changes may not align with your brand voice or message. By controlling your ad creative manually, you ensure that your messaging stays consistent and resonates with your target audience.
• Responsive Search Ads Adjustments: Responsive search ads allow Google to test various headlines and descriptions. While this can be effective, Google’s automatic combinations might not always work as intended. Start with manual ad testing and only switch to responsive formats when you have clear insights into what messaging resonates best with your audience.

How to Turn Off Auto-Apply Settings

Turning off auto-apply settings in Google Ads is a straightforward process. Follow these steps to ensure that you maintain full control over your campaigns:

1. Log in to your Google Ads account and navigate to the Admin tab in the left-hand menu.
2. On the left-hand side, click for Account Settings.
3. Scroll down to Auto-apply. Inside the box on the right, click Go to auto-apply settings.
4. In the auto-apply dashboard you’ll see various recommendations Google can apply automatically. Review each one carefully.
5. Uncheck all boxes for auto-apply options (e.g., keyword suggestions, bid adjustments, ad variations).

Why Manual Campaign Management Is Critical

Taking manual control over your campaigns allows you to make strategic decisions based on data, not algorithms. Here are some key reasons why this approach is more beneficial in the long run:

1. Data-Driven Adjustments: Manually managing your campaigns means every change is made based on real performance data. As you gather insights about which keywords, ads, and audiences perform best, you can make informed decisions that lead to higher quality conversions and more efficient ad spend.
2. Granular Budget Control: Manual control allows you to allocate your budget where it will have the most impact. For example, you can increase bids on top-performing keywords and scale back on low-converting areas, keeping your budget efficient and maximizing your ROAS.
3. Targeted Keyword Optimization: Instead of broadening your reach indiscriminately with Google’s automated suggestions, you can focus on refining your keyword targeting. This includes identifying negative keywords, adjusting match types, and testing long-tail keywords to drive more qualified traffic.
4. Ad Creative Testing: When you manually control your ad creative, you can run systematic A/B tests to see which messages resonate best with your audience. This allows you to craft ads that not only drive clicks but also convert, increasing overall campaign effectiveness.

Best Practices for Manual Campaign Management

To get the most out of manual control, consider the following best practices:

• Set Clear Goals: Whether it’s driving leads, sales, or traffic, define your goals before making campaign adjustments. This will guide your decision-making process.
• Test and Optimize: Continuously test different ad creatives, bid strategies, and keywords to see what works best. Use data to make incremental changes, rather than overhauling campaigns based on hunches.
• Track and Analyze: Monitor performance regularly. Use Google Ads’ reporting tools to track metrics like click-through rates (CTR), cost per conversion, and return on ad spend (ROAS). These insights will help you fine-tune your campaigns over time.
• Don’t Rely on Broad Match: Initially, focus on exact match and phrase match keywords to keep your targeting precise. As your account matures and you gain confidence, you can experiment with broad match in limited ways.

Create Remarketing Audiences

A critical step in optimizing your account and setting you up for future success with remarketing campaigns is to create remarketing audiences. These audiences will help smart bidding strategies optimize effectively, allow you to view performance data related to your audiences, and grow to allow for targeting in Step 7.

• In your Google Ads account, navigate to Tools in the left menu, and under the Shared library dropdown, select Audience manager.
• Click + New Audience and choose Website Visitors as the source for your remarketing list.
• Define the audience conditions based on actions taken on your site. For example, you might create an audience of users who visited the product page but didn’t convert, or users who abandoned their shopping cart.
• Set a membership duration of 90 days, which represents how long users stay in your remarketing list.
• Create additional audiences based on different conditions such as membership duration or action taken on your site.

Control Equals Success

By turning off Google’s auto-apply recommendations and manually managing your campaigns, you’re taking a more active role in the success of your Google Ads strategy. This hands-on approach allows you to stay in control of your ad spend, messaging, and targeting, ensuring that every decision you make is aligned with your business goals. While automation has its place, especially in more mature campaigns, the foundation of a strong Google Ads account is built on strategic, data-driven management.

In the next section, we’ll discuss how to build and scale your campaign structure, starting with branded search campaigns and transitioning into high-performing non-branded search campaigns.

4. Start with Branded Search Campaigns to Build Awareness and Drive Early Wins

Duration: 2-3 Weeks

When building a Google Ads account from scratch, one of the most effective ways to start is by launching a branded search campaign. For small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), this is an essential first step that helps capture high-intent traffic—people who are actively searching for your business or products by name. Branded search campaigns offer low competition, high conversion rates, and a great foundation for long-term success.

Even if your business is new and lacks significant brand awareness, running a branded campaign can serve as a crucial building block as you expand into more competitive, non-branded campaigns as it allows your account to accumulate conversion data, which is an essential step to running successful smart bidding campaigns in Google Ads.

In this section, we’ll walk you through why branded search campaigns are important, how to set them up for success, when to use them in your overall Google Ads strategy, and how long to run your new branded campaign before moving on to Step #5.

