Worksheet: Launching your
first Google Ads campaign
Congratulations! Itʼs exciting, and possibly intimidating, to think
about pushing your digital marketing to the next level with your
first Google Ads campaign.
Stepping into a new platform to create your PPC ads isnʼt hard as
you might think.
Google Ads isnʼt an overly complicated platform to use, but it does
have itʼs own specific processes and specifications to keep in mind
— especially when youʼre driving to optimize campaigns to
maximize your ROI.
Even on your first go-around, you want to make sure youʼre doing
everything you can to deliver as much value to your organization as
possible.
Weʼre here to help. As you approach your first Google Ads
campaign, use this eight-step worksheet to make sure youʼre
starting off on the right foot.
Step 1:
Define goals
All campaigns should be designed to serve a business or marketing
goal for the organization. To identify the right goal to pursue
through your campaign, consider the following:
❏ What type of customer are you hoping to attract?
❏ What motivates or interests them?
❏ What do you want them to do or buy?
❏ What pain point are you addressing for them?
❏ What is the desired action (call your business, make a
purchase, fill out a form on your website, request a demo,
and so on)?
❏ How will you define success? What metrics will you use to
measure performance (clicks, calls, form submissions)?
Once you have a goal defined, you can move forward with
developing the adʼs messaging and content.
Step 2:
Research competitors
By using research tools to investigate your competitorsʼ own
keyword strategies and even spending levels, you can build
your own strategy that takes advantage of the gaps in their
strategies — or attacks those ad strategies head-on.
Your research should include the following:
❏ Find out what keywords your competitors are
targeting. The Google Ads Keyword Planner lets you
plug in your competitorsʼ URLs to see what types of
keywords are being targeted to drive traffic to their
sites.
❏ Find out what types of ads are being run, and what
kinds of budgets they carry. Youʼll need to invest in a
paid service that offers this data. There are many to
choose from, but SEMrush is a well-known research
tool that lets you see what kinds of ads your
competitors are running, and tells you how much
theyʼre spending.
Competitor research will prove useful in helping you develop
and define the parameters of your Google Ads campaign.
Step 3:
Set a budget
Budgeting involves making a few different decisions within
Google Ads. To figure out your spending level, youʼll need to
do the following:
❏ Figure out your daily budget. This is the maximum
amount of money youʼd like to spend on your
campaign in a single day. You can set your ad
campaign to never exceed this amount, which gives
you control over your spending.
❏ Set a maximum bid amount. This is the maximum
amount of money youʼre willing to spend for a single
click on your ad. This bid amount is determined by a
few different factors, including your daily budget, the
relative competitiveness of the keywords being
targeted, and the revenue generated by a single
conversion with your business.
Having a general budget will help you piece together a
keyword strategy and make other decisions to finalize your
campaign. Depending on decisions you make further down
this worksheet, though, you may need to revisit budgeting
later on.
PRO TIP: When you are just starting out you may want to
start small to see what works for your business then invest
more in the most successful outcomes.
PPC budget calculator
1. Select keywords for your ad copy
2. Research search volume trends
3. Research CPC (Cost Per Click) estimates
4. Target geographic areas important to your business
5. Run ads at specific times to your business and industry
6. Target devices that are specific to your customers
7. Monitor your position, ad spend, and conversion metrics
7 rules for preparing a PPC
ad spend budget
What is your current CPC (cost-per-click):
Use internal data or Keyword Planner within Google AdWords.
$10
What percentage of website visitors convert
into leads?
A conversion may be defined by performing an action like
filling out a form, starting a trial, downloading a content
offer, or completing some other action that's valuable to
your business.
20
Cost per lead
$50
=(CPC/conversion rate)*100
Sales team capacity:
How many leads can your sales team take care of every
month?
5
PPC budget:
$250
(cost per lead x sales team
capacity)
Step 4:
Plan your keywords
Keywords are the cornerstone of any pay-per-click (PPC)
Google Ad. Hereʼs how to approach this process in a way that
uncovers worthwhile keywords:
❏ Refer back to the keywords your competitors are
using. Are there any less competitive and more
cost-effective keywords that might be worth targeting
in your ads?
❏ What keywords relate to your target customer? Many
businesses use different keywords to target those who
are ready to buy or those who aren't. Each campaign
should consider keywords with these stages in mind.
Some may still be searching for a DIY solution to the
problem you solve. Some may already be comparing
different local businesses to make a call.
❏ What kind of search volume does the keyword
receive? Keyword strategy is a balance between
search volume and relevance, and competitiveness
and cost. Tools such as Mozʼs Keyword Explorer and
SERP Analysis Tool can help you find the right
balance.
❏ What is the competition for these keywords?
Competition is ranked as Low, Medium, or High and
refers to the number of other advertisers who are
already appearing for that keyword. The competition
rank you see in Google Ads will be specific to your
location preferences you set in your account. You may
want to add keywords that have high competition to
your list because they are such a good fit. This is ok.
❏ Are the CPCs (or cost per click) for your keywords
overshooting your budget? The CPC metric tells you
the maximum amount you will be charged each time
someone clicks on your ad when they found it using
that specific keyword. If the CPC is higher, it means
each click will use up more of your budget.
❏ What negative keywords do you want to exclude?
