Google Ads: Keyword Search Campaigns. How to maximise your performance with Justin Seibert (episode 048)
by April Buencamino-dyJustin is the President of Direct Online Marketing, a top 200 Premier Google Partner who have clients around the world. Justin’s been named on the Hanapin Marketing “Top 25 Most Influential Pay Per Click Advertising Expert” list three years running, so we’re very lucky to have him here sharing the latest tips and tricks for your keyword search campaigns.
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About Justin
Justin moved to Los Angeles, California after graduating from Vanderbilt University. Within 2 years of moving, he ended up working for a financial company where he was assigned to a new marketing leg and asked to cover the Internet.
They ended up making money for the company and it opened Justin’s eyes to the fact that digital marketing worked. People were actively searching on the Internet, and you just have to make sure that you were showing up when people were searching for something.
What’s up and what’s new with Google Keyword Ads
On the keyword side of things, Google made an announcement back in February that phrase match keywords are going to start acting like modified broad keywords.
Originally you only had broad match, phrase match, exact match and negative keywords.
When modified broad was introduced, it was a good space between broad where you had a lot of wasted spend and phrase, that just didn’t get all the variations you were looking for.
Justin was hesitant after the announcement that modified broad was going away. But after going through existing client accounts, it doesn’t seem to make much difference which makes him more hopeful about this change.
Dynamic Search Ads
Dynamic Search is where you give Google a little bit more control. It’s like telling Google to scan your site or preferably, specific pages or sections on your site.
After scanning the content of your site or pages and you’ve created your ad and entered your description, Google will generate a dynamic title and it will have your ad appear.
For Dynamic Search, Justin suggests to:
- Put negative keywords and include your brand name as a negative keyword
- Don’t go with a huge budget at first
What drives great performance with Keyword Ads?
Google has been pushing for automation for over a decade now and has gotten better over the last couple of years.
Take advantage of this for your automated bidding strategies, but make sure you are getting conversions.
The world of automations
In general, make sure your conversions are right and that they matter to your account. At the campaign level, choose which conversions you want to optimize. Be deliberate and choose specific conversions.
On keywords, try Dynamic Search as this is a great way to test for SEO as well.
Set up your Google Ads yourself or hire an agency?
There is no “one size fits all” answer for this one and would depend mostly on the situation.
There are a lot of things to consider, one of which is the kind of capabilities you have in-house if you want to set it up yourself.
Insider Tips
If we’ve inspired someone to take their first step with Google Ads – what do they need to know to give themselves the best chance of success?
Whether you’re doing this on your own or if you have an account manager, don’t just set it and then forget it.
You have to look at the data and analytics. Look at the search term reports and see where the conversions are coming from.
In addition, Justin says you have to stay committed. The general mindset that’s lacking so many times is the commitment to what you’re doing with Google Ads.
Once you’ve started of course you’ve got to ‘keep optimising’! So what’s your favourite way to improve google ads performance?
What he recommends is to think like your user. Pull yourself out of the scenario or better yet, get an outside perspective.
Find someone who is not in your industry and doesn’t know all the jargon. See what their user path looks like and make sure it makes sense to them as the user.
If someone listening wants to learn more about Google Ads is there one cheap/free resource you’d recommend?
Crystal ball time – what’s coming up in the next 6-12 months that we should be getting ready for in Google Ads?
Automation is going to continue to take over everything.
Also look into Google Discovery Ads because Google is moving toward this. It’s simple enough to make it easier even for novices to have success with Google Ads.
Interview Links
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