Why Branded Search Campaigns Matter

Branded search campaigns focus on protecting your brand space in the search engine results pages (SERPs). When users search for your business by name, you want to ensure that they find you easily and aren’t sidetracked by competitors bidding on your brand terms. Here’s why branded search campaigns are critical:

1. Capture High-Intent Traffic: Users searching for your brand name or products are already familiar with your business, which means they’re further along in the buyer’s journey. These users are more likely to convert than those who are just starting their research or exploring other options.
2. Protect Your Brand from Competitors: Competitors may bid on your brand name, displaying their ads when users search for you. By running a branded campaign, you control the top position in search results, ensuring that your business, not your competitors, captures this high-value traffic.
3. Increase Click-Through Rates (CTR) and Conversion Rates: Since branded terms generally face less competition than non-branded keywords, your ads will typically achieve higher CTRs and lower cost per click (CPC). Additionally, these users already know your brand, making them more likely to convert once they click on your ad.
4. Strengthen Your Organic Presence: While you might already rank high in organic search results for your brand name, running branded ads can reinforce your presence and give users more options to interact with your site, such as specific landing pages, product pages, or promotional offers via ad extensions.
5. Drive Conversions to Help Optimize Smart Bidding: Smart bidding is the gold standard for running successful Google Ads campaigns. In order for Smart Bidding algorithms to effectively work, you need conversion data. Brand campaigns allow you to quickly drive conversions to help smart bidding algorithms build a foundation for future non-brand campaign expansion.

How to Set Up a High-Performing Branded Search Campaign in Google Ads

Launching a branded search campaign isn’t just about bidding on your business name—it’s about creating a campaign that effectively leverages your brand’s value while driving meaningful results. Here’s a step-by-step guide to building a branded search campaign that delivers early wins and long-term value:

Step 1: Start with Exact Match Keywords

• For branded campaigns, you want to focus on exact match keywords that target variations of your brand name. These include the core business name, misspellings, and any relevant brand-related product names or services.
• Example: If your business is “Acme Plumbing,” your exact match keywords should include variations like [acme plumbing], [acmeplumbing], or [acme plumbing services].
• Using exact match ensures that your ads appear only when users specifically search for your brand, protecting your budget from irrelevant clicks.

Step 2: Use Enhanced CPC or Manual CPC Bidding

• While automated bidding strategies like Maximize Conversions can work well in the future, start your branded search campaign with Enhanced CPC (ECPC) or manual bidding. This gives you more control over your cost per click and allows you to make data-driven adjustments once you see initial results.
• Enhanced CPC adjusts your bids in real-time to increase the chances of conversion but still allows you to maintain control over your maximum CPC.

Step 3: Write Compelling Ad Copy Focused on Brand Value

• Your ad copy should clearly highlight the value of your brand and what makes it unique. Since users searching for your brand are already familiar with your business, emphasize features like customer testimonials, awards, or specific product benefits.
• Use ad extensions to maximize the real estate your ad takes up in search results. Include sitelinks to relevant product pages, callouts for promotions or guarantees, and structured snippets to showcase product categories or services.
• Example Ad Copy:
  • Headline 1: “Acme Plumbing – Trusted Since 1995”
  • Headline 2: “24/7 Emergency Plumbing Services”
  • Description: “Rated #1 for quality and reliability. Call today for fast service.”

Step 4: Leverage All Available Ad Extensions

• Make the most of Google’s ad extensions to provide additional information about your business and improve your ad’s click-through rate. The more extensions you use, the more visible and informative your ad will be.
• Key extensions to include:
  • Sitelink Extensions: Link to key pages on your site, such as product categories, customer testimonials, or special offers.
  • Call Extensions: Let mobile users call your business directly from the search results.
  • Location Extensions: Help users find your nearest physical store if applicable.
  • Image Extensions: Add visual appeal to your branded ads with relevant images, such as your logo or product photos.

Step 5: Set a Sufficient Budget for Visibility

• Your branded search campaign should have a dedicated budget to ensure visibility when users search for your brand name. Since branded keywords tend to have lower competition and CPCs, you won’t need a huge budget, but you do want to ensure your ads show consistently at the top of the search results.
• Start with a daily budget that covers all expected searches for your brand each day, then adjust based on performance.

When to Use Branded Search Campaigns

A branded search campaign should be the first step in your Google Ads strategy, especially if your business already has some level of brand recognition or direct traffic. Here’s when you should prioritize running a branded campaign:

1. Established Brand with Direct Traffic: If your business is established and receives direct traffic from people searching for your brand name, a branded search campaign will ensure that you capture this traffic before competitors do. It also helps drive conversions for users who are already familiar with your offerings.
2. Brand New Business: Even if your business is new and lacks brand recognition, branded campaigns can help raise awareness by reinforcing your name in search results. Over time, as more people learn about your business through other marketing channels (like social media or offline efforts), they’ll start searching for your brand directly.
3. High Competition for Your Brand Name: In industries where competitors bid on each other’s brand names, a branded search campaign helps defend your brand and ensures that users find your business when searching for it.
4. Complementing Organic Search Efforts: Even if your business ranks well organically for branded search terms, running branded ads gives you more control over the messaging and landing pages. It also increases the visibility of your brand in search results, which can boost click-through rates.

Optimizing Branded Search Campaigns Over Time

After running your branded search campaign for a few weeks, you’ll start to gather valuable data that can be used to optimize your performance. Here’s how to continue improving your results:

• Monitor Conversion Data: Track the performance of your branded campaign in terms of conversions, conversion rates, and cost per conversion. Adjust your bids or daily budget based on how well the campaign is driving high-quality leads or sales.
• Test Ad Copy and Extensions: A/B test different variations of your ad copy and extensions to see which messaging resonates best with your audience. For example, you can test whether emphasizing “trusted since [year]” versus “24/7 emergency service” drives more conversions.
• Refine Your Keyword List: Periodically review the search terms report in Google Ads to see what users are typing to find your brand. Add any relevant brand variations to your keyword list and exclude irrelevant terms using negative keywords.

