For many, getting started with Google Ads can come with an overwhelming number of questions, doubts, and hurdles that prevent them from channeling its potential—or from using it at all.
We recently conducted a survey asking Semrush users about their biggest challenges with and fears about Google Ads. To overcome these challenges and upgrade your ecommerce toolkit, we’ve turned to the experts, gathering insights and actionable strategies.
So, whether you struggle with setting up your first campaign or have anxieties surrounding the platform or overspending, read on!
Identifying Common Fears and Challenges
Let’s look into the issues that people running Google Ads struggle with most. We’ve had conversations with our users about their troubles with Google Ads and will put these common fears and challenges under the spotlight. We’ve invited experts in digital marketing to guide us through each of these common obstacles with insights, solutions, and strategies drawn from their wealth of experience.
Concern #1: I’m worried Google Ads will show my ads to the wrong audiences.
The best way to know if your ads are being served to the right people is by investigating the network segments and placements. This will help you see if you accidentally opted into broader placements than you intended.
Because audiences no longer function on bid adjustments (save for manual bidding), you’ll need to choose audiences to exclude that don’t meet your requirements, as well as observe test audiences. I strongly recommend targeting and observing audiences for low-budget campaigns.
Because PMax doesn’t let you outright target any audiences, be sure that you have a strong placement, topic, and negative keyword exclusion list.
Concern #2: I believe that choosing the right keywords is crucial for conversions, but it feels quite complicated.
My mentor, Roy H. Williams, a famously successful advertising writer, always told me to ‘talk to the dog, in the language of the dog, about what is in the heart of the dog.’ This means if you want to catch your customers’ interest, you need to really understand what they’re looking for and talk directly about that in a way that is relevant to them.
Search engine experts work hard to make their systems understand how relevant a website’s words are to what people are searching for.
This is because they want to show people the best matches for what they’re looking for. I presented at a conference in 2012 about how searching online is like dogs chasing a scent. This idea got me invited to share that presentation again with the Microsoft Quality Score team.
This isn’t new information. Dr. Ed Chi from Xerox Research Center in Palo Alto found out way back in 2001 that people look for information online similar to how animals follow a scent. He called this “hub-and-spoke” surfing: you start from a main point and follow the trail if it smells interesting, but go back if it doesn’t until you find what you’re looking for.
Despite knowing this, many marketers still mess up by not keeping the trail interesting enough for customers, who then get distracted by other things, just like beagles do.
Our job as marketers is to figure out what the customer is trying to buy and help them buy it. We need to start with the keywords and understand the customer’s purpose and how they approach those keywords. For example, I had a chat with Keith Goode, a technical SEO expert, about how different people might search for the “best hamburger” based on what “best” means to them. If you don’t match your message to their specific search intent, they won’t be interested. Unlike a dog that would be happy with any hamburger, customers want exactly the experience they were actually looking for.
It’s the business that’s responsible for matching the intent exactly. If you outsource your keywords to an agency, make sure they explain to you EXACTLY how they’re doing this.
Concern #3: Choosing the right platforms for running ads feels like a gamble. I constantly wonder how to allocate my budget to achieve the best returns.
Start with the ad platforms that have the most potential to reach your target audience, such as Google Ads. For more specialized networks, try LinkedIn, Meta Ads, or Pinterest Ads.
Start out by allocating a higher percentage of budget to the wider coverage network—for example, 60-70%. Use the remainder to run ads on one or two other ad platforms. Once performance data is collected, evaluate the best performance based on your goals: branding, leads, sales, etc. Reallocate your budget to invest a higher percentage in the winning platform and reduce or discontinue the others. Always allow for wiggle room to test new opportunities you can add into the mix!