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The process of getting excellent Pay-Per-Click (PPC) results can be long, daunting, and confusing. You need to test, tweak, and look for new solutions continually. Undertakings like keyword research, ad text optimization, bid management, landing page optimization, and more are vital components of a successful PPC campaign.
That’s why having Google Ads shortcuts are incredibly useful. Instead of draining all your time and energy, you can save time and get more done with the same amount of resources. This means the benefits flow to your bottom line as well.
In this article, we will cover 20 great Google Ads shortcuts that make your life easier. You’ll have more time to focus on the higher-level aspects of your business so you can drive better results for your brand.
Without further ado, let’s dive in:
Specific keyword terms don’t give you as much flexibility as dynamic search ads. With DSAs (Dynamic Search Ads), you can generate excellent results. Typically, they bring a lower Cost-Per-Click (CPC) as well, moreover:
If you have a relatively small campaign or set of ads, it’s much easier to keep track of keywords. However, as your business grows, there can be certain challenges.
You might find yourself bringing in account managers who don’t know every aspect of your existing campaigns, leading to bidding on duplicate keywords. Each account manager has a unique account structure that they prefer.
Searching for these keyword duplicates is time-consuming. However, Google Ads Editor includes a feature that will do this for you. You can be precise about how you want to define duplicate keywords to prevent wasting your ad budget. You can identify duplicate keywords in editor as:
The Label function is severely underappreciated in the PPC world. It can help you organize and save time in numerous ways. Apply it to the keyword, ad group, or campaign level to turn things off and on quickly.
When you want to compare your brand messaging and copy, it can be a lifesaver. Simply add a label to your ad copy, for instance, by checking the box next to the ad copy you want to label:
Then choose Label in the blue toolbar that appears.
One great way to streamline your ad creation and testing is to use the Ad Variation feature. You can find this under the Drafts and Experiments section. It’s in the toolbar to the left of the main pane:
You can select the blue “plus” button to see a menu allowing you to specify further which campaigns it will affect. You’ll be able to choose the type of ad that receives the variation, and all the other details you need to get it running.
You can even set up a percentage split of your audience. A 50/50 split is achievable, allowing you to adhere to marketing best practices, whereas with typical Google Ads testing, Google optimizes it automatically. Sometimes, the best Google Ads shortcuts simply leverage what Google has already put in place.
Logging your account history in Google Ads can be tough. With so many moving parts, along with multiple people managing one account. For instance, looking at year-over-year data might become confusing as the previous year may have been an event or anomaly.
Certain holidays, as an example, fall on different days each year. Additionally, PR campaigns or social media campaigns might have created a bump in traffic or conversions on a particular day. Adding notes to your campaigns can help tremendously with keeping everything organized.
Click on the performance graph in the Campaign or Ad Group view. When hovering over the line, you’ll see the Add Note option where you can type your note.
Once you have notes in the account, they will appear as a little square along the graph’s dateline.
Clicking on it will show you the notes left and the date they were made.
You can then check the labels you want to apply to those ads, or create a new Label.
Sometimes you need repetitive ads, but quite often, they are a waste of time. Maybe you want to show a countdown for the number of days an item is on sale, or an ecommerce brand wants to accurately reflect in near-real-time the amount of a specific product that they still have in stock. Managing these repetitive ads manually is a nightmare!
This feature requires you to create a template with product attributes that you can upload to Google Ads. There are many ways to do this, but the standard attributes include:
What this does is allows you to input a snippet of code connected to your informational spreadsheet, which then inputs things like the correct model, brand, price, or another parameter into your ad copy. Automating processes like this is a huge time saver, but also helps you run more effective relevant ads. You can find how to use ad customizer in Google Ads.
The best way to stop wasting your time obsessing over is to embrace automation and best-in-class PPC tools. Tools like PPC Signal can give you detailed insights about your account. Which campaign is lacking? Which campaign is gaining success these days? What are best devices performing on specific day and specific time, why CTR started droping , why Avg. CPC started moving high for last couple of days. These are all important questions that can be answered when you equip your team with the right arsenal.
Reporting is one of the biggest PPC time sinks, especially if you’re dealing with some of the issues we’ve mentioned above. Reporting and analysis can be a big-time commitment, so Scripts is one of the best Google Ads shortcuts to implement.
These snippets of code can be used to create custom reports or make automated edits to your account. Scripts can allow you to do just about anything, like tracking historical Quality Score, tracking drastic increases in spend, identifying underperforming keywords, and more.
It looks complicated on the surface. But don’t let it scare you. The easiest way to harness the power of Google Ads scripts is to use the hundreds of stock ones already created, or reach out to a developer to whip one up for you.
Split testing is a major aspect of Google Ads. You will test out thousands of different ads during the lifespan of your account. Most people just let their underperforming ads sit there, wasting time and money.
Why would you maintain all of these non-performing Google Ads? It makes your account way more complex and intimidating than it needs to be.
Instead of trying to be everything to everyone with hundreds or thousands of ads, use Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI) instead. DKI replaces specific words in your ad with terms that match exactly what the searcher was looking for.
A landing page that doesn’t deliver on your conversion or cost-per-acquisition (CPA) goals is effectively useless for your PPC campaign. Instead of spreading your resources by trying to create overly text in pages, focus on a handful of well and optimized landing pages like:
The use of UTM (Urchin Traffic Monitor) codes will help you track your customers for better data insights. In Analytics, not all hits will show up if they’re not in the paid search category. A UTM is simple to create and allows you to see exactly which pages are being visited. It’s the epitome of what Google Ads shortcuts are all about.