Branded Search Campaigns as a Strong Foundation

Starting with a branded search campaign sets a strong foundation for your Google Ads account. By focusing on high-intent, brand-aware traffic, you’re not only driving early wins but also protecting your brand space from competitors. Once your branded campaign is performing well, you’ll have the data and experience needed to expand into broader, non-branded search campaigns, which we’ll cover in the next section.

In the next part, we’ll discuss how to transition from branded to non-branded search campaigns, scaling your efforts to reach a broader audience while optimizing for conversions and return on ad spend (ROAS).

5. Transition to Non-Brand Search Campaigns to Grow Revenue

Once you’ve established a strong foundation with your branded search campaign and accumulated conversion data, you’re ready to take the next big step—launching non-brand search campaigns. Non-brand campaigns target keywords that are broader and not specific to your company’s name, allowing you to reach new potential customers who are searching for products or services like yours but haven’t yet heard of your brand. This is where Google Ads starts to become a powerful growth engine for your business.

However, non-brand campaigns require a more strategic approach than branded campaigns because you’re competing for more generic keywords with higher Cost per Clicks (CPCs). In this section, we’ll cover when to transition to non-brand campaigns, how to structure them for success, and what strategies you should use to ensure they drive profitable results.

Why Non-Brand Search Campaigns Matter

Non-brand campaigns allow you to tap into a much larger pool of potential customers by targeting people who are searching for relevant products, services, or solutions, but who may not know about your business yet. These users are typically higher in the funnel, meaning they are in the research phase and haven’t yet decided on a particular brand. Capturing this audience helps you grow brand awareness and expand your customer base.

Why Non-Brand Campaigns are Critical for Scaling Your Account

1. Expand Reach: With non-brand keywords, you’re no longer limited to people who are familiar with your business. You’re now reaching a much broader audience actively looking for the products or services you offer.
2. Capture Intent: Many non-brand search queries express high intent, such as searches for specific products, services, or solutions. These are valuable opportunities to get in front of potential customers before they’ve committed to a competitor.
3. Build Brand Awareness: By consistently showing up in searches for non-branded keywords, you’re introducing your brand to users who might not have considered your business before. This can lead to greater long-term brand recognition.
4. Higher Volume Potential: While branded campaigns are essential, their scale is limited by the number of people searching for your brand name. Non-brand campaigns can drive significantly higher search volume, which, when optimized, can result in greater traffic and conversions.

When to Transition to Non-Brand Campaigns

The timing of your transition from branded to non-brand search campaigns depends on a few key factors. You don’t want to rush into non-brand campaigns until your account has a solid foundation, and you’ve gathered enough data to make informed decisions. Here are some indicators that it’s time to scale:

1. Your Branded Campaigns Are Performing Well: If your branded search campaigns are consistently driving conversions, have high-quality scores, and your cost per acquisition (CPA) is stable or decreasing, you’re in a good position to expand into non-brand campaigns. This means you’ve fine-tuned your targeting and bidding strategies.
2. You’ve Established Conversion Tracking: Before launching non-brand campaigns, make sure your conversion tracking is set up accurately (as discussed in Section 1) so you can properly measure performance and use smart bidding strategies like Maximize Conversions or Maximize Conversion Value effectively.
3. Your Website Is Optimized for Conversions: Non-brand traffic will include users who are unfamiliar with your business. Make sure your website has clear calls to action (CTAs), fast load times, and optimized landing pages to convert these users effectively.
4. You Have Sufficient Budget: Non-brand keywords tend to be more competitive and may have higher cost-per-click (CPC) rates than branded keywords. Make sure you have a sufficient budget to test non-brand campaigns without compromising your branded campaigns.

How to Structure Your Non-Brand Campaigns

A well-structured non-brand campaign is essential for driving performance and maintaining control over your budget. Here’s how to set up non-brand campaigns for success:

Step 1: Start with High-Performing, Core Products or Services

• Begin your non-brand campaigns by focusing on your top-performing products or services. These should be items with high margins or strong conversion rates that are crucial to your business. This approach allows you to prioritize what matters most and ensure your initial non-brand campaigns are built around offerings that are more likely to drive ROI.
• Create separate ad groups for each product or service to keep your targeting and messaging relevant to the user’s intent.

Step 2: Use of Exact Match Keywords

• When starting with non-brand campaigns, focus on exact match keywords to keep your targeting more precise. Exact match keywords will only show your ads when users search for a specific term, while phrase match allows for slightly more variation, such as additional words before or after your core keyword.
• Example: If you offer plumbing services, your first Ad Group might be centered around Plumbing Services with exact match examples of:
  • [plumbing services]
  • [plumbers near me]
  • [plumbing services in my area]
• Example: Your next Ad Group might be based on Drain Cleaning, which could have keywords such as:
  • [drain cleaning services]
  • [drain unclogging services]
  • [drain unclogging company]
• This approach ensures that your ads are displayed to users who are highly likely to be interested in your offerings, reducing wasted clicks and cost. Make sure that each of your ad groups has a distinct and relevant landing page. For users looking for drain cleaning, they should click an ad and go to a landing page that is directly related to Drain Cleaning.

Step 3: Avoid Broad Match

• Broad match keywords can bring in a large amount of traffic but are less targeted. When you’re first starting non-brand campaigns, avoid using broad match keywords.
• As your campaigns mature and your campaigns have gathered significant conversion data, you can experiment with broad match keywords in a more controlled manner.