Negative keywords allow advertisers to limit words or
phrases from triggering an ad display to a search user.
This helps you create focused ads that exclude
low-relevance searches from your campaign. For
example, if you are running ads for your pest control
company and you do not offer certain services for bed
bugs or crawl spaces, you may want to include
negative keywords such as “bed bug treatment” or
“crawl space.”
Negative keywords are the keywords you add to your
account to prevent your ads from appearing when theyʼre
included in a search query. For example “free” would be a
negative keyword youʼd add to most any campaign. That
way when someone searches for “free dentist” your ad
wonʼt appear.
❏ Use our chart below to jump-start your keyword
brainstorming. Then pare down your options to
identify the best keywords that meet your budget and
goals, and offer the greatest value.
Keyword Search volume Competition CPC Top search results
Negative keywords
Step 5: Plan your ad copy
Writing ad copy is an inexact science — but with time,
experience, and attention to analytics, you can refine your
approach and drive better results. In the meantime, here are
some best practices to keep in mind:
❏ Write copy for the customer being targeted, and in
regard to the problem you can solve for them. All of
this needs to be aligned with your campaign goals to
maximize your potential success.
❏ Write multiple types of headlines and descriptions
for your ad copy. You can ultimately select just one of
each, but you can run A/B tests of different
combinations to see which ones drive the best results.
●
Do:
● Use second person
language (you, your)
● Talk about your
customers' challenges
● Use action verbs
● Be specific
Donʼt:
● Keyword stuff
● Copy your
competitors
● Use industry jargon
● Forget a call-to-action
Headline best practices:
❏ Use the chart below as an outline for planning your
ad copy.
Headline 1
(30 characters)
Headline 2
(30 characters)
Headline 3
(30 characters)
Description 1
(90 characters)
Description 2
(90 characters)
Step 6: Perfect your call to
action and landing page
Every good PPC ad needs a strong call to action (CTA) and
landing page to keep the search user on track to make a
conversion. Here are some basic steps you can take:
❏ Cra a clear CTA that makes it easy for users to know
what the next step is. Make sure itʼs a simple, direct
CTA that flows naturally into the landing page content.
Examples: “Start 14-Day Free Trial”, “Schedule a demo”
❏ Build a landing page that specifically matches what
youʼre offering in the ad, and the needs being
addressed. If youʼre creating ads for a new seasonal
womenʼs clothing line, donʼt refer traffic to your main
retail page — set up a storefront landing page that
features the new seasonal line youʼve promised your
audience.
❏ Check the quality score for your PPC landing pages.
A relevance score is used to assess the quality of the
link between your advertisement and your landing
page. A low quality score can affect your position on
the search results page and can lead to a lower
click-through rate for your campaign. Google offers a
user-friendly guide on how to fix your quality score.
As with other elements of your Google Ads campaign, trial
and error may help you develop better CTAs and landing
pages to improve your performance metrics over time.
Step 7: Set everything up
in Google Ads
Once the details are finalized, youʼre ready to build your
campaign in Google Ads. Remember to do the following:
❏ Integrate Google Ads with other analytics or SEM
tools you may be using to track performance. Google
Ads can pass data into tools such as Google Analytics,
SEMrush, Moz, Databox, and CallRail to improve your
reporting.
❏ Integrate Google Ads with CallRail to track phone
calls and form submissions directly through
CallRailʼs platform. CallRail offers tracking
capabilities and data points that you canʼt get through
Google Ads or many other leading analytics platforms.
If youʼre fielding inbound calls to your business or
using the phone to engage with customers in any way,
this data can be valuable in helping you understand
how ads are driving calls, as well as how those calls
are contributing to your conversion rates.
Step 8: Ensure reporting
is in place
Setting up your campaign is just the first step in a much
larger, ongoing process to optimize ad performance over
time. Take the following important steps:
● Make sure CallRail and other analytics tools are
properly integrated into Google Ads and are
receiving data related to your campaign.
● Implement A/B testing to see what offers the greatest
value to your ad campaign. Every audience is
different, so the tone of your messaging, the pain
points used, the CTA you offer, and even the headlines
you write to grab attention can all impact
performance.
○ Remember: Test only one new element of an ad
at a time. This lets you isolate that element so
you can be certain of which changes are
producing what results. If you change more
than one element at a time, youʼll never be able
to say for sure what caused the change in your
results.
Building a Google Ads campaign is easy — but maximizing
the value of that campaign is hard work. CallRail is designed
to offer insights and value to marketing channels that all too
oen get overlooked by traditional analytics tools.
Discover the value of CallRail for your own business — sign
up for a free trial today.
Use website activity to see which pages convert: With
keyword-level call tracking, when a visitor comes to your
website following an online search, we assign a unique
phone number to them during their entire stay. Youʼll
know who called and what keywords, pages, etc., they saw
and used while they were online with you.
See what happens before, during, and aer a call
Take the guesswork out of your marketing approach by
drilling down into the paths and campaigns most effective
for your business. This data feeds directly into Google
Analytics, Google Ads, and Microso Advertising so you
can see phone calls as conversions.
“As an agency, it's critical
for us to show our clients
how the ads weʼre running
are generating leads,
whether via offline phone
call or an online form
submission. CallRail helps
us report on both lead
types in one platform.”
—Brent Stutzman, Brand Your Practice
