Are you coming to the end of setting up your new Google AdWords campaign? Are you coming close to putting your campaign live? When in the process of putting an AdWords campaign live you need to make sure you’re doing a number of final checks to make sure everything is set up correctly. The last thing you want to do is put a campaign live that will only waste money and not actually convert any visitors. In this article, I will be discussing 7 points that you need to be checking over before putting a campaign live.
Let’s get started with the first point you need to check…
1. Are All Landing Pages Working & Live?
The first point you must check before putting a campaign live is whether or not your landing pages are actually live and working correctly. The last thing you want to do is put your ads live which point to broken webpages that will only put off your new visitors. Not only that but you will also be wasting your own money as the ads you have set up won’t actually work as intended. Simply check all the landing pages and web pages you’re wanting to send paid traffic to and make sure they all work as they should. If it’s the case that you find a broken page you need to get this fixed before putting it live. A simple check that will help save you wasted money.
2. Are All Keyword Match Types Correct?
The next point you need to check for is your keyword match types. The different keyword match types all show your ads for different searches that have been completed. You need to make sure your keywords match types are correct or again you can waste money on clicks that will never convert. The options you have for the different match types are:
- Exact Match
- Phrase Match
- Broad Match
- Modified Broad Match
You can learn more about what exactly each keyword match type does with this useful article - A Quick & Easy Guide To Google AdWords Keyword Match Types.
3. Is Your Daily Budget Correct?
Your daily budget is a massive point you need to check, a mistake with this can be extremely costly! Your daily budget does exactly what it says on the tin, it’s your daily AdWords budget. Now Google AdWords can double your daily budget if demand is there but it will equal itself over the month meaning you don’t overspend for that month. Now let’s say you mistakenly add an extra number value to your daily budget, you go from a £10 daily budget to £100 daily budget, you see the impact this could have? You could end up spending a huge amount more than you planned too, yes eventually you would see that this is wrong but even then you would have wasted a large amount of unplanned budget.
4. Have You Set Up Conversion Tracking?
What’s the point of running Google AdWords if you don’t have an end conversion, right? Having conversion tracking enabled will mean you can see exactly how many conversions you have had from your Google AdWords. This will give you exact figures on how successful your AdWords campaign actually is. You will be able to see what work is needed to be done to make your campaign even more successful. So for example, whether you need to work on the cost per conversion on your account, whether you need to work on the overall conversion rate on the account, or whether you simply need more of them coming in.
5. Have You Added All Relevant Ad Extensions?
Ad extensions help to make your ads stand out more on the page, as well as giving the searcher more information about your services/products. You need to make sure you’re checking that you’ve added all the relevant ad extensions that you can to help boost your ad appeal. Yes some ad extensions may not be right for your offer but make sure you’ve at least checked to see what extensions you do have to use. You can learn more information about ad extensions with this article we posted last year - Getting Started With Google AdWords Ad Extensions.
6. Have You Added Negative Keywords?
Negative keywords can play a massive part in getting your campaign up and running and can help eliminate wasting money. By adding negative keywords you’re ruling out certain searches from showing your ads. This means you can cut out showing your ads to people you know won’t be interested in your offer/service. Learn more about negative keywords with this great article - Why Use Negative Keywords In Google AdWords?
7. Are You Targeting The Correct Location?
Targeting the wrong location will soon lead to you having 0% useable leads and a big spend in your budget. Make sure you’re targeting people that are actually in the location you want to show for. So if you’re only a UK company make sure your ads are only showing in the UK! Same for if you’re a local company that only deals in a certain radius, make sure you’re targeting that radius. Not showing in the right location is one of the biggest reasons why companies waste money when using Google AdWords. A simple check in your settings will allow you to see whether your locations needs a tweak or not.
Not Feeling Comfortable Setting Your Campaign Live?
If you’ve read the above checkpoints and are not feeling too comfortable setting your campaign to live this is not a problem at all! Get in touch with us today and speak to one of our AdWords specialists. They can review your account and suggest what changes you need to be making to make your account successful.
