Let’s be real, in the world of digital advertising, a paid search campaign that doesn’t convert is just a money pit. It’s easy to get lost in a sea of metrics and jargon, but at the end of the day, it’s all about turning those clicks into actual customers. At Arm Candy, we’ve gotten pretty good at that, and it all starts with building a smart search campaign from the ground up.

The Right Keywords

You can have the most creative ads in the world, but if you’re not targeting the right keywords, you’re just shouting into the void. And no, it’s not just about picking the most obvious terms in your industry. You’ve got to get inside your customers’ heads and figure out what they’re really looking for. Are they just browsing, or are they ready to take the next step to becoming a customer?

That’s where we come in. We get to know your business, your customers, and what your competitors are up to. We use a mix of powerful tools and our secret sauce to find the keywords that will bring the right people to your site. 

The Nitty-Gritty of Keyword Research & Ad Group Structure

So, how do we find these magic keywords? It’s a combination of art and science, really. Here are a few of the tools:

• Google Keyword Planner: This is our old faithful, the starting point for any good search campaign. We use it to get a feel for what people are searching for, how much it’ll cost you, and what the competition looks like. It’s a great way to get the ball rolling.
• The Heavy Hitters (SEMrush, Ahrefs, etc.): While Google gives you the basics, tools like SEMrush and Ahrefs give you the inside scoop. We use them to spy on your competitors (in a friendly way, of course) and see what’s working for them. It’s like having a secret weapon in your back pocket.
• Our New Best Friends (Gemini and ChatGPT): You’ve probably heard of these guys, and for good reason. We use them as our creative brainstorming partners. We’ll ask them to come up with a bunch of different ways people might search for what you’re selling. You’d be surprised at what they come up with!

Once we have this master list, we don’t just throw it all into one big pile. We meticulously organize it. This is where Ad Groups come into play. Each ad group is built around a theme. For example, if you sell shoes, you wouldn’t just have one ad group for “shoes.” You’d have one for “men’s running shoes,” another for “women’s hiking boots,” and another for “kids’ sandals.” Why? Because this allows us to write ads that are hyper-relevant to the search. Someone searching for “men’s running shoes” sees an ad about running shoes, not sandals. This relevance leads to higher click-through rates, better Quality Scores, and ultimately, lower costs.

Strategy is Everything: Structuring Campaigns and Bids for Success

Okay, so your keywords are organized into neat, themed ad groups. Now what? You can’t just dump them all into one campaign line and hope for the best. This is where the real strategy comes in. How you structure your campaigns and choose your bidding strategy is the difference between a campaign that just spends money and one that makes money.

First, let’s talk structure. We typically break campaigns down into three main buckets:

• Brand Campaigns: These target keywords include your company’s name (e.g., “Arm Candy services”). This is your defensive line. The goal here is to protect your brand from competitors who might be bidding on your name and to capture people who are already looking for you. Assuming you are running other media channels (like CTV, for example) this is going to create a spike in Brand searches that you want to capture before your competitors.  These campaigns are usually super-efficient, with high click-through rates and low costs. In some industries, the defense game calls for a large percentage of the budget, but on average, this lies within 10-15% of the budget.
• Non-Brand Campaigns: These campaigns target generic keywords related to your products or services (e.g., “digital advertising agency” or “how to run paid social ads”). This is how you find new customers who haven’t heard of you yet. Because it’s more competitive, it will take up the lion’s share of your budget, often around 60-70%. This is your growth engine that puts you in front of net new customers who are searching exactly for what you provide.
• Competitor Campaigns: Feeling aggressive? This optional bucket is for targeting keywords that include your competitors’ names. It’s a great way to peel off some of their customers who might be on the fence. It can be a bit pricier and might not have the best conversion rates, but it’s a powerful way to gain market share. We usually allocate about 15-20% of the budget here, depending on the intensity of the bidding market.

A Guide to Bidding: Aligning Strategy with Your Business Goals

Once your campaigns are structured, you need to tell Google what you’re trying to achieve. Choosing a bid strategy isn’t just a technical step; it’s where you translate your business goals into instructions for the algorithm. While we usually lean into conversion-focused strategies, the whole menu has its uses.

Conversion-Focused Strategies (Our Bread and Butter):

• Maximize Conversions: The goal is simple: get the most conversions possible within your budget. This is a great starting point to gather data before getting more specific.
• Target CPA (Cost Per Acquisition): You tell Google, “I’m willing to pay $50 for a new customer.” The algorithm then does its best to hit that average, focusing on clicks it thinks will convert at that cost.
• Target ROAS (Return On Ad Spend): The go-to for e-commerce. You say, “I need to make $5 for every $1 I spend.” The AI then hunts for users who are not just likely to buy, but to buy big, all while aiming for your target return.

Awareness & Traffic-Focused Strategies:

• Maximize Clicks: The name says it all. The goal is to get as many clicks as possible for your daily budget. This is a volume play. We might use this for a top-of-funnel campaign where the main goal is to drive a flood of traffic to a new piece of content or build brand awareness quickly. We have also found use for this strategy in extremely competitive top-of-page bidding industries. 
• Target Impression Share: This strategy is all about visibility. You can tell Google, “I want to show up 90% of the time someone searches for my brand name,” or even, “I want to appear above my main competitor 80% of the time.” It’s an aggressive (but expensive) strategy for owning your space and defending your brand turf.