Step 4: Write Compelling Ad Copy Focused on Solutions

• Non-brand search users are often looking for solutions to their problems. Your ad copy should emphasize how your product or service solves a specific issue or meets their needs. Make sure to highlight unique selling propositions (USPs), such as free shipping, warranties, 24/7 support, active promotions or discounts, ease-of-use, etc.
• Use dynamic keyword insertion (DKI) in your ads to automatically include the user’s search query in the ad, which can improve relevance and click-through rates (CTR). An example for a headline might be:
  • Non dynamic keyword insertion: 24/7 Plumbing Services
  • Dynamic keyword insertion: [KeyWord:24/7 Plumbing Services]

Step 5: Set Initial Bidding to Maximize Conversions on a Controlled Budget

• Use Maximize Conversions bidding when starting your non-brand campaigns. This automated bidding strategy helps Google optimize bids to get as many conversions as possible within your specified daily budget.
• Once you’ve gathered enough conversion data (usually after 30-60 conversions), consider switching to a Maximize Conversions with a Target CPA (Cost per Acquisition). Set a target CPA that is 10%-15% lower than your Avg. CPA over the past 30 days. If after a week, you are not reaching your CPA, continue to lower by 10%-15%. If you are reaching this Target CPA or exceeding it, raise it to your Avg. CPA over the initial period and continue to optimize.

Step 6: Create Custom Landing Pages for Non-Brand Traffic

• Since non-brand traffic may be unfamiliar with your business, create landing pages tailored specifically to this audience. Your landing pages should clearly explain what makes your product or service the best solution and include a strong CTA.
• A/B test different landing page designs, headlines, and offers to see which performs best with non-brand visitors.

Best Practices for Non-Brand Campaign Optimization

Non-brand search campaigns require continuous optimization to maximize ROI. Here are some key strategies for keeping your non-brand campaigns performing at their best:

1. Monitor Search Terms and Add Negative Keywords: Regularly review the search terms report in Google Ads to see the actual search queries triggering your ads. Add irrelevant queries as negative keywords to prevent your ads from showing for searches that aren’t aligned with your goals.
2. Adjust Bids Based on Performance: Use performance data to adjust your bids. Increase bids on high-performing keywords and reduce bids on keywords that are driving clicks but not converting. This helps keep your campaigns efficient and cost-effective.
3. Refine Ad Copy and Test Variations: Continuously A/B test new ad copy variations to find what resonates best with your audience. Test different messaging approaches, such as focusing on benefits, promotions, or urgency.
4. Use Audience Targeting for Greater Precision: Layer audience targeting onto your non-brand campaigns to improve performance. By targeting specific demographics, in-market audiences, or remarketing lists, you can ensure your ads are shown to users who are more likely to convert.
5. Expand to Dynamic Search Ads (DSA): Once your initial non-brand campaigns are running successfully, consider adding a Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) campaign to capture additional search queries related to your website’s content. DSAs automatically generate ad headlines based on your site’s pages, helping you expand your reach without needing to manually add keywords.

Scaling Beyond Brand Campaigns

Launching and optimizing non-brand search campaigns is a crucial step toward scaling your Google Ads efforts. These campaigns allow you to reach new customers, grow brand awareness, and capture valuable search traffic from users who may not be familiar with your business. By carefully structuring your non-brand campaigns, focusing on core products and services, and continuously optimizing based on performance data, you can build a robust and scalable advertising strategy.

In the next section, we’ll explore the importance of using Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) to fill in the gaps in your keyword targeting, further expanding your reach and capturing additional search opportunities.

6. Use Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) for Broader Reach and Improved Coverage

As your non-brand campaigns begin to scale, there will always be some search queries that slip through the cracks—queries that could potentially lead to conversions but don’t match any of the keywords in your campaigns. This is where Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) come in. DSAs are a powerful tool for filling in these gaps, allowing you to capture additional traffic without having to manually add every possible keyword variation. DSAs work by scanning your website content and dynamically generating ads that match relevant search queries, giving your campaigns a broader reach while maintaining relevance.

In this section, we’ll dive into how Dynamic Search Ads work, why they’re essential for expanding your campaign reach, and best practices for setting up and optimizing DSA campaigns.

How Dynamic Search Ads Work

Unlike traditional search campaigns that rely on manually selected keywords, Dynamic Search Ads automatically match user queries to relevant pages on your website. When a user searches for something closely related to your website’s content, Google dynamically generates an ad headline and landing page URL based on the content of your site. This allows you to capture long-tail search queries and broader keyword variations that you may not have included in your campaigns.

Here’s how the process works:

1. Google Crawls Your Website: Google continuously crawls your site to understand the content on each page, including product descriptions, service pages, and blog posts. This forms the basis of how DSAs determine which queries are relevant.
2. Matching Search Queries: When a user searches for a term that’s relevant to the content on your site, Google matches that query to one of your site’s pages.
3. Dynamic Ad Creation: Google generates an ad headline and URL based on the content of the matching page, ensuring the ad is relevant to the user’s search intent. You provide the ad descriptions, which remain static across different queries.
4. Ad Display: The dynamically generated ad is shown to the user, directing them to the most relevant landing page on your site.

