What Does a Google Adwords Consultant Do? Can They Help Me Grow?

So — you’ve seen the success that your competitors have been able to generate on Google Adwords and you’d like the same for yourself?  

Google Adwords is an incredibly powerful platform. It gives companies the ability to get their business in front of interested searches in their local area or nationally. 

Visitors that arrive at your webpage through paid ads are 50% more likely to buy than organic visitors.

But — if you’ve ever tried to manage a Google Adwords campaign on your own, you probably quickly learned that there is a bit more to it than meets the eye.

On Adwords, it’s easy to dive in head-first and end up burning through your advertising budget without making any real headway toward profitability.

Adwords success isn’t just about setting up great campaigns — it’s about understanding the signals that the data is sending and using that information to inform future strategies and optimizations.

There are two key types of Google Adwords consultants:

• Those that provide advice. They may help you to audit your current advertising operations, provide next steps, and help you to shape your strategies.
  
  
• Those that provide a done-for-you service. Not only do they help to point you in the right direction, but they handle all of the tasks associated with executing the strategy that they recommend.

Here at RiseFuel, we are the second type of Adwords consultant. We work closely with our clients to design and execute a custom-strategy with the goal of generating and growing ROI over time.

While every Google Adwords consultant uses a different process, there are typically a few key tasks that are a part of any done-for-you Adwords management service.

Determine Objectives, Define Metrics for Google Ads

How do you define success? It’s one of the most important questions that any consultant worth their salt should have for you in the beginning of your engagement.

Over time, you should work together to define a specific set of metrics that you will use to gauge success in your time with them.

Some of the most common metrics used by Google Adwords consultants include:

• Conversion Rate. Conversion rate is a common choice because it plays such a critical role in the overall success of any campaign. When your conversion rate is low, you pay a higher cost for each new customer. Higher conversion rates are a sign that you are targeting the right keywords and locations within Adwords.
  
  
• Click-through rate (CTR). The rate at which viewers click on your ad. A high click-through rate is critical for increasing your AdWords Quality Score and proving relevance for your ad with a particular audience. An ad that gets clicked is one that connects with its intended audience.
  
  
• Quality Score. Quality Score is a metric that Google uses to determine whether or not your ad was relevant to its intended audience. High click-through rates, levels of engagement, and site speed all play a critical role in the quality score of any campaign.
  
  
• Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). Ultimately, it’s the metric that stands head and shoulders above the rest. What are our returns? Over time, a Google Adwords consultant will help you to grow your return on ad spend.

Before you begin your engagement with a consultant, it’s important that both parties have the exact metrics that they will be using to gauge success.

Then, your decision of whether or not to stick with the consultant in the long-term comes down to cold, hard data.

Manage and Improve Quality Score

Google wants to connect searchers with advertisements and organic content that most closely align with exactly what they are searching for.

For years, Google had a problem with companies bidding on keywords that were unrelated to the keyword they bid. This led to a confusing and often aggravating for end users. The Quality Score system was designed to remedy this issue.

Quality score is a dynamic variable that looks at several aspects of your ad and campaign. Each keyword has its own score that affects your ad rank and cost per click — playing perhaps the key role in whether or not a specific keyword or campaign is profitable for your company.

With higher quality scores, you receive a discounted price on each click. A Quality Score of 10 provides a 30% discount on each click. That is a lot of wiggle room for an advertising campaign.

There are a few key ways in which a Google Adwords consultant can lower the Quality Score for any campaign:

• Segment campaigns around smaller targeted ad groups. By structuring each campaign around specific targeted ad groups, you increase the relevance of the ad that is shown to searchers — which is Google’s ultimate goal with the Quality Score system.
  
  
• Optimize Adwords ad copy. Ads that contain the keywords of the search are generally more relevant than ads that do not. But that is not your only consideration, as the click-through rate of the ad also plays a critical role in its total quality score.
  
  
• Laser-targeted landing pages. Google also crawls the landing page and analyzes it to determine relevance. In many cases, it is better to create a separate landing page for campaigns with lower quality scores to increase this relevancy.
  
  
• Decrease website load times. Slow loading pages provide bad experiences to users, something that Google wants to avoid. Faster loading landing pages mean higher quality scores.

Quality score plays a critical role in the profitability of your Adwords campaigns. A consultant should help you to lower scores over time.

Design or Commission Effective Landing Pages

Your landing page plays a key role in the success of your campaign. Some consultants offer an in-house solution for landing page design. Others may contract out to a designer or company to help them.

Either way — landing page design is necessary to run effective Adwords campaigns across various keywords.

Both your campaign’s Quality Score and conversion rate are dependent on the relevance and effectiveness of your landing page.

If you don’t have a designer on-staff, working with your consultant to have effective templates created so that you can create personalized landing pages for every major keyword group is a part of the ongoing Adwords optimization process.

Source: Vertical Leap

Write Convincing Copy

Copywriting, or the words that are shown on your landing page, are perhaps the most important part of any campaign. The way that you convey your value and the offer to your audience.

