Google Ads Smart Campaigns – Part 2: Getting Expert Advice

This article is a follow up to my previous article, Google Ads Smart Campaigns: Designed For Small Business. It covers what Smart Campaigns are, how to quickly set up a Smart Campaign, and what are some pros and cons of Smart Campaigns. If you are unfamiliar with Smart Campaigns, I would suggest you give it a read. Also for reference: Google Ads

Free Expert Advice?

Before I cover my experience with Google Adwords Experts, I just want to rant about “free”. Severin Web Design offers a Free Consultation. It is part of the package I offer my clients. I always do this as it helps build trust and allows me to determine if Severin Web Design can help your business. I cannot create a thorough proposal without a consultation. It also allows my new clients to get to know how I work and whether my business is a good fit for their project. “Included” or “No Obligation” Consultation just doesn’t work as well as “Free” Consultation…

Everybody likes FREE. But sometimes free means either it is not free, it could be an up sell or it could be a complete waste of time. No business owner likes their time wasted.

Rant over.

In reality, the Google Adwords Expert advice isn’t free since you are paying for your Google Ads so support should be included and it is. Really. No up sells. Plus, it was well worth the time spent.

Here is what I stumbled upon…

Check Your Notifications

When working with products and services like Google Ads, Google Search Console or Google Analytics it is always a good idea to check your notifications. These are normally in the upper right corner. Google and other services like this will notify you if there are things that need your attention. I check these weekly as part of my tasks that also include checking my website’s performance and statistics.

When checking my Google Ads notification (the red exclamation point), I saw a notification about booking a free call with an Adwords Expert.

Image showing an example of the notification for Google Ads about a free call from an Adwords Expert.
Google Ads Notification

Fully expecting to be up sold, I thought well why not I will try it. I clicked Schedule Now, selected a time slot and entered my contact information. I booked a meeting for a couple of days later and almost immediately forgot about it.

The phone rings two days later around the time I had booked. I screen all unknown numbers because most calls are spam nowadays and will waste my time. I checked voicemail and it was Michael, my Adwords Expert. He left a pleasant message about calling him back.

20 minute Review

I called back and we had just enough time to discuss my Smart Campaign I had set up. We talked about 20 minutes. Seriously, only 20 minutes. But it was 20 minutes that were very much worth my time. As a small business owner, thank you, Michael and Google, for not wasting my time.

Michael was very nice and knowledgeable. He was already reviewing my Smart Campaign before I called back.

We covered three main topics/issues related to my Smart Campaign.

  • More Specific Product and Services Listings
  • Location and Audience Size
  • Multiple Ads Per Campaign

Let’s cover each.

More Specific Product and Services Listings

According to Michael, the Google AI (artificial intelligence) uses the products and services you create to build your keywords list. (The AI also uses your business category so make sure you use the appropriate category.) He explained that using more specific listings would make the AI pick more specific keywords.

For instance, I selected “private customers” thinking that more is better. If you think about it “private customers” could mean just about anything. The Google AI could pick keywords that are not related to your campaign. And more than likely, clicks that you really don’t want to pay for.

Michael also stated the sweet spot for Product and Services listings was 3 to 5 per Smart Campaign.

After some thought, I now have these four services listings that better define my business and the ad campaign I am implementing.

  • Commercial Website Design
  • E-Commerce Website Design
  • Website Maintenance
  • Mobile Friendly Website Design
Image of the new services listing in Google Smart Campaigns after discussing with Adwords Expert
New Services Listing – Severin Web Design

Location and Audience Size

Next, we reviewed the Location and Audience Size settings. Here, I chose to use a 20 mile radius around my business. That gave me an audience size of over 28 million people searching per month. My logic being again bigger is better. I even added 5 miles from the default 15 miles.

I explained my logic to Michael. Michael stated it this way “That’s great for Google but not necessarily for your business.” You need to have impressions (views) and clicks. The trick is to have impressions and clicks that relate to your business. Otherwise, you are paying for unrelated clicks.

Although I can design a website for a client anywhere in the world, the clients I want are small local businesses. For example, when I was looking for a legal adviser and accountant for the business one of my main criteria was to be close. It’s just more convenient especially in Atlanta. Again, you need to think like the person searching.

I decided to use a 10 mile radius around Severin Web Design. That still gave me a potential audience size of 8 million people per month.

Image of the radius selected for the new campaign. It is set to 10 miles and shows 8 million people per month.
Google Smart Campaigns – Where to Show Your Ad

We also discussed the other option on this screen, Set up specific areas, where you can select the zip codes and/or cities you would like to advertise in. That option might be something I look into if this ad campaign is not delivering. I will follow up this article if I find that more successful.

Multiple Ads Per Campaign

Michael then reviewed my ad and said it looked good. The ad included good keywords and a call to action (CTA – see definition below). But… (there’s always a but) did you know you can run multiple ads per Smart Campaign.

CTA – Call To Action

A CTA is a marketing term to compel your audience to do something. This could be to click for more information, purchase, or sign up for something. They take many forms like “limited time offer”, “while supplies last”, and “call now and get another for free”. It gets the audience to feel compelled to purchase or click.

Why would you create more than one ad per campaign? Apparently, the Google AI will show the ad that best matches the keyword the searcher typed in. This means you can target your audience better.

I wondered if there was a limit to the number of ads per campaign and Micheal did not think so. He has seen up to 24 ads per campaign.

I needed to create a couple of more ads that targeted my potential clients or keywords better. You can see what I ended up with below. As I work on my Smart Campaigns, I will be creating more and probably rewriting these as I understand my audience better. The good thing is Google makes this easy to set up.

Image showing 3 Google Ads set up for the Severin Web Design Smart Campaign.
Google Smart Campaigns – Multiple Ads Set Up

Wrap Up

In this article, we covered the included “free” advice you can get with Google Ads. My Google Adwords Expert, Michael, was very helpful and knowledgeable. Kudos Michael!

We covered three ways Michael assisted me in improving my Smart Campaign. By creating more specific product and services descriptions, focusing on a smaller radius around the business and creating additional and better targeted ads for the campaign.

Overall this was a good experience and very helpful. Hopefully, you will find these suggestions helpful to your business. I would recommended talking to an Adwords Expert. For me, it was not a time-waster.

Have you had a good or bad experience with Google Ads Experts? Anything we should know about that experience? Or any questions about Smart Campaigns? Leave a comment.

Upcoming Article: Landing Pages!

If you read my last article on Smart Campaigns you might have noticed that I changed where the Smart Campaign links to. I created a specific landing page for this ad campaign. Landing pages are essential to online advertising. So look for that article in the next couple of weeks.

Thanks for reading! Kris

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