- Choosing the Right Campaign Type
- Setting a Realistic Budget
- Keyword & Audience Targeting
- Landing Pages That Convert
- Optimization That Actually Moves the Needle
Choosing the Right Campaign Type
Search campaigns capture existing demand, Shopping campaigns work best for product-based businesses, Display builds awareness, and Performance Max lets Google's AI optimize across all inventory from one goal. Most businesses should start with Search before expanding.
Setting a Realistic Budget
Your budget needs to be large enough to generate statistically meaningful data — too small a budget means you never learn what's actually working. We generally recommend a minimum test budget that allows at least 15-20 conversions per month to optimize against.
Keyword & Audience Targeting
Start narrow and specific rather than broad. Exact and phrase match on clearly commercial-intent keywords typically outperforms broad match early on, when you don't yet have enough conversion data for Google's automated bidding to work efficiently.
Landing Pages That Convert
Never send paid traffic to a generic homepage. Dedicated landing pages that match ad messaging exactly, load fast, and have one clear call-to-action convert significantly better than sending clicks to a multi-purpose page.
Optimization That Actually Moves the Needle
Weekly search term review, systematic negative keyword additions, and disciplined A/B testing of ad copy consistently outperform "set it and forget it" campaign management — this ongoing optimization is where most of the real performance gains happen.