The First 90 Days of A New Google Ads Search Campaign: Here's Exactly What to Do

Okay, you just built a new search ads campaign, whether you're a brand new account or an existing advertiser and you're testing new keywords, what the heck do you do now? You don't just magically start making money. I wish it were that easy. And if you watched my how to set up Search Ad Campaigns the Right Way and How to Optimize Search Ad Campaigns the Right way, which will be in the description below. If you haven't, then you've got all the knowledge in setting up money printing search ad campaigns, but they don't start that way. So what do you do after you launch a new campaign? What should you be looking for and what time expectations should you be setting for yourself in order to actually start making some money? I'm going to break all of that down from month one, two and three. That's how I like to look at ad campaigns, especially new ones. I like to look at them from a ninth 90 day time frame, not two days or two weeks like a lot of people do. There's a certain order and certain metrics you should be looking at month one that are different compared to what you would be looking at and optimizations you would be making in month three. So I'm going to break all of that down for you in this video. So let's go ahead and dive in before I actually dive into into what you should be doing month one, two and three on a brand new search campaign. I want to start off by setting expectations. I think that's actually the most important part. So whether you manage clients as an agency or freelancer, or you're doing this yourself within your own business, or you are doing this within a business and you report to a boss or the owner of the company, I always let my clients know that even if you're in an existing advertiser, if we are starting a new campaign and adding in new keywords that we haven't bidded on before, then it doesn't matter how successful everything else is going now. Your chances of success are usually higher, but it doesn't matter. You're starting essentially from scratch. So for example, you could be best buy selling appliances and your campaigns are doing really, really well. High performance from the appliance campaigns and now you want to start selling and advertising on computers and laptop keywords. Well, it doesn't matter how well your appliance campaigns do because computers and laptops aren't appliances. They're totally different from someone looking to buy a refrigerator. Again, Best Buy would probably be just fine starting that up. However, they have to go in with the same expectations as someone who's starting a brand new campaign with new keywords. This is new data that you're getting. It's way different if you're taking keywords that you are doing well for you in a campaign and you're segmenting it due to a structural change. That's different. However, if you're starting a brand new search campaign and you're adding a bunch of unknowns to it, you're. You have to go in with realistic expectations. And those realistic expectations are, you probably will not be profitable month one, you probably won't be profitable month two, you might be profitable month three, but the ultimate goal in 90 days is by the end of that 90 days, your confidence level in the data that you have just accumulated and started optimizing on, you are confident over the next 90 days, you can start steering that campaign the direction you want to go, whether it's particular ROAS or CPA goal or it's continued scalability that you're looking for. So have those expectations for yourself. If you're managing this yourself for your own business, or if you are managing a client at an agency or you're a freelancer, you should not be letting them think that by starting up a new campaign, you're just going to be minting money in a week or two. I have this all broken down into why I think 90 days is a good timeframe to be looking at. And I have the workflow, the metrics, and the optimizations you should be doing within those 90 days. So let's actually dive into this flow diagram that I built. I'll also show some metrics within real accounts too. But this is really what you should be looking at. So month number one, you just got the campaign built. What the heck should you actually be looking for and what your goal should be? Okay, so month one is all about generating clicks and conversions. So your goal should be 10 clicks per day and you should start actually getting some conversion volume there. Now, you'll notice I'm not saying hitting pro roas goals or CPA goals. None of that matters. What matters is I need about 10 clicks per day in order to actually just get enough volume. I've audited or consulted with too many companies who launch a campaign and they're like, well, it's not working. I'm like, you guys get two clicks a day. Of course this isn't working. You can't suffocate that. So 10 is not a hard rule. It's Just I like to see 10 clicks plus per day. One why it's going to give me 300 clicks in a month and I should have generated at least some conversion volume from that. And that's enough clicks to start getting some good search term data and actually being being able to analyze that correctly and be able to start making optimizations. If I only was getting one click a day and I went a whole month, well, I've got 30 clicks, that means nothing, right? Right. I can't do anything with 30 