How to Duplicate a Google Ads Campaign (+ Why You Should)
Here, we'll break down how to duplicate a Google Ads campaign (as well as ads themselves, audiences, and keywords) -- and why you might want to....
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Optimizing paid search campaigns is like tending a garden.
You can’t just pop some seeds in the dirt and expect a bountiful yield. Even in the best conditions, your plants require consistent nurturing — but if you water too much? Those babies are gonna drown.
Similarly, paid search campaigns require thoughtful optimizations to bear fruit.
And knowing how to build your proverbial garden beds, assess what’s thriving (and wilting), and make adjustments accordingly is essential to pay-per-click (PPC) campaign success.
Let’s get our hands dirty!
Paid search optimization (or PPC optimization) is simply the practice of making adjustments to your campaign settings that improve its performance.
Of course, optimizing paid search campaigns isn’t an exact science. If it were, paid search agencies everywhere would cease to exist.
Whether you run Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, or Amazon Ads, the optimization process looks more like this:
Let’s meditate on that first step for a moment.
You’d be surprised by how many PPC campaigns aren’t set up properly.
This leads to a whole lot of wasted time and money, when you could be focusing on more high-level optimizations.
Even if you’re a paid search pro, take a look through this checklist to make sure your campaign settings are in place before making any optimization decisions:
Paid search is perhaps the most powerful tool in digital marketing because of its machine learning capabilities and bountiful data.
There’s a lot of guesswork involved in the initial setup (what keywords you think your target audience use, what campaign types probably deserve the most budget). But as time goes on — and more users convert — search engines get better at identifying who your target audience is and seek to find more lookalike buyers.
Optimizations are our way of nudging the search engine in the right direction and learning those buyer behaviors more effectively.
But it’s important to remember that the learning process takes time. And if we make too many changes too soon, we can stunt the learning altogether.
Give your campaign about a week or two post-launch before you make adjustments. If your campaign isn’t getting a whole lot of impressions right away, give it more time.
It’s important to translate your big goals into measurable KPIs for your paid search campaign. (Image: Unsplash)
When it comes to digital marketing, goal numero uno is probably more money in pocket.
And while “spend less, make more” is a perfectly reasonable expectation from your paid search campaigns in the long run, you’ll need to channel more specific metrics to measure success along the way.
Think of it as smaller steps to reach that bigger goal: maybe you’re a startup that needs more brand awareness before you can get more sales. Or maybe you’re a business with a long customer lifetime value (CLV), so a higher cost per acquisition pays off further down the line.
Whatever success looks like for your business at this moment, it’s important to translate those goals into measurable KPIs for your paid search campaign.
Once you identify which metrics matter most to your digital marketing strategy, make sure those goals are defined inside Google Analytics and connected with your Google Ads.
Your Quality Score is a rating from Google that gives a sense of how well your ad quality compares to other advertisers.
The better your Quality Score, the more likely your ad is to appear in front of valuable searchers.
It’s best practice for every advertiser to check in with your Quality Score regularly and make any adjustments to give it a boost. No matter your KPI, a better score will help achieve that goal.
In fact, many of the paid search optimizations you make to improve your score will cover a lot of your optimization bases (like improving your landing page, ad copy, and clearly defining your ad groups).
Aside from your Quality Score, there are a few pillars to check inside your account on a regular basis for improvement opportunities:
To your audience, “keywords” are just the words they use to ask Google a question.
But to advertisers, keywords are the trigger that activates your ad placement — the foundation of your search campaigns, if you will.
We use keywords to organize our campaigns, guide the copy in our landing pages and search ads alike, and identify users’ level of intent. So it’s imperative to review your keyword list semi-religiously to keep up with what your target audience is searching for at every stage of the funnel.
Consider semantic architecture here: The words you use to describe your product or service might not be the way your prospects search for you. Use tools like Answer the Public, iSpionage, and Semrush to assist in this pursuit.
Similarly, keep your negative keyword list updated to save your budget.
At HawkSEM, we use our proprietary platform, ConversionIQ, to identify which keywords convert at high volumes with a low cost and properly allocate the budget to maximize ROAS. You can learn more about it here.
Check in with your different ad formats and ad copy, then make note of which ads are performing well and which aren’t.
Make sure to A/B test along the way.
And when it comes to visual assets, keep your imagery and videos fresh and relevant. If you’re an e-commerce business, this means lifestyle images of your products.
This is especially true with Google’s Performance Max, which uses assets and audience “signals” the same way we use keywords — testing, targeting, and segmenting super qualified users.
Your landing pages and website should be extensions of your ad. Your visitor should feel comfortable and in the right place as soon as they arrive.
To accomplish this, ask yourself:
And, friends, let’s not forget how deeply SEO and paid search marketing are connected. Improving your website and organic search results will directly impact your paid search efforts, trust us.
Budget optimizations are personal.
That said, it’s a good idea to allocate more budget to the campaigns that are performing the best and lower the budget for campaigns that aren’t performing as well (or campaigns that are fresh in the experimentation phase).
Keep in mind some campaigns, like YouTube ads, might not be a high converting campaign on paper but play a big role in the buyer’s journey.
The lesson here? Don’t completely pause or deplete the budget for these campaigns. Know which ad types play what role in your conversion funnel.
Your bidding strategy and optimizations will depend on your unique goals and performance. However, we recommend starting with manual CPC early on.
Here’s why:
Google wants you to get as many clicks as possible — but mostly because that’s how they make money. Google cares less about if those clicks come from qualified leads.
So, if you just want to get the most clicks for your budget, you can use the traditional automatic cost-per-click (CPC) bidding system.
But if you want more control over your campaigns, especially in those early stages, manual bidding is a better option. This option allows you to increase your ad visibility and prioritize high-converting keywords, all while lowering your CPA.
But there’s a catch. Although manual bidding is great when you need more control over bids, this strategy also requires more time and energy to make sure you bid the right amount at the right time.
As we’ve discussed, your specific campaign optimizations will depend on your goals and performance.
If you’re feeling a little aimless at first, we recommend running Google Ads Experiments to A/B test your optimizations because it easily tracks the results for you and tells you whether or not there’s statistical significance.
But in an effort to provide a little extra guidance, we’re going to show you optimizations you might make for some of the most common KPIs in paid search.
Let’s dig in!
Want to get more users a-clickin’? The best optimizations for this KPI come down to your ad copy and keywords. After all, the more enticing your offer, the more likely they are to click.
Here’s how to optimize your campaign to increase CTR:
Sure, paid search is measured by conversion actions. But if you those conversions cost you more than they’re worth, you might want to focus on lowering your cost per conversion with some of these optimizations:
If you’re getting an abundance of clicks without any conversions to show for it, it’s time to reduce that CPC. Some optimizations include:
If you’re getting the clicks and the impressions but lagging on your conversions, it’s probably time to look at your website for some good old conversion rate optimization (CRO). Here’s what to check for:
This is a big one, but here are some paid search optimizations to get you started toward a better ROAS:
A well-organized and high-quality paid search campaign should always be your primary objective when it comes to making optimizations. From there, you can make adjustments along the way that align with your unique KPIs.
If you’re thinking paid search optimizations and management sound like a full-time job, you’re right.
Reach out for a free consultation and see if we can take over the heavy lifting — and give you a bigger ROI.
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