How to choose your AdWords agency for high-performance SEA campaigns?

Do you use an AdWords agency to create and manage your AdWords advertising campaigns, or are you considering doing so? Would you like to complement your natural search engine optimization (SEO) marketing strategy with paid search (SEA ) to maximize your website's performance, attract more traffic and win online customers?

This article looks at the basics of Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords), from creating a text ad to choosing a Google AdWords-certified agency, as well as the best practices to adopt. Finally, we recommend three marketing tools for tracking and optimizing your SEA campaigns.

To find out more about Search Engine Marketing (SEM), follow the guide!

See all software Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

What is an AdWords campaign?

Definition

An AdWords campaign is a marketing acquisition channel designed to get a website listed in Google's top results for specific searches, so that it appears in the ads at the top of the page.

This channel, known as SEA (Search Engine Advertising), is distinct from SEO (Search Engine Optimization): ads are positioned at the top of the page in Google results, as in the example below, and preceded by the word "Ad".

There's no magic involved, just a tool: Google AdWords (recently renamed Google Ads). This is Google's advertising network, the tool used to promote text, image or video ads.

Most often, it's a PPC (Pay Per Click) campaign: you pay for each click on your ad.

Objectives of an AdWords campaign

The objective is simple: to be visible on specific keywords related to your business, and to attract and convert potential new customers.

You can reach all your potential customers online. Online advertising offers several ways of targeting potential customers who are looking for your products and services.

With a well-managed, high-performance AdWords campaign, you can reach your audience :

• at the right time - you can customize your delivery schedule down to the day and hour;
• in the geographic area you want to reach;
• on any type of device (computer, smartphone, mobile).

Google AdWords video tutorial

There are many Google AdWords tutorials available online, particularly in video format. Here's an introductory video to Google AdWords for new businesses wishing to start an AdWords campaign:

How to create an AdWords text ad?

Use Keyword Planner to select the right keywords

Keyword Planner is Google AdWords' keyword planning tool for advertisers. It enables you to choose the right keywords for your audience and prepare your AdWords campaigns in the best possible way.

How does it work?

1. You search for keywords related to your activity, product or service.
   Example: "shoes" if you have an online shoe store.
2. The Google AdWords Keyword Planner suggests new keywords related to those in your search to give you new ideas and increase your chances of appearing in Google results.
   Example: women's shoes, men's shoes, pumps, sneakers, etc.
3. You group your keywords by common theme in what we call ad groups. This grouping enables you to improve your performance.
   Example: ad group "escarpin" with keywords such as "escarpin", "escarpin pas cher", "escarpin noir", "escarpin rouge", "escarpin verni", etc.

➡️ The data provided by AdWords helps you make the best choice of keywords, so that your AdWords budget isn't the only factor affecting the performance of your campaigns.

What information does AdWords deliver?

For each keyword search, the keyword planning tool gives you the following information:

• search trends over a given period, in total and on mobile,
• a list of related keywords, in order of relevance, with the following data for each :
  • average monthly search volume,
  • competition (low, medium or high),
  • ad impression rate,
  • high and low bids, i.e., respectively, the maximum and minimum amounts an advertiser is willing to spend to have his ad featured on a keyword,
  • account status, to track your campaigns and find out if you're already using this keyword.

💡 There are alternatives to Keyword Planner, such as Ahrefs, Semrush or Keyword suggest.

Choosing the right targeting option

Several targeting options are available on AdWords. Choosing the optimum targeting option helps you to capture the core users of your audience, and only them, in order to maximize the ROI of your campaign.

The targeting options are as follows:

• exact match: the keyword searched for by the user corresponds exactly to your campaign keyword, to the nearest letter.
  Example: [escarpin rouge] means that the ad will only appear if the user types the exact expression "escarpin rouge".
• phrase match or match expression: a fairly short search expression containing your keyword.
  Example: "escarpin rouge" means that if the user types something before or after "escarpin rouge", such as "escarpin rouge pas cher", the ad will appear.
• modified broad targeting: the user searches for a long expression containing your keyword. This targeting takes accents and singular/plural variations into account.
  Example : +escarpin +rouge means that if the user types "choose cheap red pumps", the ad will appear.
• broad match: the user searches for a long expression containing your keyword, variants or synonyms of this keyword.
  Example: if the user types "chaussures femme", which is a synonym of "escarpin rouge", your ad will appear.

💡 It's also possible to add keywords to exclude in order to be more precise.
For example: if you only sell women's shoes, you should add "men", "children" to the keywords to exclude. If your positioning is exclusively high-end, add "pas cher" to the keywords to be excluded.

