Sustained Success with Google Ads: The Core Framework

Google Ads is too often a game of 2 steps forward… and then 1, 2 or 3 steps back.

Sometimes you hit high performance but then can’t maintain it.  Other times you’ve enjoyed sustained success and then watch in shock and dismay as performance declines month after month no matter what you do.

It’s frustrating. It’s dispiriting. It’s difficult to figure out what is going on or what to do about it.

(And you already know how unhelpful Google Ads support is.)

But there is good news! This is a game that Google actually wants you to win even if they don’t help you as much as they should. Why? Because they want you to keep advertising. So they provide a platform and tools that enable most advertisers to win.

You just need to know how to navigate the platform and wield the tools.

This post will help you! It will give you the core framework of 4 pillars that enable sustained success with Google Ads. This framework does the job even in a tough economy and with aggressive competition.

But just before we get there…

What does “Sustained Success” even look like with Google Ads?

Here’s what “sustained success” doesn’t look like:

Ever-increasing conversions with ever-decreasing CPA (cost per conversion).  Or ever-increase revenue with ever-increasing ROAS (Return on Ad Spend).  Best to dispense with those fantasies now.  You can achieve such things over the short-term, especially if your campaigns were mismanaged until now.  But every campaign has a limit and, before that, diminishing returns.

Here’s what “sustained success” often looks like:

Relatively flat performance metrics with sometimes modest gains. For example, you manage to gradually ramp up conversions while holding CPA constant.  Or you manage to elevate ROAS for constant ad spend. Or you nudge up the % of “qualified leads” while total leads remain flat.  The point is that good results can often look humble and boring even though you’re doing a ton of good work in the account.

Why? Because Google Ads is highly dynamic. If you achieve a performance boost, that often comes at the expense of competitor performance.  Do you think they are just going to sit around and take it? Or will they adapt at your expense? Meanwhile, Google is changing the playing field through algorithm and feature updates.  And you might also be serving a market that is evolving (as most do).

It’s like you’re trying to play a nice game of chess and make sensible moves…

But then suddenly a couple of more armies get dumped on the board (competitive changes).  And then your pawns lose the ability to capture pieces (market changes).  And then your queen gets blindfolded while your bishops start jumping like knights and two new rows are added to the board (Google platform changes).

[BTW, if a game like that sounds fun to you, like it does to me – check out Knightmare Chess. Only during non-work time, of course!]

But don’t be discouraged!  Suffering setbacks and even running in place are perfectly fine as long as your business objectives are being met. You don’t need to “dominate” search or show charts where curves always bend upward.

You just need to make Google Ads work well enough to meet your business objectives.

With that said, here are the 4 pillars that will support your sustained success in Google Ads:

1. An accurate and precise focus on business objectives
2. An ideal account structure for learning and optimization
3. An optimized schedule for continuous performance improvement
4. A prioritized schedule for high-impact testing

Let’s jump in…

Pillar #1: An Accurate and Precise Focus on Business Objectives

The problems:

• If your Google Ads campaign goals don’t map to actual business objectives, then you end up aiming at the wrong targets.
• If your conversion tracking isn’t complete and precise, then you don’t know when you’ve hit the targets.

If you can’t tell when you hit a target, and you’re not even sure which ones to aim at, then you are just setting fire to your ad dollars.

The solution plan:

1. Determine the performance results that your Google Ads campaigns need to achieve. Get agreement and buy-in within your company and marketing team. Express the desired performance as key user actions for a given cost. Be both precise and reasonable.
2. Configure Google Ads conversion actions to track when those key user actions occur. Ensure they are comprehensive and accurate. This will need to be done in conjunction with your analytics, tag manager, CRM and sometimes 3rd party tracking tools.
3. Apply conversion values to user actions, and track “qualified leads” in addition to raw leads. This lets you aim right at the bullseye.

These steps can be complicated, both strategically and technically. But you must complete them and make this pillar rock solid before you can hope for any success with the other pillars!

Pillar #2: An Ideal Account Structure for Learning and Optimization

The problems:

• If your campaign mix doesn’t align with your business objectives, then you waste money and handicap your efforts.
• If your campaigns are poorly organized and segregated, then you can’t learn what is and isn’t working and make adjustments.

BONUS PROBLEM: Google’s objectives don’t match yours! Ever notice how Google’s automated recommendations often seem nonsensical and counterproductive? Same for the advice you receive from Google reps?  That’s because of this yawning gap:

• Google’s objectives: Get your account to spend as much as possible while yielding just enough apparent success to keep you around. (NOTE: actual success is not necessary)
• Your objectives: Increase the revenue and profitability of your business.

