How to Scale Your Google Ads Campaigns
You’ve set up your campaigns down to the nitty-gritty, performing numerous optimizations and finally reaching those stable monthly conversions. Now what?
Maybe you’re happy with your current results and would like to keep it that way. Or, maybe you're bursting with ambition, ready to see if you can invest a bigger budget into your Google Ads account. But how do you know if your ad campaign can scale up?
First step: Saturate the search volume
First things first; we need to check how much room you have to scale your budget with your current keywords and targeting. Luckily, there is a metric that can precisely measure this: Search Impression Share Lost due to Budget. This will show you how many impressions you missed out on due to budget restrictions.
Let’s talk numbers. Let’s say you invested €1000 in one month and lost 60% of searches due to budget. If we make the calculation, this means that you could have spent roughly €2500 over that same month. Be aware that this calculation is very rough, as those last couple of percentages of your impression share will have incremental costs. However, this metric is often a good starting point for understanding the ceiling of your campaign budget with its current settings.
Try and get this metric to 5% or lower. Once you do so, you can start looking at the next steps.
Second step: Expand your campaign
There is little to do once you have saturated all possible search volume with your current campaign settings. That’s why if you still want to scale more, you will need to expand the following:
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Keywords
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Match types
With more and new keywords you automatically increase the number of searches you will show up for. Start by looking at the Search Terms Report in Google Ads to gain insights on what your visitors are looking up. Next, use a keyword tool to figure out new keywords that compliment these search terms.
You are always able to scale with new keywords, but it can impact effectiveness. In Superkraft’s case, “digital marketing agency Ghent” will convert better than “marketing Belgium”. However, the second one will have a higher volume because it’s much more generic. Finding the right balance between broader keywords, targeting and cost efficiency is part of good PPC management.
Changing your match type is another solution. If you have exact or phrase match types you can look to include some broad match types. We recommend some broad match keywords because these can easily flood your ads account with unwanted search results. When setting up broad match keywords, make sure to pay extra attention at the beginning of your campaign because you will need to look at your search terms and add negative keywords.
Be prepared that while these changes will allow you to scale your budget, your campaign may not convert at the same rate. Don’t try to do it all at once and take it slow. Add new keywords, analyse your new results and figure out how to proceed. Maybe the results are fine and you can keep going. Maybe it needs a revision. Remember that search is no exact science. Everything comes by trial and error!
Third step: Expand your audience (optional)
This will not work for every company, every product or service, but it’s a surefire way to expand and allow your campaign to scale. You can expand your audience by changing the following settings:
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Locations
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Demographics
If your audience is already quite broad, adding onto it could hurt you more than help you. However if your audience is narrow and you’ve got the guts, you have the possibility to expand it while sacrificing some efficiency.
Once you have followed all steps, you could find yourself back in a stable position looking to scale even further. You could follow the steps in this guide once more and repeat the process. Or you can contact us at Superkraft and we can figure out your next steps together!