Why DSAs Are Essential for Expanding Reach

Dynamic Search Ads are particularly effective for businesses with large websites, expansive product inventories, or content-rich platforms, but they can also benefit smaller businesses by ensuring broader keyword coverage. Here are some key reasons why DSAs are crucial for scaling your campaigns:

1. Capture Long-Tail Keywords: Long-tail keywords often go unnoticed in traditional campaigns because they’re difficult to predict. DSAs automatically capture these queries, allowing you to reach users searching for specific, low-competition terms that could drive highly qualified traffic.
2. Minimize Keyword Gaps: No matter how comprehensive your keyword research, there will always be search terms you miss. DSAs fill in these gaps, ensuring that you don’t miss out on potential traffic from relevant searches that weren’t explicitly targeted.
3. Expand Without Additional Work: Instead of manually researching and adding new keywords, DSAs allow you to expand your reach automatically. Google’s algorithms continuously scan your website for new content, ensuring that your ads stay updated without requiring additional keyword management.
4. Tailored Ad Experiences: DSAs create ads that are highly relevant to the user’s query, improving click-through rates (CTR) and conversion rates. By dynamically adjusting the headline and landing page to match the search intent, DSAs help improve the user experience, leading to better overall performance.

Visit our guide on dynamic search ads (DSAs) for more information on how to setup these campaigns.

Dynamic Search Ads for Scalable Growth

Dynamic Search Ads offer an efficient way to expand your Google Ads reach, capture additional search volume, and improve your keyword coverage. By leveraging Google’s ability to dynamically generate ads based on your website’s content, you can ensure that your campaigns remain relevant, even as user search behaviors change. When used in conjunction with traditional search campaigns and proper targeting, DSAs can drive significant value by bringing in incremental traffic and conversions.

In the next section, we’ll explore the benefits of creating remarketing campaigns, targeting users who have visited your site but haven’t yet converted, to further enhance your Google Ads strategy.

7. Create Remarketing Campaigns to Re-Engage Non-Converters and Maximize Conversions

After setting up and optimizing your branded and non-branded campaigns, you’ve likely started driving traffic to your website. However, not all users who visit will convert on their first interaction. This is where remarketing comes into play. Remarketing campaigns allow you to re-engage visitors who have already interacted with your website but did not complete a desired action, such as making a purchase or submitting a lead form. By targeting these warm audiences, you can improve your conversion rates and drive higher return on ad spend (ROAS) with minimal effort.

In this section, we’ll dive into why remarketing is essential for maximizing your Google Ads performance, how to set up effective remarketing campaigns, and best practices for driving re-engagement with display and video ads.

Why Remarketing is Critical for Google Ads Success

Remarketing focuses on users who are already familiar with your brand or offerings. These users have visited your website, explored your products or services, but for some reason, didn’t convert. Remarketing helps you stay top of mind for these potential customers and encourages them to return and complete the conversion process.

Here’s why remarketing is a crucial part of a well-rounded Google Ads strategy:

• Increased Conversion Likelihood: Users who have already interacted with your brand are more likely to convert compared to cold traffic. Remarketing allows you to re-engage these users and encourage them to complete the desired action.
• Lower Cost Per Acquisition (CPA): Since remarketing targets users who are already familiar with your brand, your cost per acquisition tends to be lower compared to other campaign types. These users don’t need as much persuasion or information as cold traffic, making them more cost-effective to convert.
• Improved Brand Recall: Not all users will convert on their first visit to your site. Remarketing keeps your brand top of mind by serving ads to users who may need multiple interactions with your brand before making a decision. This constant reinforcement can help shorten the decision-making process.
• Target High-Value Audiences: Remarketing allows you to segment your audience based on specific actions taken on your website, such as users who abandoned their cart, viewed particular products, or spent time on key pages. This targeting precision ensures you’re showing ads to users most likely to convert.

Types of Remarketing Campaigns

There are several types of remarketing campaigns you can create within Google Ads, each designed to target specific segments of your website traffic. Here’s an overview of the most common types:

1. Standard Remarketing:
   • How It Works: Standard remarketing displays your ads to past visitors as they browse other websites within the Google Display Network or use apps.
   • Use Case: This is great for general website visitors or users who visited key pages but didn’t convert. It helps re-engage people as they continue browsing other sites, bringing them back to your website.
2. Dynamic Remarketing:
   • How It Works: Dynamic remarketing goes a step further by showing personalized ads based on the products or services that users viewed on your site. For example, if a user viewed a specific product, the remarketing ad will show that product with additional incentives to encourage the purchase.
   • Use Case: This is particularly effective for ecommerce businesses, as it allows you to serve highly relevant ads to users who abandoned carts or browsed specific products.
3. Video Remarketing:
   • How It Works: With video remarketing, you can show ads to users who interacted with your YouTube videos or channel. These ads can appear on YouTube, within video content on the Display Network, or in search results.
   • Use Case: If your business uses video content to build brand awareness, video remarketing helps re-engage users who viewed your videos but didn’t take further action.
4. Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA):
   • How It Works: RLSA allows you to show search ads to users who have previously visited your site as they search for relevant terms on Google. You can either adjust bids for these users or create unique ads tailored to their previous interactions with your site.
   • Use Case: RLSA is perfect for targeting users who are still in the research phase but are closer to making a purchase decision. By bidding higher for these users or tailoring ad copy to them, you increase your chances of capturing the conversion.
5. Customer Match:
   • How It Works: Customer Match allows you to upload a list of email addresses to Google Ads, and Google will match those addresses to users in its network, allowing you to serve personalized ads to your existing customers or leads.
   • Use Case: This is useful for upselling, cross-selling, or re-engaging customers who have purchased in the past but haven’t returned in a while. You can also use it to target leads in your database with new offers or promotions.