Sometimes those objectives overlap, but often they do not. When they don’t, following Google’s recommendations is a recipe for hair-pulling frustration and wasted ad spend.

The solution plan:

1. Determine the optimal campaign makeup to reach your business objectives. Keep your KPIs from Pillar #1 clearly in mind as you do so. Then allocate budgets and efforts accordingly. For example, in most lead generation accounts 70%+ of investment should go towards Search campaigns. Remarketing, Display, Video and Pmax campaigns should be properly tested and then paused if they can’t keep up.
2. Optimally segregate your campaigns and ad groups to give you critical visibility and control. Sometimes this segregation will be based on business needs. Always the segregation will be based on enabling effective long-term optimization.

[For an exhaustive list of account structure pitfalls, see “Pitfalls in Google Ads Lead Generation – A Long and Hazardous List!” Especially note the “Pitfalls in Prospect Targeting” section.]

If you make mistakes in campaign makeup or segregation, you can try to readjust later. But that costs precious time and money. Make the effort to put your best foot forward from the start.

These first two pillars are about setting up your account for sustained success.  Once you have them in place you can proceed to the next two pillars, which are about optimizing your account for sustained success.

Pillar #3: An Optimized Schedule for Continuous Performance Improvement

The problems:

• If you make certain types of campaign updates too frequently, at best you achieve nothing and at worst you sabotage Google’s automations.
• If you make certain types of campaign updates too infrequently, you miss opportunities to improve performance and respond to competition.

When it comes to Google Ads performance analysis and optimization, you have to find the “Goldilocks zone”. You need to find the right frequency for each type of update for your needs.

The solution plan:

1. Create a schedule for each type of important campaign update. This will be unique to your account. Some updates should be done frequently, such as reviewing search queries and adding negative keywords. Other updates should be done infrequently to allow statistically significant data to accumulate. This includes tasks such as reviewing performance by keyword or demographics or location or time of day.  You should also set regular reminders to review changes to competitor tactics and changes to the Google Ads platform.
2. Stick to the schedule! Don’t skip the necessary frequent analysis and updates. On the flip side, remember you need to wait weeks or months between certain types of high-value updates. Be disciplined! Making changes based on insufficient data is often worse than doing nothing.

We use spreadsheets to track custom update schedules per client – very handy.

[For a comprehensive list of updates you might want to schedule, see “Pitfalls in Google Ads Lead Generation – A Long and Hazardous List!”]

Here is a link to a handy statistical significance calculator. And some PPC analysis tools do the statistics calculations for you, such as the A/B ad testing tool within Adalysis. (Note: We have no relationship with Adalysis – we just genuinely like their tool.)

Pillar #4: A Prioritized Schedule for High-Impact Testing

The problems:

• If you don’t test big changes, then you miss opportunities to substantially elevate your Google Ads performance.
• If you don’t run proper A/B tests for big changes, then you can’t know whether observed performance differences were due to those changes.

The solution plan:

1. Prioritize the types of changes that could have the biggest effects on your campaign performance. Within your Google Ads campaigns this includes changes to budgets, bidding, ads, audiences and other targeting. You will also want to test certain new features that Google regularly launches. Beyond Google Ads it is equally important to test big changes to your website landing pages and conversion funnels.
2. Use correct methodology for A/B testing. This means you need to form a clear hypothesis for what you expect each test to yield. You need to know how you will accurately measure the results. You need to run the tests as truly randomized and concurrent. And you need to be disciplined. Wait to declare test winners until each experiment has received statistically significant data.
3. Sequentially launch these prioritized A/B tests.  Unless you have a large account with massive amounts of data, it’s not practical to run more than one big experiment at a time.  Doing so exponentially increases the amount of time you need to wait to see statistically significant results. Launch a new test only after the prior test has completed and you have implemented corresponding updates.

[See “AI for Google Ads Lead Generation: 3 Good Uses and 3 Costly Mistakes” for help in deciding which types of bid strategies to test.]

This pillar is necessarily more fluid in its timing than Pillar #3. And it can be more difficult to implement correctly. But it also gives you the most opportunity to be creative and to find ways to achieve significant leaps in your Google Ads account performance.

Summary

While not easy, sustained success with Google Ads is achievable for most advertisers. The core framework of 4 pillars outlined above will give you your best shot at it.

Our agency has successfully implemented this framework for many businesses. Could your company or marketing team benefit from specialist help to achieve long-term success with Google Ads? If so, reach out to us. We look forward to helping you, too!