Here are some of the many benefits of using a UTM code:
Lots of marketers tend to stick with the search network when it comes to Google Ads. This approach is because the search network has high intent. When people are actively searching for keywords like “red basketball shoes,” they have a desire to purchase. They are ready to buy and simply looking for the best place to do so.
Compare that to display ads, when someone sees a banner ad while not actively searching for products. They most likely won’t click. That’s because they aren’t searching for your product, but not because the audience targeting is off. Google Ads lets you run diverse audience-based campaigns, yet most people aren’t taking advantage of them.
Here are some benefits of using a Custom Audience for Remarketing:
There are a lot of moving parts to Google Ads, which can make it a complicated tool. Even the setup process for the first-time Google Ads user is confusing despite being given step by step instructions. And unfortunately, Google sets you up for failure when creating your first campaigns.
For example, when you start setting up a Google Ads campaign or account, Google asks you to select a bunch of keywords for your ad.
By doing this, your ad will show for every single keyword in this group. But it also means your ad will not be relevant for half of them. So when you create an ad, you can’t offer a good value proposition for both that is specific enough to drive conversions.
People searching on Google Ads want specific results. They want to know precisely what they will be getting when they visit the landing page. You can’t risk having unspecific ads that target countless keywords. Instead, you need to start producing single-keyword ad groups.
Over the last couple of years, people have become obsessed with mobile landing pages. However, there are a lot of conversions happening that businesses just aren’t attributing to mobile.
On the phone, your agents can convince and compel your prospects to take action. This explains why click-to-call on mobile is a total game-changer.
It is being observed that on average, conversion rates from landing pages are less or around 3%, meaning 97% of people are just hightailing it out of there. Those people who do convert to leads, though, aren’t a guaranteed sale. You then have to track them down.
Click-to-call gives interested prospects the ability to instantly connect with a real, live person at your business, making them worth at least 3x more than clicks to your website. Just remove the link to your web landing page and direct people to call instead.
Historically, you needed to be very specific with Google Ads to choose the keywords you wanted your ads to show. You needed to specify misspellings or plural forms of your keywords using phrase and exact keyword match types.
Now, Google Ads includes “close variants” in your exact match and phrase match keywords. It’s one of the Google Ads shortcuts that every marketer should know.
Don’t waste time worrying about every typo or variation of your keywords. Instead, let Google automate this process for you. And when you discover extra keywords that you don’t want to bid for, simply include them in your list of negative keywords to exclude them.
Launching a Google Display Network (GDN) campaign can build brand awareness. Additionally, you might find that it lowers your CPC. When you want to spread the word about your product or service, leverage the Display Network to scale to a wider audience and bring people into the top of your funnel. What makes this one of our recommended Google Ads shortcuts is simple: you can scale your reach without breaking the bank.
Create several audiences when starting your campaign. You can identify new angles to reach your target audience by seeing how these segments behave. This is immensely helpful when you want to show relevant ads to the right people at the right time.
Keywords matter. But many marketers don’t realize they don’t need to be 100% original in their keyword research. If you can hijack some of the traffic from your competitors, then you should do it.
You can even mention your competitor’s keywords to trigger your ad. This introduces your brand to searchers, who might not have discovered your solution otherwise.
Expanded text is a great way to add more information when a short tease is not enough. The process of targeting long-tail keywords requires a little more elaboration due to the specificity of the search.
Notice the difference of characters available in the headline, URL, and description in the second one versus the first one. You have the room not only to write a persuasive headline but also to add a second headline and full description.
The longer text can often generate a better clickthrough rate (CTR). It has been observed that it can boost your clicks by 15%. If you think about it, it makes sense. The more you tell your audience, the more they can be persuaded to consider your offer. And you can include more keywords to match searches.
Keywords are essential in any PPC campaign. But there is more to marketing than that. You need to be persuasive as well. Make sure your headline and ad copy appeal to your market’s core problems, desires, and affinities.
Take a look at the top three ads that appear when you search for “acne help”:
The first ad, for instance, is asking a question. Questions are like commands to the subconscious mind. It immediately gets the searcher thinking about the premise of your question, and it creates curiosity. When you answer the question with a solution or call-to-action like “learn more,” then you give them a clear path to act on their desires.
Notice also how the ad doesn’t have an exact match with the search phrase. However, it is close enough. And the second ad has the keyword but doesn’t necessarily persuade in any meaningful way.
The third ad neither includes the right keywords nor has a compelling copy angle. If you find yourself at an impasse with your CTR, notice the words you are using. If they aren’t keywords, ensure that they are not useless filler.
Your words should always entice the reader to feel, act, or question in a way that forms a stronger bond with your product. Merely getting to the top of the search engine results by paying for ads is not a recipe for success. You must utilize long-known marketing psychology that has been proven to generate responses.
When it comes to Google Ads shortcuts, writing excellent ad copy is perhaps the fastest way to multiply your results without spending more.
Learning Google Ads is a tough challenge that demands a lot of time, energy, and budget to get great results. However, the tasks of campaign planning and optimization don’t have to take control of your team. Instead, by developing a solid understanding of Google Ads shortcuts, you can free up everyone in your organization to be more productive.
Take advantage of the strategies, tactics, and tools mentioned above. Even if you only apply one or two to get started, you can start experiencing more profitable results. That’s not to mention the decrease in headaches that comes with it. So put the advice above into practice today and make your life in PPC marketing easier.
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