Copywriting is persuasion. Think of the copy on your website and landing pages as a salesman, there to persuade your visitors to buy your product.

Writing great copy is part art and part science. Being persuasive is hard. Poor copy is one of the most common reasons for advertising campaigns to fail and one of the most common reasons why it is difficult to run a successful first advertising campaign for your business.

Some of the key components used in effective copywriting include:

• An attention-grabbing headline
• Social proof (testimonials, case studies)
• A compelling story
• Personalization
• Focus on the customer
• A call to action (click here to buy now)

A Google Adwords consultant will know how to put together effective copy. Without it, you can’t expect any advertising campaign to be successful.

Split-Test & Optimize Google Ad Campaigns

In advertising, nothing is perfect out of the gate. There is always room for improvement as time goes on.

Improvement in Google Adwords landing pages is typically achieved through split testing.

Split testing (also known as A/B testing) is the process of creating two different versions of a web page. Those versions are the control (original) and a variation. Then, the two pages are pitted against each other to see which performs best.

The types of variations on each test are generally small. Maybe the wording of a headline is changed. Maybe the placement or color of a button. Maybe some information on your page is worded differently.

The goal is that with each test, you identify new improvements that you can make to your landing page that connect with your audience and result in more conversions and profit.

Over time, you’ll compile changes that help to noticeably increase your conversion rates and generate more money through each campaign.

Any experienced Adwords consultant should have a track record of being able to effectively split-test and optimize Adwords campaigns. It plays such a critical role in the overall success of your overall strategy that it should be a requirement.

Source: 360Logica

Install Effective Attribution & Call Tracking

Do you receive calls from customers to set up appointments? For most local businesses, this is simply how business is done.

But do you have systems in place for tracking the calls that come in through your digital advertising campaigns? If you don’t, then how can you be certain that your advertising channels are actually producing what you believe they do?

This is a big part of any Google Adwords consultant’s job — to help you better understand the revenue that is being driven by your advertising campaigns.

Part of that is done through digital tracking. By inserting a cookie or a pixel on a visitor’s machine, you can continue to engage with them through advertising on other platforms.

For local businesses, call tracking is big. Most call tracking involves setting you up with a specific number for interested prospects to call, which then is tracked separately from the number that is listed on your business website.

Of course, a few will fall through the cracks. A person might see your ad on Monday, then look your business up on Wednesday and set up an appointment.

This appointment would fall outside of your phone tracking system. Still, you’ll know a lot more about the ROI'S generated from your campaigns than if you didn’t have one in place.

An effective Google Adwords Consultant will not only help you to improve the effectiveness of your advertising campaigns but help you to measure it as well.

Source: WordStream

Install Marketing Automation & Funnels

The beauty of digital advertising is the fact that many of the tasks associated with onboarding new customers can be automated.

Things like setting up appointments, reminding them in the days leading up to an appointment, sending marketing emails, and checking in with them after their appointment can all be reliably automated.

Often, these are services that would also benefit your advertising campaigns as well. 96% of your visitors will not come to your website ready to buy. It takes time to build trust with them.

Marketing automation can help you to nurture interested prospects over time, walking them through the buyer’s journey.

Building that funnel is a task unto itself. But when done right, that funnel can be used throughout many channels and advertising campaigns, resulting in higher returns over time.

An investment in marketing automation and funnel development is an investment in your future.

Expand Profitable Campaigns in Your Google Adwords Account

Of all of the Adwords campaigns that you are currently running, which individual campaigns generate the most profit? Unfortunately, most companies do not know.

Part of the job of any Adwords consultant is to audit your current advertising operations. In that process, they should identify campaigns that are already performing for your business.

Then, they will look to expand those campaigns to new, related keywords or up the bid when it makes sense to increase traffic.

Navigating Adwords campaigns and growing profitable ones can be a delicate song and dance. Without experience, it is very easy to send a profitable campaign into the red by making critical changes.

An Adwords specialist will know what changes can yield more profit and what changes are riskier to make for each campaign.

Launch Retargeting or Remarketing Campaigns

Retargeting is the process of placing a pixel on your owned properties (website or landing page), which installs a cookie on the user’s machine. That cookie then allows you to deliver advertising campaigns to them on other platforms.

As an example — if a person found your website through a Facebook post, you could then deliver Google Ads to them on the display network, Twitter, LinkedIn, or any number of advertising platforms.

This is great because recipients of retargeting campaigns are already familiar with your brand and are more likely to purchase.

Retargeting campaigns can help you to stay top of mind and continue to get your brand in front of interested parties who may not have been ready to purchase during their first engagement with your brand.

Source: Single Grain

An Expert’s Touch Delivers ROI

Running effective Google Adwords campaigns can be very difficult, particularly if you don’t have any experience.

A Google Adwords consultant will help you to analyze your current operations, identify areas for improvement, and launch new campaigns for highly targeted keywords that generate a positive ROAS.