Unlike social media ads, where targeting is based on audience interests, search ads boil down to keywords. As a result, how you conduct keyword research before you structure your campaign is crucial. Once you select the keywords you want to bid on, allocating the right amount for your budget is just as important to set yourself up for success.
In this blog post, we’ll cover both topics of keyword research for Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns and setting a budget for ad spend.
Google Ads’ Keyword Planning Tool
Although there are multiple keyword research tools, Google Ads’ Keyword Planner works excellent. This planning tool is built inside the platform and is very simple. To reach it, you’ll have to sign in to your Google Ads account, click “Tools And Settings” on the top menu bar, then “Keyword Planner” under Planning. Once there, select “Discover New Keywords” and start typing phrases.
Let’s use a dental office as an example. To find what keywords you want to bid for a dental office campaign, you can type common keywords to start getting ideas, such as “dentist near me.” Once you click “Get Results,” Google Ads will show similar keywords. Additionally, you’ll get more information about each keyword, such as the average monthly searches, the top-of-page bid range, and the competition level.
In this case, the keywords we would want for a dental office would have a high search volume and some competition. You need search volume because without it your campaign will not serve ads. Further, competitive keywords usually mean other advertisers have found success bidding on them.
You’ll also want keywords that involve the person searching to hire someone for a service. For example, keywords that end with “near me” or have the main keyword (dentist) somewhere, like “teeth whitening dentist,” would be great contenders.
Organizing your account structure while searching for keywords to bid on helps this process. It is recommended that you designate a spreadsheet or a notepad to the list of keywords you may use, along with their average cost-per-click (more on that later).
Don’t Forget About Negative Keywords
Just as crucial as phrases you want to invest in your advertising budget, there are keywords you want to avoid. Import these negative keywords into Google Ads, so your ads won’t be served when someone searches for them.
General negative keywords include phrases like free, DIY, how to, and more. To find specific negative keywords based on your industry, you’ll want to use the same method you did for finding positive keywords. It may help if you ascend by average monthly search volume and find top-of-the-funnel keywords that you don’t want to bid on.
I Found My Keywords, Now How Much Should My Budget Be?
Finding a Bidding Limit
Now that you have a list of keywords you want to target on your spreadsheet or notepad, along with the average cost-per-click for each keyword. The next step is to find your maximum cost-per-click bidding limit.
To do this, you can find the keyword with the highest average cost-per-click and use that. However, you might find that most of your keywords are within the same range, with only a few outliers with much higher cost. In this case, you may want to use the highest of the median range.
The next step for your monthly budget is determining how many days per week you want to serve ads. Selecting your ad schedule is vital, as you’ll likely run your Google Ads campaign using a daily budget. For example, if you want to serve ads seven days a week, you’ll multiply the number of days per week (7) by the total number of weeks in a year (52) and divide it by the total number of months in a year (12) to get 30.4 days. Therefore, if you serve ads seven days a week, you’ll multiply your daily budget by 30.4 to find your monthly budget.
Setting a Daily Budget
Finding out your daily budget is the final step. You’ll want a large budget to capture a minimum amount of weekly data for the Google Ads algorithm to optimize your account. This formula depends on your industry’s average conversion rate and entire funnel, from the ad copy to your landing page. However, the goal is to generate at least one conversion each day.
To keep things simple, let’s walk through a dental office example. We set our maximum cost-per-click for our keywords at $15. Additionally, we are confident that we’ll be working with a 20% conversion rate, meaning that one of every five ad clicks will generate a conversion. We’ll need five $15 clicks to generate one conversion per day, equaling a $75 daily budget. If we serve ads seven days a week and multiply it by 30.4, our monthly budget will need to be $2,280.
Three29 is a Data-Driven Digital Agency
At Three29, we help business owners succeed with their digital and PPC campaigns. First, we meet with our clients to gain knowledge about their business and to understand who is their target demographic. Then, we conduct keyword research and discuss what Google Ads budget they would need to run a successful campaign.
After we move forward with our clients, we set up their Google Ads account, create their landing page, and set up all conversion tracking necessary for a successful campaign launch.
Don’t hesitate to contact us if you want to discuss what keywords you should bid on and your monthly advertising budget. We look forward to speaking with you about how our Google ads management services can further your business goals.
