Getting Started with Google Ads- Your first 4 Months

Great! You’ve decided to make Google Ads a part of your marketing strategy!

It’s easy to jump right in and create a couple campaigns to quickly get started, but without a well thought-out strategy, your Google gambit might be over before it really begins.

Creating a couple quick campaigns without the essentials in place and you will quickly burn through those precious advertising dollars and will only be left with frustration and discouragement.

Your competitors have already picked up a thing or two and have made enough optimization to make any newcomers have to really bring their Google-A-Game if they want to compete for profit.

But have no fear, as long as the following steps are taken in your first 4 months, you will be well on your way to investing your marketing dollars with Google rather than gambling.

#1- Know Your Numbers!!

The very first thing you will want to do before even considering creating any ads is to Know Your Numbers!

I can’t emphasize this enough.

So what does this mean?

This means knowing some basic numbers within your specific business to get to profitability as quickly as possible when advertising on the Google Platform.

We don’t start any part of the process without first knowing a client’s numbers to make sure their Google Ads Campaigns are Economically Viable.

You will need to know the following for each campaign:

#1- Average Order Size

#2- Average Gross Profit Margin Percentage (sales minus any cost-of-goods sold).

#3- Average Close Ratio Percentage (How many leads become a sale)

Based on this information we can derive the following:

#1- Average gross profit (in dollars)

#2- Maximum we are willing to pay for each click

#3- Maximum we are willing to pay for each conversion (lead)

Put these into a simple spreadsheet and now you KNOW YOUR NUMBERS, yay!

At the end of the day, it’s just simple math and either the math adds up (in terms of profit) or it doesn’t (sad face).

Here is our Know Your Numbers Example Spreadsheet.

These show 4 separate hypothetical campaigns and the numbers for each.

Feel free to use this to create your own scenerio.

You might be surprised to see just how much you can bid on each keyword, or you may learn some products aren’t worth it. Either way, it’s important to know this BEFORE turning on those first campaigns.

Anybody can create Google Ads campaigns, but not everyone can create long-term profitable campaigns.

The ones who do achieve long-term profitability and are taking steps to insure that every marketing dollar has a purpose- to generate a positive return on investment.

Accomplish just this one goal and you have an incredibly powerful spoke in the wheel of your marketing strategy and will be in a position to have a leg up on your competition.

#2- Have a Clear Strategy & Objective

All campaigns that we set up for clients have a focused approach from the outset.

For example- we like to start with the low-hanging fruit.

What I mean by this is your high-dollar, high margin product or service.

This is your bread-and-butter.

The higher the average order size, generally the easier it is to achieve profitability.

Start with these campaigns before moving on to lower dollar and lower margin products or services as these may require more attention and optimization before becoming fruitful.

Also, make sure to identify if you are predominantly e-commerce or lead gen. Custom landing pages are great for lead gen while e-commerce is focusing on optimizing orders directly through your website.

The following is an approximation of the First 4 Months of Google Ads workflow that Production Clicks follows (varies by client based on needs), but most follow this sequence of events:

Month #1- Establish Your Strategy & Initial Set Up

After you know your numbers and have a solid strategy, it’s time to get started.

We’ve got lots of set up work to do, so let’s get started.

This may seem daunting, but nothing a good ole fashioned checklist can’t solve.

So, let’s dive in to those initial tasks of getting you set up before any campaigns are started.

Initial Set UP

Set Up (Doesn’t Require Client)

Month #2

Month 2 is where we get to the heart of the matter.

Your first campaigns should be live by now and you are able to start carefully tracking search terms.

I recommend doing this every day in the beginning.

Even if you are using Exact Match keywords, Google still let’s a lot slip through and may end up showing your ads for queries that aren’t relevant. Use this as an opportunity to build out your negative keywords so that only those bullseye queries will trigger your ad to appear.

Optimization in Month 2 is vital and the more you watch the keywords, the less waste you will experience.

Month #3

Month 3 is all about building out you campaigns.

Just like building a home, you have to start with a sturdy foundation.

Month 1 and 2 were all about this sturdy foundation and now it’s time to take incremental steps like creating additional campaigns or identifying different adgroups within a campaign.

For example, if you are a sign company that does a lot of real estate signs, you might find that a campaign should have 2 different adgroups. One for ‘residential real estate signs’ and one for ‘commercial real estate signs’.

The more you can plan and organize, the more targeted your ads, campaigns and landing pages will be.