Steps to follow

We'll guide you through the AdWords ad creation process step by step.

But before creating your ads, you need to have selected the keywords you want to position yourself on, and grouped them by common theme to create ad groups.

Example: create an ad group "escarpin" with keywords such as "escarpin", "escarpin pas cher", "escarpin noir", "escarpin rouge", "escarpin verni" and so on.

Process with the old Google AdWords interface

1. Log in to your Google AdWords account.
2. Click on Campaigns.
3. Select the campaign to which you wish to add a text ad from the menu on the left.
4. Click on Ads, then on + Ad and select "Text ad".
5. Click on Choose... and choose the ad group to which you wish to add a new one.
6. Enter :
   • the final URL,
   • a title,
   • description,
   • optional fields, if applicable.
7. Save the ad.

Process with the new Google Ads interface, the new name for Google AdWords

1. Log in to your Google Ads account.
2. Click on Ads and extensions, in the left-hand menu.
3. Click on the More button ➕.
4. Select Text ad.
5. Enter :
   • the final URL,
   • a title,
   • a description,
   • optional fields, if applicable.
6. Save the ad.

As you fill in the various fields for your text ad, you'll get a preview of your Ad for computer and mobile.

Mobile example:
Escarpins pas cher
Find all our red
Escarpins at the best price!
https://www.maboutique.com/escarpin

Best practices for writing a high-performance ad

• The keyword on which you want to position the ad must be present in the title.
• Create one AdWords ad per keyword.
• Use capital letters on strong words: they are more visible.
• Rename your URL with the campaign keyword: once again, your site has a better chance of being seen by a surfer. Each keyword must be found in the URL of a page on your site.
• Add ad extensions: telephone number, customer reviews (stars), postal address, price, links to other pages on your site, etc.

How to create powerful Google Ads? Video answer:

How to run a successful SEA campaign?

How do you run a good AdWords campaign? How to make it effective and profitable?

Criteria to consider before launching your AdWords campaign

Don't blindly throw yourself into creating one or more ads as a "test run"; the results won't be there. Start by observing :

• your audience(s): age, gender,
• target geographic area: city, country or region,
• language,
• price: what cost-per-click (CPC) are you prepared to spend?
• your conversion, sales or registration objectives,
• campaign duration.

3 tips for a successful AdWords campaign

A landing page that converts

A visitor has clicked on your ad and been redirected to your website: congratulations, you've taken the first step! Now your goal is to retain that visitor.

The quality of your ad's landing page is the key factor here. Indeed, if this page doesn't contain the information you're looking for, isn't easily readable, isn't mobile-friendly, etc. the visitor won't stay on your website and your conversion rate will drop in favor of your bounce rate.

💡 Google scans the page content to see if it matches the keywords purchased on AdWords. Depending on the result, it assigns a quality score to the word. The higher the score (good quality), the lower the bid.

Take care with your landing page to provide the necessary answers to the user's query and keep them on your site.

A mobile-friendly site

In 2019, the number of mobile searches will surpass the number of desktop searches:

• 46% of traffic is expected to come from desktop ;
• 54% of traffic from mobile.

Source : Alioze

You no longer have a choice: to meet web users' expectations, you need a mobile-optimized website to match user behavior.

➡️ When creating your AdWords ad, check the box to adapt your ad to mobile devices.

Precise tracking of your campaigns

You've defined conversion objectives internally before launching your AdWords campaigns. There are two main tools you can use to monitor the performance of your campaigns and adapt them if the expected results aren't up to scratch: Google AdWords and Google Analytics.

These tools measure the cost and ROI of each campaign, ad group, keyword or ad.

Google Analytics allows you to observe the behavior of web surfers on your site, and to see how much direct sales this channel brings in, as well as indirect conversions.

At the start of your campaign, define the performance indicators you want to track to measure the impact of your AdWords ads. This enables you to :

• add, modify or delete keywords,
• adjust bids and budgets,
• test new ad variants,
• modify your targeting (duration, geographic zone, device type, etc.)
• or even completely rethink your strategy, either quantitatively or qualitatively, if the results are not convincing.

SEA agency: what's the role of an AdWords agency?

Despite the above explanations, are you still confused by all this marketing jargon? You don't have the time, skills or inclination to manage your AdWords campaigns? Worried that your efforts are costing you more than they're bringing in?

AdWords is a very powerful channel and can be very profitable. Conversely, it's very quick to spend a lot of money on AdWords, and optimizing a campaign is actually very technical. It's like fine-tuning a watchmaker to make it work.

Call on an AdWords agency to design and manage your paid search campaigns.

Why entrust your AdWords campaigns to an agency?