But we can get even more granular. Let’s say within one campaign, you have different ad groups with different profit margins. Your “high-end running shoes” ad group can afford a lower ROAS than your “discount sandals” ad group. In these cases, we can set ad group-level targets. This gives us the flexibility to push budget toward our most profitable products or services, all while letting the campaign’s overall bid strategy do its thing. It’s about giving the AI a smart framework to operate in, then steering it precisely where we need it to go.

The New Kids on the Block: PMax and AI Max

The game is always changing, and right now, AI-driven campaigns are the talk of the town.

• Performance Max (PMax): Think of PMax as an “everything” campaign. It’s a bit of a “black box,” but when it works, it really works. You feed it creative assets (headlines, images, videos) and, most importantly, you give it clues about who to target. These clues are called Audience Signals. This is how you teach the AI. You can give it your first-party data, like a list of past purchasers or website visitors. You can also build custom segments of people who have searched for specific terms or browsed certain types of websites. These signals act as a starting point, helping the AI find more people like your ideal customers across all of Google’s channels. And to ensure your ads show up in the right places, PMax now includes powerful Brand Controls that allow you to set Brand inclusion/exclusion list within the system, providing safety and possibly Brand/Non-Brand PMAX capabilities.
• AI Max for Search: This is the new (still being tested) upgrade for your standard Search campaigns. Instead of just relying on your keyword list, AI Max uses Google’s AI to understand the full context of your business your ads, your landing pages, etc. to find new, high-intent searches you’d otherwise miss. The best part? It gives you more control than PMax, with ad-group level controls for things like location and brand inclusion/exclusion, and more transparent reporting.

The Retailer’s Dilemma: PMax vs. Standard Shopping

If you’re in retail, you’ve got an extra layer to this puzzle. The big question we hear all the time is, “Should I use Performance Max or stick with my Standard Shopping campaigns?” The answer, like most things in advertising, is: “It depends.”

• Team Standard Shopping: You’re a control freak (in a good way!). You like to manage bids for individual products, you have very specific margin targets for everything you sell, and you want to see exactly which search terms are triggering which product ads. Standard Shopping gives you that granular control. It’s your reliable workhorse.
• Team Performance Max: You’re focused on growth and reach. You’re comfortable handing the reins over to Google’s AI to find new customers wherever they are, not just on the Shopping tab. PMax takes your product feed and blasts it across all of Google’s channels, using automation to find the most likely buyers. It’s a full-funnel powerhouse, but it requires a bit of faith in the algorithm.

The best approach? Test both. Don’t just flip a switch. We often advise clients to run them in parallel. Maybe you start PMax with a specific category of products or set a different ROAS goal. Let the data tell you what works best for your business.

And PMax isn’t just a one-trick pony. You can tailor it to your specific needs:

• For Online Sales: This is the most common use case. You hook up your Google Merchant Center feed, and PMax will use your product catalog to run dynamic ads across the web, from Shopping placements to YouTube pre-roll, all optimized to drive online sales.
• For Local Stores: Got a brick-and-mortar? PMaxm is the upgraded game-changer to the once “Local” campaigns. By setting “store visits,” as the campaign’s focus shifts to driving foot traffic. It will use your location data to show ads to people near your stores, highlighting local inventory and promoting in-store visits. It’s a powerful way to bridge the gap between your online ads and your physical front door.

It’s All About the Data: Tracking What Actually Matters

None of this works if your tracking is a mess. You can’t optimize what you can’t measure. But it’s not just about tracking something, it’s about tracking the right things. This is a two-part puzzle: what action best reflects your business goals, and what action gives Google’s AI enough data to learn?

This is the conversation we have with every client. What is the most valuable action someone can take? For an e-commerce store, the answer is easy: a Purchase. For a B2B company, it might be a Demo Request or a Contact Form Submission. For a local restaurant, it could be a Store Visit. This most important action becomes your Primary Conversion. It’s the north star that we tell the algorithm to chase.

But here’s the catch: the algorithm is hungry. It needs a steady diet of data to get smart. If your primary conversion doesn’t happen very often (think high-ticket items or a long sales cycle), the algorithm might starve, and your performance will suffer.

That’s where Secondary Conversions come in. These are valuable, but less critical actions that happen more frequently. Think “Add to Cart,” “Newsletter Signup,” or “PDF Download.” We track these too, but we tell Google they’re for “Observation” only. They don’t directly influence the bidding, but they give the AI a ton of extra signals about what a good customer looks like. It’s like giving the algorithm a more complete picture of the user journey, which helps it make smarter decisions about who to show your ads to.

Choosing the right mix of primary and secondary conversions is crucial. It’s the handshake between your business goals and the needs of the machine, and it’s the foundation for a scalable, intelligent campaign.

We’re Here to Help You Win

Building a smart search campaign is a lot of work, but it’s also a lot of fun. It’s a mix of strategy, creativity, and a little bit of magic. We’re here to help you navigate the wild world of digital advertising and build campaigns that don’t just get clicks, but also get results.