clicks. So that's why 10 clicks per day is what your goal is and hopefully you actually start generating some conversions from that. Now what KPIs should you be monitoring? Well, it's very simple. You really should just be looking at clicks. Am I getting clicks or not? And am I hitting that 10 clicks per day? Maybe your bidding is set incorrectly and you're not getting any clicks and it's not spinning the budget. I see that happening. By the way, if you watch my video on how to set up a search campaign the right way and also how to optimize search campaigns the right way, I talk about all of this. So I don't need to go too deep into the tactics there because that's already done for you in those videos. So make sure to go check that out, but make sure you're getting the clicks. So I would be monitoring that daily click through rate. This one's huge. I have audited campaigns where their keywords don't match their ads or at least the terms they put in don't match their ads. And what you should be looking at is am I getting at least a 2% click through rate. Now that percent will adjust dependent on what position your ad is, depending on how aggressive you are. But when you just start a new campaign with what you want to be looking at is am I at least getting relevant clicks? And I, I'm going to know that it's relevant because my ad copy is going to be relevant to the searcher because my click through rate will be healthy. So if it's below 2%, you're in danger zone. Something's wrong. Whether it's the ad or the keywords, you absolutely need to investigate that. There should be no reason you have less than a 2% click through rate. If it's like 1 1/2, okay, you've got something to fix there. But I just, if it's below 2 usually it's a bit of a red flag to me and I'm diving in further. So make sure you're watching that click through rate again, you might not get a good idea on this until you run at least several days, if not a week, because you're going to need enough click volume in order to actually get an accurate click through rate to be reviewing then am I getting conversions? If I've had a hundred clicks or fifty clicks and I don't have any conversions, I might be checking my conversion tag. Is the conversion tag actually set up correctly? Now that would be more on a brand new account where you might not have ever generated a conversion before. If you're an existing advertiser and this is just a different campaign, then you probably already know if your tag's working or not. However, I do want to monitor am I actually getting some conversions now and then conversion rates? Yeah. What's your conversion rate like? This isn't huge yet. This is going to be more month two, month three, but I do want to see what that conversion rate's looking like. So optimizations. You want to be adding negative keywords every single day. I would already have had a negative keyword list generated through negative keyword research. Lucky for you, I have an entire YouTube video on negative keywords. I will have that in the description below. But make sure to be adding them for the efficiency piece. That way you're getting rid of that irrelevant traffic very, very early on. And in the beginning you don't want to be doing like a lot of ad testing and bid testing and all this other advanced stuff. In the beginning you're just there like I've got a sound structure built on a campaign. I just need to start getting some data. So less is more in the beginning. And really the main optimization you should be making is just adding negative keywords. So reviewing the search term report, I have that as the optimization. Monitor the search term report, add negative keywords, then monitor your conversion tracking. Especially if you're a brand new account that hasn't generated conversions before. Okay, month two, what's the goal? Well, you want to review and optimize clicks and conversions. So the clicks and conversions you just generated throughout month one, you are now doing a continued review of that data. So the goal month two is you want to optimize towards 30 plus conversions. Sometimes that's not going to happen. Sometimes you just can't get the 30 plus month two and you know, you may have to wait till you're later on. However, the goal is if month one you started actually getting the click volume you need and you started getting conversions and click through rate looks good. The traffic Looks good. Your ads are resonating. Cool. Well, you're probably still not profitable, right? Because you're operating this usually from a max click or manual CPC bid strategy, sometimes even a max conversions. Again, I go through all of that in my other YouTube videos. I even have a full masterclass on bid strategies. I'll make sure to add that in the description below as well. Month two Though you've got a sound build, there's no red alerts there. Month two is I need to get volume here. Why? Because ultimately by month three you want to be using some smart bidding, whether it's TROAS or tcpa. So month two is all about trying to amplify the conversion volume and the ultimate goal there is to get the 30 plus conversions KPIs you should be monitoring month 2 clicks click through rate conversions Conversion rate same as month one. Not much is changing there right now. Now optimizations go a little further. So month two optimizations Adding negative keywords, monitoring search term report. We already know