Everything should tie together to better serve your visitor.

The more relevant you are to the visitor, the more leads you’ll see.

Month #4

Month 4 is all about the Leads Pipeline. You should have a steady flow of leads by now. Your leads pipeline should start showing some signs of progress and maybe even a couple sales already.

Remember, sales will always lag adspend, so while your overall Google Ads marketing budget may not be ROI positive, you should be trending in the right direction with a pipeline filling with qualified leads.

Here are some tasks generally associated with Month #4

Managing Expectations

Making sure we get a solid return on our investment is priority #1, but it’s also important to manage expectations upfront since success isn’t always a straight line.

Your 1st 4 Months are going to be trying to get a campaign that either (A) wasn’t advertising to produce results or (B) was advertising before but maybe with lackluster results to start on the path of success.

Frankly, no easy task.

But if a solid marketing strategy is in place and you KNOW YOUR NUMBERS, then it’s just a matter of time.

Just like a fresh baseball pitcher who takes the mound, it takes some warmup pitches before we start to see the strikes.

The same is true for advertising on Google.

Here are the hurdles we need to jump over to reach success in your 1st 4 months:

Hurdle #1- First Month is Mostly Set Up

The first month is a lengthy list of set up tasks from designing a custom landing page to conversion tracking and of course creating your first Google Ad.

All of that just takes time to do it right, but then we’re off to the races!

Hurdle #2- Building Your Leads Pipeline

This is where the fun begins.

Those first few leads start to appear and now it is a matter of getting as many qualified leads as possible at the lowest cost possible given your budget.

This is building your Leads Pipeline

Now we know that the chances of getting a sale off that first lead are less-than-favorable, but the more leads that come in the more likely your first sale is just around the corner.

We don’t want just 1 lead or 3 leads or 10 leads, we want to pack it so full of leads that sales just start to appear.

You can never be sure which lead will close and for how much, so instead we focus on what we can control and that is the shear volume and quality of leads that your budget will allow.

Hurdle #3- Following Your Average Service or Product Sales Cycle

Assuming everything is going great with acquiring new leads, it is imperative we keep in mind most sales will lag behind.

This is less of a concern if you have an e-commerce site and strategy where a conversion is a sale, but for most lead-gen services and products, getting a lead is only the beginning.

Case-in Point- We have a client who designs, builds and manufacturers custom trade show exhibits. Their average sales cycle (or time it takes for the average lead to become a sale) is 3 to 9 months.

Yes, that’s right!

A lead can take up to a whopping 9 months to close (sometimes longer).

So it’s important that we recognize this from the beginning so you don’t feel like you are getting leads, but no sales.

We have to wait for leads to cycle through the average time it takes for them to close.

See for Example my rudimentary attempt at drawing a visual of this phenomenon:

Not uncommon to dip into the red since sales will always lag adspend

This feeble attempt at a diagram, is hopefully enough to put some visualization behind it.

Essentially, what I would like you to take away from this is in the very beginning, there is a fair amount of set up work before the fist ad goes live and lastly, you’ll notice that a lead that comes in from month 2 may not result in a sale until month 4 (or longer).

Your full Lead Pipeline is not full until after it has had anywhere from 3-5 months of ad performance followed by the sales that will track with your average sales cycle.

Simply put there is a lot of pre-flight work before hitting the runway and then a lot of speed that we have to build before it takes flight. (My best analogy!)

Hurdle #4- Optimizing

You Might even be wondering what a ‘close match variant’ is

Conclusion

This post was meant to give you an insight into our approach at Production Clicks.

The biggest takeaway I would like to leave you with is to not skip any steps, especially the early ones.

If you can experience some wins early on, you will want to build upon that success.

Too often people try something hoping it will just ‘work’ and when it doesn’t, they get discouraged and think ‘maybe Google Ads’ doesn’t work for my business.

While Google Ads may not be the go-to for all businesses and industries, it is the most important for LOTS.

There is no adverising platform in the world quite like Google. The power of *intent* where somebody pulls up the Google Search Engine and types in a query carries an enormous value.

Think about it- somebody is activily looking for what you sell. It doesn’t get any more powerful than that and most other platforms just put up ads by the thousands, millions or billions hoping something will stick like throwing spagetti on the wall.

Google is powerful, but like with all great power it has to be used properly and I hope this was helpful and provided some insight.

If you have any questions, just let us know!

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