Entrust the management of your AdWords campaigns to an SEO agency. Why should you? Creating, managing and monitoring SEA campaigns can't be improvised. By choosing a service provider, you can be sure of :

• choose the best keywords for your business,
• knowledge of the tools and best practices (Google Ads, but also Bing Ads, Facebook Ads and Twitter Ads) for effective campaigns,
• knowledge of Internet user behavior, which can change very quickly online,
• monitoring and updating SEA campaigns,
• analysis of actual costs and optimization of campaign ROI,
• personalized advice for your company.

Outsourcing AdWords campaigns is like making an investment, just as you would hire a service provider to create a website or manage your accounts. You could do it, but at what cost, and for what result? Agencies work on a performance basis: their commission depends on the return on investment of your campaigns.

Concentrate on your core business and let the marketing professionals manage your AdWords campaigns.

How do I choose an AdWords agency?

Here's a list of indicators to help you choose the right AdWords agency for your needs:

• Google AdWords certification, or Google Partner, guarantees the quality of the agency's work and the profitability of the campaigns it manages.
• What's your budget? What commission does the AdWords agency charge (usually 10% to 15%)?
• What is the campaign tracking system? Is there any?
• What activity reports are sent to you? Does the agency provide detailed reporting on what's working (or not)?
• What is the agency's reputation, or rather e-reputation?
• Does it have any areas of specialization?

Directory of AdWords agencies for your SEA campaigns

Here's a selection of SEA agencies, from AdWords pure players to smaller players in Paris, Lyon, Bordeaux, Lille and Montpellier.

AdWords agencies are legion: we haven't listed them all. If you'd like to recommend an agency that has proved its worth to you, just mention it in the comments and we'll add it!

The agencies listed below are all certified Google AdWords agencies ✅.

[Special case] SaaS software publishers are now well acquainted with this player for referencing their service in Google results: appvizer! More qualified leads, cheaper than AdWords, what more could you ask for?

How do you measure the effectiveness of your campaign?

You've chosen to entrust your AdWords campaign(s) to an agency, but :

• Didn't they provide you with any reporting? (A word of advice: change agency!)
• you don't understand the mass of data they've passed on to you?
• KPI (key performance indicator) tracking is incomplete or doesn't meet your expectations?
• your in-house marketing team is closely monitoring the performance of your campaigns?

The simplest and most effective way to measure the effectiveness of your campaigns is to use dedicated marketing tools. We compare three of them.

Ranxplorer

Ranxplorer is a powerful SEM-SEO tool that compiles an impressive amount of data in numerous dashboards. For example, you can see which keywords your site is positioned on, and how your traffic is evolving.

You gain visibility on :

• keywords on which you are not positioned, but could be and still gain traffic;
• tracking of keywords that drive traffic to your site and optimization opportunities (SEA analysis);
• the number of keywords positioned in sponsored placements, including Google Shopping results.

Finally, Ranxplorer detects your competitors and analyzes their strategies (semantic performance, positions occupied, etc.).

Seiso

Seiso is the Google AdWords analysis tool developed by JVWEB. It's ideal for e-commerce sites, but can also be used by any company with an ATS budget that needs to be maximized. Its clear, sober and visual interface simplifies data analysis in the various dashboards.

A simple log-in using your Google account authentication gives you access to a free audit of your Google Ads campaigns, as well as a free monthly report delivered straight to your inbox: easily monitor performance and identify areas for improvement.

Seiso recalculates quality scoresby campaign and for the account as a whole, to identify what's working and what's not, under-utilized campaigns and unprofitable campaigns.

Beyond the fact that it's free, its other major strength is its reliability and security. You retain full control over your account data, which is not stored in Seiso.

Selldorado

Selldorado operates on a different model from the two previous tools, relying on affiliation and retargeting to maximize your campaign revenues. It's aimed particularly at small e-tailers, putting them in touch with partners who will bring them traffic and sales.

It's a simple, no-subscription, no-commitment solution. You'll be charged a 12% commission on the sales generated by your partners, so you only pay if you're making money.

What's more, you get dedicated access to manage your campaigns and track the consumption of your advertising budget.

Selldorado is powered by the Effinity group.

See all software Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Boost qualified traffic to your site

You now have all the keys you need to attract qualified visitors to your website and convert them into customers. The creation and management of Google Ads holds no secrets for you.

A final word of advice: companies sometimes spend huge sums on AdWords advertising and see little or no return on their investment. Don't hesitate to call in an AdWords agency and entrust your campaigns to one of their experienced consultants. It won't necessarily cost you much more, and you'll be assured of high-performance campaigns!