How to Set Up a Remarketing Campaign in Google Ads

Setting up a remarketing campaign in Google Ads is relatively straightforward, especially if you’ve already integrated Google Ads with Google Tag Manager (GTM) for conversion tracking (as discussed in Section 1). Here’s a step-by-step guide to setting up your first remarketing campaign:

Step 1: Create a New Campaign and Ad Group(s)

• In the Google Ads dashboard, click Campaigns and then the + New Campaign button.
• Select Display as your campaign type, and choose your marketing goal (e.g., Sales, Leads, or Website Traffic).
• Under Targeting, select Remarketing and choose the audience you created in the previous step.

Step 2: Design Your Ads

• Create visually appealing display ads that will capture attention. Use images, logos, and compelling messaging that encourages users to return to your site and complete their conversion.
• If you’re running Dynamic Remarketing, ensure your product feed is set up and integrated with Google Ads. This will allow Google to automatically serve personalized ads featuring the specific products users viewed on your site.

Step 3: Set Your Bids and Budget

• Choose an appropriate bidding strategy based on your campaign goals. You can use Maximize Conversions to optimize for conversions or Maximize Conversions with a Target CPA to control costs and aim for a specific cost per acquisition.
• Set a daily budget that aligns with your goals and allows sufficient reach for your remarketing audience.

Step 4: Launch and Monitor:

• Once your ads are created and targeting is set, launch your campaign. Be sure to monitor performance regularly, paying attention to key metrics like click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate, and cost per conversion.
• Make adjustments as needed, such as modifying your ad creatives or adjusting your bids to improve performance.

Best Practices for Remarketing Campaigns

Remarketing can be incredibly effective when done correctly, but there are a few best practices to ensure you’re getting the most out of your campaigns:

1. Segment Your Audiences:
   • Not all visitors to your website are the same, so segment your remarketing audiences based on behavior. For example, create separate lists for users who abandoned their cart, viewed a product but didn’t purchase, or spent a significant amount of time on your site. This allows you to tailor your messaging for each group.
2. Cap the Frequency of Ads:
   • While remarketing is effective, you don’t want to bombard users with ads. Set a frequency cap to limit how often users see your ads. This prevents ad fatigue and ensures your brand remains positively perceived.
3. Use Compelling Offers:
   • Encourage users to return by offering an incentive, such as a discount, free shipping, or an extended warranty. These offers can help overcome any hesitation that initially prevented them from converting.
4. Rotate Ad Creatives:
   • Refresh your ad creatives regularly to prevent banner blindness and keep your audience engaged. Test different formats, messages, and designs to see which resonate best with your audience.
5. Leverage Dynamic Remarketing for Ecommerce:
   • If you’re running an ecommerce business, dynamic remarketing is a must. Personalized ads showing the exact products users viewed, along with price and additional offers, can significantly increase your chances of recovering abandoned carts and driving conversions.

Turning Lost Opportunities into Wins

Remarketing is one of the most effective tools in your Google Ads arsenal for turning lost opportunities into conversions. By re-engaging users who have already shown interest in your brand, you can improve your overall conversion rates and maximize the value of your existing website traffic. Whether through display ads, dynamic remarketing, or search ads, remarketing helps keep your brand top of mind and encourages users to return when they’re ready to convert.

In the next section, we’ll explore advanced campaign optimization techniques, including A/B testing, switching to Max Conversion Value, and experimenting with broad match keywords to further improve your campaign performance.

8. Maximize Performance with Advanced Campaign Optimization Techniques

Once your Google Ads campaigns—both branded and non-branded—are running smoothly and generating consistent results, it’s time to start focusing on advanced optimization techniques. These techniques will allow you to maximize your return on investment (ROI) and drive even better performance from your campaigns. From switching to advanced bidding strategies to A/B testing your ads, landing pages, and experimenting with broader keyword match types, the key to long-term success lies in continually refining and optimizing your campaigns based on data.

In this section, we’ll cover several advanced optimization strategies, including switching to Max Conversion Value and Target ROAS, A/B testing your campaigns, and how to carefully experiment with broad match keywords to boost performance.

Switch to Max Conversion Value and Maximize Conversion Value with a Target ROAS for Higher Profitability

As your campaigns start generating enough data, particularly in terms of conversions, it’s worth considering switching from Max Conversions to more advanced bidding strategies such as Max Conversion Value and Maximize Conversion Value with a Target ROAS (Return on Ad Spend). These bidding strategies are especially useful if your primary focus is maximizing the profitability of each conversion, rather than just increasing the volume of conversions.

Maximize Conversion Value

Max Conversion Value is an automated bidding strategy that focuses on maximizing the total value of your conversions. Unlike Max Conversions, which seeks to maximize the number of conversions, Max Conversion Value adjusts your bids to generate the highest conversion value possible within your budget.

• When to Use It: Use Max Conversion Value when you care more about the value (e.g., revenue, lead quality) of each conversion than the sheer number of conversions. This strategy works well for ecommerce businesses with variable product prices or service businesses where certain leads are worth more than others.
• Requirements: To use Max Conversion Value effectively, you must have conversion value tracking set up (e.g., recording transaction value or lead value) so Google Ads can optimize around this data.

Maximize Conversion Value with a Target ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)

Maximize Conversion Value with a Target ROAS is another advanced bidding strategy that focuses on generating a specific return on ad spend. Essentially, you tell Google Ads how much revenue you want to generate for every dollar spent, and the algorithm adjusts bids to meet that target.

• When to Use It: Target ROAS is ideal for businesses that have a clear understanding of their profit margins and can determine what an ideal ROAS looks like. For example, if you want to make $5 in revenue for every $1 spent on ads, you would set a target ROAS of 500%.
• Requirements: Like Max Conversion Value, Maximize Conversion Value with a Target ROAS requires you to track conversion value accurately. It’s also important to have sufficient conversion data—Google recommends at least 30 conversions in the past 30 days—to allow the algorithm to make informed bidding decisions.