that. However, you probably have enough volume now. Months two while you're monitoring and reviewing the search term report, not only are you adding negative keywords, but you're going to be adding converting keywords as well. So you're going to find some search terms that are doing well, might have a couple conversions to them. Conversion rates look really good. I would start adding those back into those ad groups they're coming from and testing further with those. Then you actually are at the volume standpoint you could be not always, but where you should start pausing low performing keywords. So if you have a keyword that has had a few hundred clicks and the data is just showing, hey, this is like doing terrible. Click click through rates are below average, conversion rates are below average or hasn't converted at all and this thing is just sucking money, then you should be looking at actually pausing low performing keywords as well, reviewing budget allocation, making sure you don't have a one individual or two keywords inside of your new campaign. That's blowing all of the spend. And so you would want to review that and pause those terms if necessary or make some adjustments there. Also, you know, if there's certain issues within that campaign that are limited by budget, we're going to want to actually then increase budget there. So if we're not getting the 10 clicks per day that we need, or we don't see a path to getting 30 plus conversions at the current budget, I would be reviewing do we have enough budget to this campaign for this to actually grow 230 plus conversions. So I would, I would be reviewing a budget and the allocation of that budget, then adjusting bid strategy. So again, I go real deep in this. In the other YouTube videos, especially the bidding masterclass, but also the two search YouTube videos I've already talked about. In the beginning month one, you're more than likely, as I've mentioned mentioned before, you're on max clicks, manual CPC or potentially max conversion out of the gate. Month two, if you are on manual bidding or even max click bidding, but you're starting to get enough volume in conversions, you can start moving to max conversions then or start at least testing that again. This isn't always the case, but if you've got enough conversion volume going on month two, you can start moving to smart bidding. If you're not using smart bidding. Normally I'm not using smart bidding when I get a campaign off the ground. Month one, Month two, I'm starting to try to tap into smart bidding as long as I have the conversion volume to do that. And that again is usually going to be max conversions or max conversion value. I'm not normally adding a CPA or TROAS goal just yet. That's usually coming later. This will vary. There's a huge difference between month one and month two for someone spending $1,000 per day versus someone spending $100 per day. So it also just depends on the volume. But if I have the conversion volume there, month two and my KPIs are looking really good, then I'm looking at adjusting my bid strategy to a smart bid strategy. Okay, month three, this is now kind of that month where. All right, can we get this thing dialed in by month three, you should feel very confident that you're there or you're very close. So the goal for month three, you should be absolutely at that level of hitting 30 plus conversions. Again, don't freak out if you're not there yet. I mean, not every campaign is going to follow this perfectly. So this is just kind of the ideal scenario in the first 90 days if you're not at 30 plus conversions yet, because there's some other optimizations and cleanup that you had to do. Month one and month two, fine, that's now month four, month five, month six, potentially. So not all of this is going to fall into a 90 day time frame. So don't freak out about that. But in the ideal 90 day time frame stage, by month three, I am at 30 plus conversions and now I'm optimizing towards scale or profit goals. KPIs, I'm monitoring month three, same as usual. Clicks, click through rate conversions, conversion rate. However, I'm now going a little deeper. I'm looking at return on ad spend and CPA dependent on how this search campaign is. If it's E commerce, usually it's a ROAS. If it's lead generation, usually I'm looking at CPAs, not always, but in most cases that's, that's how their success metrics are structured. So I'm now looking at ROAS and CPA. Well, if my ROAS goal is eventually like 300%, I'm still just at like 100% ROAS. Well, I'm pretty far off from profitability still, so there's an issue there. So maybe I've got the conversion volume now, but boy, can I actually make this profitable. Same with cpa. The other thing I'm looking at is my impression share metrics. So to give you an example, if my volume of conversions is really high and good and I feel it's healthy, but my profitability or my return on ad spend or CPA is way off from my ideal goal, well, I'm looking at my impression share. Am I being too aggressive? If I'm too high of impression share or top impression share ad positions, then I know I'm being too aggressive potentially on my bidding. So that's. Now I'm diving into the bidding strategies and is this an area that I can start fine tuning my bids? That would ultimately work the math to get me to my goal. Now if I'm not, and I'm still under. So if, let's say my impression share is quite low, my