Goal:
To design a complete structure of how your Google Ad Account will look like for Search campaigns.
Ideal Outcome:
You have a blueprint ready to implement on Google Ads Manager.
Prerequisites or requirements:
Research the type of products or services your company (or your client) has, what are the campaign objective(s), the type of campaigns you plan on running, budget, and the type of target audience you’re working with. Getting this information prior will help you design the ad account structure more easily.
Why this is important:
A well structured ad account will help you (and your colleagues) save time, navigate, scale, optimize and make reports for the ad account.
Where this is done:
A piece of paper, notepad, Google Spreadsheet (template provided below) or Google Draw if you’re presenting to a client.
When is this done:
During the campaign planning stage, before you set up any ad campaigns.
Who does this:
Person responsible for media buying.
Environment Setup.
Make a copy of this Google Ad Structure spreadsheet template and edit it as you go through the document.
How Google Ads is organized
Google ads is organized into 3 layers: Account, campaigns, and ad groups.
- Account — Each account has a unique email, password and billing information.
- Campaign — Each campaign has its own budget and campaign settings (campaign objective, location targeting, language, audience targeting, and bidding strategy)
- Ad group —Each ad group targets a set of keywords with one or more similar ads.Source: Google
Design your Ad Account Structure
Account Level — Create one Google Ad account for each website (domain) you’re launching ad campaigns for.
Note: Google recommends one account for each website but it’s not strictly enforced. The main reason to create separate accounts would be for billing or access purposes. For example managing accounts for different clients (and their website).
Campaign Level — This will depend on your objective, business model, product offering and target market. Consider these options:
For businesses with a single product or service to market:
Create at least one campaign for each campaign objective. This campaign structure is recommended if you’re designing a sales funnel for a product. First create awareness, then get them to become a subscriber and finally get them to purchase a product.
For businesses with multiple brands, products (eCommerce) or services to market.
If you offer different products or services. It’s recommended to create at least one campaign for each product type. Here’s an example for an ecommerce website selling electronics:
Note: If you plan to create a campaign for each product type AND for each stage of the sales funnel, you may end up with a lot of campaigns. This is fine only if you have sufficient budget across all campaigns (Min. $10-$50/day for each campaign)
(Optional) Create a campaign for your own-branded keywords, competitor-branded keywords, and non-branded keywords if bidding on competitors’ keywords is part of your strategy.
Ad Group level
For each ad group, choose keywords that are closely related to the ad copy and your landing page for that ad group.
Here are 3 examples of ad groups depending on your business model and objectives.
Note: All ad groups are built for a single category of product or service, which is defined on the campaign level.
Ad groups for an eCommerce product category (Cameras).
Important: The above (and the following) ad group examples are simplified for illustration purposes. Oftentimes it may not be as straightforward as creating ad groups for different product categories. The current best practice is to categorize keywords and ad groups based on a common theme (i.e Same keywords or keywords with the same meaning).
From the illustration above, “DSLR camera for beginners” can be an ad group if there are sufficient related keywords and search volume. For example:
Ad group: DSLR camera for beginners
Keywords: “Best used dslr camera for beginners”, “best cheap dslr camera for beginners”, “dslr photography camera for beginners”.
Ad copy: “Best beginner DSLRs for new photographers”
Landing page: Entry range DSLR product page.
Ad groups for features of a software company (Social Media Marketing) .
Ad groups for marketing agency services (SEO).
Tip: When you select keywords for an ad group, think of the landing page they eventually visit. Does the core message of the ad copy and landing page specifically relate to the keyword(s)? If not, then it’s better to create a separate ad group for them.
Your final Google Ads structure
Tying it all together, your overall account structure might look like the following:
That’s it! You have now designed a structure for your Google ad account. Feel free to make a copy of the Google Ad Structure template and make it your own.