Best Practices for Implementing Advanced Bidding Strategies

• Start Small: If you’re switching to Max Conversion Value or Target ROAS, start by testing these strategies in a single campaign or ad group rather than across your entire account. This allows you to see how the bidding strategy affects performance without risking your entire budget.
• Monitor Closely: Advanced bidding strategies take time to learn and optimize. Give the algorithm at least a few weeks to gather data and optimize bids effectively, but monitor performance closely during this period to ensure it’s aligning with your business goals.
• Adjust ROAS Targets: If you’re using Target ROAS, be prepared to adjust your ROAS target over time. Too high of a target might limit your traffic and conversions, while too low of a target might sacrifice profitability for volume.

A/B Test Ad Creative, Landing Pages, and Bid Strategies

Optimization is an ongoing process, and one of the most effective ways to continually improve your campaign performance is through A/B testing. By running experiments with different ad creatives, landing pages, and even bid strategies, you can identify what resonates best with your audience and drive better results.

A/B Testing Ad Creative

Your ads are the first interaction potential customers have with your brand, so testing different ad copy, headlines, and visuals can significantly impact performance. Here’s how to conduct effective A/B tests on your ads:

• Test Headlines and Descriptions: Try different versions of headlines that focus on various aspects of your offering. For example, one headline might emphasize a discount or promotion, while another highlights your unique selling proposition (USP). Test these to see which drives better click-through rates (CTR) and conversions.
• Use Responsive Search Ads (RSA): Google’s Responsive Search Ads allow you to input multiple headlines and descriptions, and Google will automatically test different combinations to find the best-performing pair. This can accelerate your A/B testing process and help find the most effective messaging.
• Monitor Engagement Metrics: Track key engagement metrics such as CTR and conversion rate to determine which ads resonate most with your audience. You should also consider using conversion-related metrics, like cost per conversion or conversion value, to assess the true impact of your A/B tests.

A/B Testing Landing Pages

Your landing pages play a crucial role in converting traffic into leads or sales, and even small changes can lead to big improvements. Here’s how to test and optimize your landing pages:

• Test Different Layouts: Experiment with various layouts to see which drives the most conversions. For example, test a simple layout with a single call-to-action (CTA) versus a more detailed page with multiple product highlights.
• Test Headlines and Copy: Just like with ad creative, you should experiment with the headlines and body copy on your landing pages. Test different messaging approaches—e.g., focus on benefits vs. features, or emphasize urgency vs. value.
• Use Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) Tools: Tools like Google Optimize, Optimizely, or Unbounce allow you to easily run A/B tests on your landing pages and gather data on how different versions perform.

A/B Testing Bid Strategies

If you’ve been using manual bidding or Enhanced CPC for your campaigns, it’s worth testing different bid strategies to see which works best. Here’s how to test bid strategies effectively:

• Create Separate Campaigns: Rather than switching your entire campaign to a new bidding strategy, create a test campaign using the new bid strategy (e.g., Max Conversions or Maximize Conversion Value). This will allow you to compare the performance of the different strategies side by side.
• Test Over a Sufficient Time Period: Bidding strategies need time to gather data and adjust, so make sure to run your test long enough to get statistically significant results. Generally, a test should run for at least two weeks or until you’ve gathered a meaningful amount of conversion data.

Optimize for Continuous Growth

Advanced optimization techniques are essential for maximizing the performance and profitability of your Google Ads campaigns. Whether you’re switching to more sophisticated bidding strategies, running A/B tests on your ads and landing pages, or carefully experimenting with broad match keywords, the key to long-term success is ongoing refinement and data-driven decision-making.

By implementing these strategies, you can continually improve your campaign performance, lower your cost per conversion, and drive higher returns on ad spend. In the final section, we’ll explore how to use broad match keywords strategically to expand your reach and further scale your Google Ads campaigns.

9. Expand Campaign Reach with Broad Match Keywords

After optimizing your campaigns with exact and phrase match keywords, there comes a time when you’ll want to expand your reach and capture more search volume. Broad match keywords are one of the most powerful tools for doing this, allowing your ads to show for a wider range of search queries that are relevant to your business. However, broad match keywords can be a double-edged sword if not handled correctly—they can drive significant traffic, but also run the risk of bringing in irrelevant clicks that waste budget.

In this section, we’ll cover how to scale safely with broad match keywords, including strategies for testing, monitoring, and optimizing their performance.

How Broad Match Keywords Work

Unlike exact or phrase match keywords, which restrict when your ads appear to more closely aligned queries, broad match keywords allow Google’s algorithm to match your ads to a wide range of search terms, including synonyms, related terms, and variations of your keywords. This flexibility helps your ads reach new audiences that may be searching for your products or services using keywords you wouldn’t have thought to target.

Here’s an example:

• Exact match: [plumbing services near me]
  • Ads will show for searches like “plumbing services near me” or minor variations.
• Broad match: plumbing services
  • Ads may show for searches like “emergency plumber,” “leaking pipes repair,” or “residential plumbing help.”

This expanded reach can be beneficial, but it’s important to carefully monitor the performance of your broad match keywords to ensure they’re driving quality traffic.