impression share, top impression share and absolute top impression share aren't very high. Like my ads are not in the top spots. Most cases I'm actually in the bottom, then I'm a bit worried. Then I'm, I'm worried about, okay, is it a conversion rate issue or is it simply I cannot make enough money per sale to actually hit my goal based off of what I'm seeing in the data. That starts to come to light towards, you know, sort of month two, but definitely in month three if you've got the volume but you're far off from your goal. Usually it's a bidding scenario. You just, you're, you have to dial in your bidding. But in some cases if you're looking at impression share and you're actually not that aggressive and you're in the bottom ad spots, well, now you're a bit in trouble and it's going to be harder actually make this probably profitable. So I am diving deeper into impression share metrics. I have YouTube videos on how to be reviewing impression share metrics, so I'll make sure to add that as well. Maybe you're new to this and you don't know what top impression share, absolute top impression share is. I will make sure to include that video. Go check that out, it'll explain it a little further. But you should be looking at those metrics in month three. Okay, optimizations in month three, what should you be doing? Well, guess what, you're adding negative keywords. You're monitoring the search return report, you're adding converting keywords just like you did in month two. You're pausing low performing keywords if you need to. Just like you did in month two. You're reviewing budget allocation just like you did in month two. Now you're testing TCPRT ROAS bid strategy. You've got the volume now. Now you should be moving towards testing, going to a CPA cap or a ROAS cap. And, and you notice I never talked about ads very much the first month or two. That's because if you build or create a good enough ad, guess What? We've got YouTube videos on ad creation. So I'm going to have all of that in the description below. Then I don't worry too much about it. So usually if my click through rates low in those beginning months, it's not due to ad copy. Usually it's due to a mismatch between what my ad copy is in the, in the search terms. So usually it's like a keyword issue at that point. So normally if you follow our ad building and ad copy videos that we have on our YouTube channel, your ads will be good enough. You don't need to go too crazy with ad testing in the first few months. You're just there to get that data. However, month three, you've got, you've got enough data to work for now. You're going to be reviewing your ad copy, you're going to be optimizing your ads and you're going to be testing new ads. This is where you start going into more of that ad testing phase. By the end of this month three, you're either already starting to dial in your profitability because now you're testing CPA caps or ROAS caps. And now you're sort of off to this finely tuned campaign and you're going to have hopefully long term success with it and you'll have to continue to optimize and mold it and evolve it but you're in a good spot spot or you're not in a good spot, you're far from your goal or you're not hitting the 30 plus conversions. Now you have to reassess everything you just did correctly the last several months and you have to determine what's my confidence level based off of the data that I have that will be able to make this profitable and how long will that potentially take. These are the conversations that I have with clients. Hey, we have done everything in a very sound, logical, best practice manner. We've gotten great traffic, we have good click through rates, our ads resonate. However, this is not working to your goals. Is this something you want to continue or are you willing to make some additional changes? Maybe the offer, maybe it's a landing page thing, etc. To see if we can make this work. And normally I have the data, I have the math to determine whether or not that's even possible. But month three is kind of like hey, we're on the right path, this will be profitable. Or I don't know if this is going to be profitable. Here's the data reassess. Do we continue or do we scrap it and we continue to test then new terms or new campaigns? That happens sometimes you run tests, they don't work. That's a part of the game. Not everything's going to work out. However, in the first 90 days that is where you can kind of make it or break it. And These are the KPIs that you should be looking at. These are the goals you should have. Don't. These aren't hard rules. But you know, this is kind of what I use to be judging the success of campaigns in the early stages and those are some of the optimizations you should be looking at as well. I hope you got great value from this. Again, lots of other YouTube videos that we have that will help go along with some of what we talked about like impression share metrics, ad testing, bid strategies, how to set up search campaigns correctly, how to optimize search campaigns correctly. Which is more after month three you now would have a whole YouTube video masterclass that I did on how to optimize further and continue to grow those search campaigns. So again, hope you got great value questions. Put them in the comments section below. I will happily answer them if I can or if I know the answer to them and I will see you on the next video.