Google Ads:

However, it takes a bit more savvy than many people assume. You can't just bid super high and hope to win out.

For instance: should you go with the suggestions put forward by Google's tools? If you're wondering how much you should trust those recommendations then read on and we'll explore your options.

Is Google Ads a Good Basis for Digital Marketing?

Look, paid advertising is always going to be a mixed bag. These days most people have migrated to social media or affiliate relationships to get things done since that seems to be where the people are at.

What Google Ads offers to people is still a good thing: it offers an extremely simple way to start driving traffic to your website.

Nearly anyone can complete the Ads certification with a bit of time. It's not going to make you an expert at PPC marketing, but it'll help you get started on better footing than most people begin with.

Google Ads offers an extremely simple way to start driving traffic to your website.

Essentially, it's a solid start for a DIY approach and requires a bit less flair for marketing than things like social media marketing and less of a time and money investment than content marketing and SEO.

Most people will want to hire a professional eventually, but if you're just beginning you'll find Ads to be one of the best ways to bring traffic to your page.

Manual Bidding

When you use manual bidding with your campaign you'll pick specific keywords to bid on and set a maximum bid. You'll quickly find that this takes a bit of time, as you need to do all of the tweaks yourself, but it's generally the best way to begin.

You'll also be able to use different advertisements for different devices since they'll have different sized screens.

Because it's more complex, however, many people opt for automated and responsive advertising instead.

Keyword recommendations

Google recommend a big number of keywords to add to your campaigns.

The problem is that Google don't know your business, and most of those keywords are irrelevant or don't show intent. You should be really careful adding those keywords, or you may face a drop in your conversion rate while your ad spend will increase.

Automatic Ads

Lately, Google has started to recommend auto-generated ads. Those ads are really generic and don't include Calls to Action or relevant contact information.

Google not only create the ads for you but also add those ads to your campaigns if you don't reject them in a few days. You should check Google Ads recommendations and dismiss those ads, or they will start running without your consent.

Responsive Display Ads

The concept of responsive display ads is easy to understand, it simply resizes your advertisements for different devices rather than you manually changing your ads for devices like tablets and phones.

It's a handy way to do things, but it means that you surrender some control of your advertising campaign. There are a lot more restrictions this way since the ad will have to be able to appear on multiple devices with few changes.

Still, it can make your life easier and being able to hit mobile devices is extremely important to digital marketing campaigns.

Automated Bidding

Automatic bidding sounds like it would be much easier, but it has some disadvantages that'll be clear in just a moment.

The main thing that automated bidding does is to allow your campaigns to run essentially in the background. It'll adjust your bids to meet your daily budget and maximize the number of clicks you're getting through Google searches.

Unfortunately, despite automated bidding handling things automatically... it's really not a tactic for newbies.

You should only think about switching to automated bidding when your manual and responsive campaigns are already generating a good amount of traffic for your page.

Automated bidding works off of the data which your campaign has built so far.

It's also not as hands-off as you might think. You'll still need to adjust things as time goes on.

Essentially, it makes the management of much larger campaigns possible without constantly tweaking each bit of the data but it's also not as newbie-friendly as manual bidding.

despite automated bidding handling things automatically... it's really not a tactic for newbies.

So Which One Do I Go With?

In the end, most people who aren't working as professional marketers will be well served with running responsive advertising and manual bidding. It'll let you show up where you need to and requires a minimal amount of work.

Your ad groups can stay small when you're using manual bidding but up to a few hundred keywords, you'll be fine. Just make sure to take the data into account as part of your overall strategy.

For campaigns that are getting out of hand the switch to automated bidding is a good idea. It just needs to have someone backing it who knows what they're doing, since it's actually more fiddly than manual campaigns.

Think of automated bidding as a tool that can be used to lower the amount of time spent on massive campaigns and you're on the right track.

In many cases, a hybrid strategy ends up being the best option. You can keep newer campaigns rolling in manually until they've built up sufficient data and traffic to expand. Meanwhile, the established ad campaigns can be automated so that less work needs to be done directly.

In the end, it really does take an expert's touch to make the most of Google Ads. That's not to say an amateur can't succeed, simply that it takes a lot of time and experience to know which move is best for your bottom line.

Sound Complicated? Let Us Handle Your SEM

There's a reason many people hire outside help for their Google Ads campaigns. They're not too complicated to begin with but fine-tuning for traffic and conversion requires a bit more finesse.

If you're looking to make the most out of your campaigns then it's probably to your benefit to try out a professional marketing service.

Think you're ready to make your campaigns soar? Contact us today and we'll see what we can do for you!