When to Start Using Broad Match Keywords

Broad match keywords should be introduced gradually into your campaigns once you’ve established a strong foundation with your exact and phrase match keywords. Here’s when to consider expanding into broad match:

1. You Have Sufficient Data on High-Performing Keywords: Before using broad match, ensure you’ve gathered enough data on which exact and phrase match keywords are driving the most conversions. By using these as a foundation, you can introduce broad match variations with greater confidence that the traffic will be relevant.
2. Your Campaigns Are Profitably Scaling: If your current campaigns are meeting or exceeding your return on ad spend (ROAS) goals and you want to expand your reach to capture more search volume, broad match keywords can help you do this without adding dozens of new keywords manually.
3. You Have a Strong Negative Keyword Strategy: Since broad match will bring in a wider range of queries, it’s essential to have a robust negative keyword list in place. Negative keywords will prevent your ads from appearing for irrelevant searches, helping you maintain a high quality of traffic.

Best Practices for Scaling with Broad Match Keywords

To get the most out of broad match keywords while avoiding budget waste, follow these best practices:

1. Use Smart Bidding for Better Targeting
   • Broad match keywords are most effective when paired with Google’s Smart Bidding strategies, like Maximize Conversions or Maximize Conversions with a Target CPA. These strategies leverage machine learning to optimize bids for conversions, reducing the risk of overpaying for irrelevant clicks. Smart Bidding helps Google’s algorithm prioritize high-conversion traffic, even if the keyword match is broad.
2. Start with Proven Keywords
   • Start by turning your highest-performing exact or phrase match keywords into broad match versions. This way, you’re targeting queries that are already driving results for your business, but with added flexibility to capture more search variations.
   • Example: If [emergency plumbing services] is a high-converting keyword, expand it to the broad match version “emergency plumbing.”
3. Monitor Search Terms Report
   • The search terms report is critical when using broad match keywords. Regularly review the report to identify search queries that triggered your ads but aren’t relevant. These irrelevant terms should be added as negative keywords to avoid future budget waste.
4. Test and Refine Gradually
   • Don’t expand into broad match too aggressively. Start by testing a small set of broad match keywords, monitor their performance closely, and scale incrementally. This will help you manage your budget effectively while ensuring that the traffic you generate is high quality.
5. Optimize Based on Performance Data
   • Track key metrics like conversion rate, cost per conversion, and return on ad spend (ROAS) for your broad match keywords. If a broad match keyword is driving a high volume of clicks but not converting, consider pausing it or adding more negative keywords to refine the targeting.

The Benefits and Risks of Broad Match Keywords

Expand with Caution!

Broad match keywords are a powerful way to scale your Google Ads campaigns, but they require careful management and optimization. By using Smart Bidding, starting with proven keywords, and monitoring the search terms report, you can safely expand your reach while maintaining the quality of your traffic. Remember, gradual testing and refining are key to avoiding budget waste and driving the best possible results.

Conclusion: Google Ads Roadmap for Strong Account Performance and Long-Term Success

Throughout this guide, we’ve covered the critical steps for building, optimizing, and scaling a high-performing Google Ads account. Whether you’re just starting with branded search campaigns or are ready to experiment with advanced strategies like broad match keywords and dynamic search ads, the key to long-term success in Google Ads lies in a systematic, data-driven approach.

Here’s a recap of the most important steps to follow as you grow your Google Ads account:

1. Set Up Accurate Conversion Tracking: The foundation of any successful Google Ads campaign is accurate and thorough conversion tracking. Without it, you won’t be able to measure performance or make informed optimization decisions.
2. Enable Enhanced Conversions: In today’s privacy-conscious world, Enhanced Conversions are essential for maintaining accurate tracking, even when users opt out of cookies or use ad blockers.
3. Turn Off Auto-Apply Settings & Create Remarketing Lists: Maintain control over your account by disabling Google’s auto-apply settings and making manual, data-driven adjustments based on your specific goals.
4. Start with Branded Search Campaigns: If your business has some level of brand recognition, branded search campaigns are a great way to drive early wins and capture high-intent traffic.
5. Transition to Non-Brand Search Campaigns: Once your branded campaigns are performing well, gradually scale into non-brand search campaigns to capture new customers and drive further growth.
6. Leverage Dynamic Search Ads: Fill in the gaps in your keyword targeting and capture long-tail search traffic with dynamic search ads, especially if you have a content-rich or ecommerce site.
7. Run Remarketing Campaigns: Re-engage users who didn’t convert on their first visit by serving remarketing ads across the Google Display Network or through dynamic remarketing for ecommerce.
8. Optimize with Advanced Bidding Strategies: As your campaigns collect more data, switch to advanced bidding strategies like Max Conversion Value and Target ROAS to maximize profitability.
9. Test Broad Match Keywords Carefully: Safely expand your reach by testing broad match keywords alongside Smart Bidding, but monitor performance closely to avoid wasting ad spend on irrelevant traffic.

Final Thoughts: Building a Scalable, High-Performing Google Ads Strategy

Google Ads is one of the most powerful tools for driving growth in small and medium-sized businesses. When managed correctly, it allows you to reach highly targeted audiences, optimize for conversions, and scale profitably. The roadmap we’ve provided in this guide is designed to help you build a strong foundation for your campaigns, optimize them effectively over time, and scale for long-term success.

By following the steps outlined here, you’ll be able to take full control of your Google Ads account, avoid common pitfalls, and continually improve your performance through data-driven decisions.

Ready to take your Google Ads to the next level? Contact GrowthIQ Digital for expert management, personalized strategies, and hands-on optimization tailored to your business’s unique needs. Let’s build a high-performing Google Ads account that drives sustained growth and maximizes your return on investment.