Google AdWords is the most massive pay-per-click platform on the globe. Why does that matter to you? By 2020, the UAE’s e-commerce market will be US$ 27 billion and the KSA’s US$ 22 billion. MENA residents are spending billions online, and your brand will want a piece of that several billion-dollar pie.
What is PPC? PPC, short for ‘Pay-per-click’ is a form of online advertising that leads people to your website. There they can learn about your brand or buy your products. PPC ads can run in search engines (Google, Bing), banners (display) (Network Partners of Google) or on social media (Facebook, Instagram). It’s called pay-per-click because when someone clicks on your ad, you, as the advertiser, pay.
Why is PPC, where Google AdWords is the most massive PPC platform, more important than ever before?
1. By 2020, the UAE’s e-commerce market will be US$ 27 billion and the KSA’s US$ 22 billion. MENA residents are spending billions online, and your brand will want a piece of that several billion-dollar pie.
2. At the same time, the MENA economy is not in the clear, and so you want to be smart about your ad spend. As opposed to traditional advertising, with PPC you only pay when people click.
3. Organic reach has plummeted on Facebook. To show up on search engines, you’ll need to invest in SEO, which is the long-game. If your brand is launching a new product next quarter, and you want to be seen on social & search, be sure to PPC.
I want to advertise on Google AdWords. But I don’t understand how it is structured or how it works. Help?!
In this blog post, we’ll outline the major steps one must take when launching a campaign on Google AdWords. In future posts, we’ll show you specifically how to make Google AdWords work for the Middle East markets that your brand is operational in by developing test campaigns from major industries.
We’re using the New AdWords Experience interface and so all instruction pertains to this updated AdWords platform.
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There are 4 major stages of actions:
1. Pre-Launch Preparation
2. Organizing the Campaign
3. Executing the Campaign
4. Analysis
I Pre-Launch Preparation
a. Setup Google AdWords. You’ll need a Google Account, a credit card, and a product that you want to promote.
b. Click on ‘Create’ a Campaign + Select the ‘type’ of campaign you want (Search/Display/Shopping/Video/App Installs)
c. Define your goal. What do you want to achieve from your ad campaign? Do you want to raise awareness for your advertising agency, hospitality brand or real estate company? Do you want more sales, do you want to increase sign-ups, or do you want people to avail of offers? Whatever your goal, be specific.
d. Analyze Competitors – Who are the other players in your industry? What keywords are they using? A tool like SEMRush can help with this. What could you do different to drive even more traffic?
e. Define your audience.
Audience = The intersection of Buyer Persona + Buyer Journey
As with Facebook Ads that are structured along the customer journey, you need to understand where in the buyer’s journey your audience is (awareness, consideration, decision). In addition to the buyer’s journey, also work with Buyer Personas; these are set demographics that have particular ‘pain points’ that they are seeking solutions for. When you’ve defined the audience for the ad, proceed with the campaign setup.
f. When you target your audience, aim well. Specify the location of your audience, the devices they are on, and the time you want your ads to reach them.
g. Keywords. Probably the most important word in this entire guide is this word, ‘keyword’. Your keyword analysis and choice should be studied and thorough. Again, a tool like SEMRush can be very useful as is AdWords’ own ‘Keyword Planner’. If advertising on Youtube via Google AdWords, consider VidIQ. Your keywords should be a combination of long-tail + short-tail keywords. [In the next blog post, we’ll show you how to determine the right keywords for your MENA brand and will show you tried-and-tested guides for the same].
h. Set your Budget. You pay per click so make sure your ads are relevant and you’re getting the right traffic to your landing page.
i. Ad Extensions. Add them always. Telephone no., sitelinks, location etc. so Google will show it where relevant.
j. Track Conversions using ‘AdWords Conversion Pixel’ and analyze in Google Analytics (simply click on ‘Admin’ in Google Analytics and then Select ‘AdWords Linking’).
II Organize Campaign
a. Use Ad Groups to organize ads by theme. Use only 1 keyword per ad group.
b. Set Match Types – If you go broad, you get more clicks. BUT you spend more. So, use modified broad, phrase or exact match types.
c. Use ‘Negative Keywords’. This way, your ad does not show when people are searching for undesirable terms (‘cheap’ or ‘budget’ advertising, for example). With them, your ads don’t compete with one another (for example ads/the ad group proffering your ‘digital marketing’ services competing those that advertise your ‘branding’ services)
d. Create the Ads. It’s obvious that you want to make your Call-To-Action compelling, and relevant to what people are searching for. AdWords recommends creating at least 3 ads for the same ad group. That’s A/B/C Testing for you.
e. Launch!
III Campaign Execution
a. Check Budgets
b. Adjust Bids
c. Check Search Terms
IV Analysis
a. Keywords – Drop old, poor-performing ones, add new ones.
b. Recycle, recycle, recycle – recycle ads that worked well. And take out the trash. Dump those ads that didn’t perform well.
c. Don’t forget your Landing Pages. If some ads showed high click through rates, but low conversions – then maybe you need to work on optimizing your landing page towards increasing conversions.
d. Adjust Parameters – keywords, audience, location, device settings.
And there you have it! A breakdown of the 4 Action Stages to Running a Google AdWords Campaign for MENA Brands on the new AdWords Experience as part of our Advertising Fundamentals 101 series. Questions, comments, suggestions? That’s what the Comments section below is for. We’d love for you to use it.
Watch out for the next blog post on how to optimize ads on AdWords for some of the most competitive industries in the UAE and GCC!
Watch out for more marketing and PPC advertising tips as part of our larger Digital Advertising Fundamentals 101 series.
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