Tips

1. Define your goals and objectives before you start any paid search campaigns.

2. Target your search account to your website – create individual ad groups around products and services you have pages for.

3. Keep keywords in each ad group to a minimum and ensure they are all thematically relevant – ideally less than 2.5 keywords per ad group.

4. Write bespoke creatives for each ad group and always run with three or four variations of messaging so you can test which works most effectively for your business.

5. Think carefully about match types: don’t put everything on the default broad match option unless you know what you are doing.

6. Include as many negative as possible and look to add these at an ad group level.

7. Decide carefully about whether to use in-house skills or an agency, and complete proper due diligence.

8. Focus always on the ‘quality score’ and the user experience. Setting up search badly hits your pocket very hard, and costs much more money than necessary.

9. Keep a close eye on competitors and the search landscape – their messaging and keyword coverage gives you an indication on what will work for you!

10. Optimise, optimise and optimise the account – this needs to be done regularly in order to get the best out of performance.

Adapted from

Ryan, D., 2016. Understanding digital marketing: marketing strategies for engaging the digital generation. Kogan Page Publishers.