Want Better Google Ads Results? Nail Your Search Campaign Structure

If you want better results from your Google Search Ads, you have to nail your campaign structure. Here's how…

*skip to the end for the example structure*

Define Your Budget

This is one is simple enough, how much budget are you willing to spend on Google Ads?

Limit Your Campaign Numbers

The fewer search campaigns you can get away with running, the better.

Google's bid optimisation algorithms work on a campaign-by-campaign basis, what that basically means is that your data is siloed.

If you amalgamate your campaigns into one instead of multiple, your bidding algorithm will benefit significantly, which will result in a lower cost per conversion.

Even if your keywords and ads remain identical, that small change will have an immediate positive impact on your results.

Use Segmentation... A Lot

Limiting the number of campaigns running improves your performance, but it's almost the exact opposite with ad groups.

Use as many ad groups as make sense to segment your campaign and ads.

As a digital marketing agency, we could potentially put all of our services into one campaign.

So for example, we could have ad groups targeting keywords for…

• Digital marketing agencies in Cork
• Digital marketing agencies in Dublin
• PPC marketing
• Google Ads agencies
• Meta Ads agencies
• Brand marketing agencies
• Etc etc, the list goes on

Then for each really specific ad group, we can send them to the most specific page on our website, or create a unique landing page for each ad group.

So, while our campaign is broad, our ad groups keep our targeting laser-focused.

That means we benefit from the economies of scale that come with a larger campaign, without compromising on targeting.

This may fly in the face of some of the advice you get from Google's own guidelines or their reps, but at the end of the day their goal is just to get you to spend as much money as possible.

They're much less concerned about how efficient your campaigns are running than your marketing agency would be.

I have included some example campaign structures for you to follow when building your own campaigns below.

Example Campaign Structure #1

Campaign #1: Brand Protection Search Campaign

Ad Groups

• Branded keywords e.g. "3B1"

Campaign #2: Service/Product Focus Search Campaign

Ad Groups

• Service 1 e.g. "digital marketing agency"
• Service 2 e.g. "ppc agency"
• Service 3
• Service 4
• Service 5

Example Campaign Structure #2

Campaign #1: Brand Protection Search Campaign + Location

Ad Groups

• Branded keywords + location 1 e.g. "3B1 Cork"
• Branded keywords + location 2 e.g. "3B1 Dublin"
• Branded keywords + location 3

Campaign #2: Service/Product Focus Search Campaign + Location

Ad Groups

• Service 1 + location 1 e.g. "Google Ads agency Cork"
• Service 1 + location 2 e.g. "Google Ads agency Dublin"
• Service 2 + location 1 e.g. "PPC agency Cork"
• Service 2 + location 2 e.g. "PPC agency Dublin"
• Service 3 + location 1
• Service 3 + location 2
• Service 4 + location 1
• Service 4 + location 2
• Service 5 + location 1
• Service 5 + location 2

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Written by Christian Donovan, Director of Performance Marketing at 3B1.