Adwords Campaign Setup - Part 3

We will now focus on the Adwords campaign setup. This involves organizing your keywords into distinct campaigns and ad groups. While this may be the shortest tip of this 6-part series, the Adwords campaign setup is perhaps the most important. Spend some time with this step and, if necessary, go back and research new keyword ideas.

Time spent with this step will pay off down the road!

To start off, let's look at the difference between a Campaign and an Ad Group.

Important Definitions for this section

Ad Campaign: An ad campaign focuses on one particular subject. You may have multiple ads tied to that campaign but the campaign itself is focused on a single topic. This is the key to a successful Adwords campaign setup.

Ad Group: An ad group is simply the collection of ads that are placed into a particular campaign. You can have one or more ads tied to a single campaign.

To visually see the difference between a campaign and an ad group, take a look at the below table. I've given an example of 3 separate campaigns - each with 3 ad groups. The example would pertain to a company that sells laboratory equipment and supplies.

Campaign #1 Centrifuges Campaign #2 Gloves Campaign #3 Apparel

Ad Group #1 Low Cost Centrifuges Latex Gloves Labcoats

Ad Group #2 Clinical Centrifuges Nitrile Gloves Aprons

Ad Group #3 Floor Centrifuges Vinyl Gloves Shoe Covers

Study the above table carefully. Do you see the difference between an ad group and a campaign? Campaigns are the broad categories you will define to promote your products and services. Ad groups contain the individual ads you will write on narrowly focused topics within the campaign category. This is the way you will want to sketch out your Adwords campaign setup. You won't be entering anything into Google just yet though - there is still some work to be done.

Ads within a particular ad group must be extremely focused on a single topic.

Focusing and narrowing on a single topic is the key. The more focused your topic and the keywords that go with them, the more successful your campaign.

The Centrifuge Campaign Example

Let's take a closer look at the Adwords campaign setup above - specifically Campaign #1 titled "Centrifuges." First off, if you know something about centrifuges, you know that there are many types for different applications. There are inexpensive tabletop centrifuges and there are more expensive clinical centrifuges and there are very large floor models running into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Obviously, one Adwords ad is not going to be
able to serve all these types of centrifuges.

If you were a scientific instrument company selling several types of centrifuges, you would create a single centrifuge campaign and then create ad groups focused on a particular kind of centrifuge.

For the low cost centrifuge, you're goal with the ad might be to get the sale immediately. The page the customer gets to after clicking the ad would then work to make the sale by providing all the compelling benefits, features and testimonials and would include a "Buy Now" button along with pricing and availability.

With the Clinical centrifuge, a much more expensive product, maybe your strategy is to get the customer to fill out a form for a sales person to come out and demo the unit for free. Your Google ad would then talk about providing a free demo and the page the customer goes after clicking your ad would compel them to fill out a form with their valuable contact info.

With the floor centrifuge, it's not practical to demo the unit and it's certainly not an impulse buy so you might decide your best strategy here is to compel the customer to fill out a contact form for a free centrifuge brochure and free pack of large centrifuge tubes. By offering the customer something of value that is free, you can start to build a relationship with this customer in order to understand their needs. By capturing their contact information, you can continue the process of marketing a very complex and expensive piece of equipment and hopefully close the sale.

Remember, depending on your product or service, you won't always be able to go for the sale right away. If the product is expensive or complicated (or both) it will be a multi-stage process and you may decide your number one goal with an Adwords program is to capture the prospects contact information so that you can continue the process of marketing to them.

The point of looking more closely at this campaign is to illustrate the importance of focusing and sorting your ad groups within your overall Adwords campaign setup. Depending on your product or service, you may focus ad groups by product features, price, particular benefit, or customer type. You can even create a specific ad group that only shows up locally so that you know you won't have to travel far to demo a piece of equipment.

Creating effective ad groups within a campaign is limited only by your imagination!

It's not uncommon for people to run dozens of campaigns and ad groups simultaneously. I don't recommend you do this when starting out. Instead, you will group a few campaigns and ad groups like the above example and then select the single campaign and ad group you feel has the best potential. Once you have some experience successfully running a single campaign, you can add additional campaigns and ad groups.

Ready to go?

Start your Adwords campaign setup by getting a piece of blank paper and grouping your keywords together in campaigns and ad groups by similar topic. You will most likely find that your keywords naturally fit into a few campaigns and ad groups. Take your time and be as logical as possible and, most importantly, make sure the keywords you attach to your ad group are focused. Maybe you find your keywords are already focused enough that you really only have one clear campaign that emerges. That's fine. Then just work separating your keywords into specific ad groups.

Below are some helpful tips for your Adwords campaign setup.

Tips For A Successful Adwords Campaign Setup

Tip #1: Look at your keywords and start grouping them together by broad topic. Each of these broad topics you define will become a separate campaign. To help you define each campaign, ask yourself "What is my #1 goal with this campaign?" Maybe it's to sell a particular product, or get more people to register for your newsletter, or collect contact information for a followup sales call.

Tip #2: After you have grouped your keywords into one or more campaign topics, separate the keywords in each campaign topic into ad groups. Just like you did with each campaign topic you created, your ad groups should focus on a specific product or service within the overall broad campaign topic. For example, if one of your campaigns deals with the various hard goods you sell, then the ad groups for that campaign could each focus on a specific product. Look at the above table again and you'll see how each of the three ad groups ties back to each broad campaign topic.

Tip #3: As you progress in deciding which keywords to attach to the ad groups under each campaign, you may think of additional keywords you want to research. Simply go back to the keyword research tool and let Google get you the data for these new keywords. If you like the data you see, add these keywords to your library. Keyword research isn't a one time endeavor. You will always uncover new keywords as you build new ad groups and campaigns.

At the end of this step on designing your Adwords campaign setup, you will have your various campaigns and ad groups organized and have chosen the single campaign/ad group that you feel has the best potential. Once you have some experience running your selected campaign, you can come back to this information later and build additional campaigns.

Congratulations, you are now ready to move on to Part 4 of this series.