Research your customers, keywords, and competitors.
Define your target customer.
Build your initial Search keyword list (use Google’s Keyword Planner: https://ads.google.com/home/tools/keyword-planner/).
Determine initial keyword match type – all have their uses, but generally, stay away from full broad keywords.
Identify keywords to block (negative keywords) – put generic account-wide negatives in negative keyword lists and then campaign-specific ones on the campaign.
Sort keywords and identify Buying-Intent keywords vs. Research keywords.
Organize keywords into relevant, similar groups.
Finalize test advertising budget.
Budget to test keyword = (100 clicks) x (Estimated CPC).
Set campaign KPIs.
Draft your budget, get approval.
Draft ad text for approval – review what the competition is doing and what’s working.
Double Check Your Destination URLs – Make sure your traffic is going to go to the right place and that the post-click landing page is optimized for conversions.
Set Up Your Conversion Tracking – The most important step. Everything else is mostly irrelevant if you can’t track your success.
Connect AdWords and Analytics account. Make sure goals are properly set up. Tag and custom parameters are active.
The goal is to drive traffic (relevant and with purchase intent) to the site, lower CPC, and more conversions.
Network settings - make sure to hit the campaign settings and double-check that your campaign is showing ads where you want them shown.
Campaign settings - open the locations and language area and triple check on what parts of the world the ads will be displayed.
Review your language settings.
Budget and bid strategy are set – can bid manually for more control or use automation to ease the management strain.
Determine your campaign naming convention – for example, you can choose to name by campaign type: Campaign type | Campaign Objective | KW Match Type | Location | Theme
Max of 7-10 ad groups per campaign.
Limit keywords per Ad Group to no more than 20. All keywords in an Ad Group should use a similar phrase so that your ads repeat the same phrase.
Always have 2-3 active ads split testing per Ad Group.
Setup Ad Scheduling based on business hours or relevant times.
Feed is uploaded and approved.
Remarketing lists (if available) have been added to your ad groups.
Dynamic display ads are set up and approved.
Added dynamic prospecting to your campaign
Choose device adjustments – usually best to keep flat initially and then change later with data.
Set delivery method to standard – don’t use accelerated.
Keep ad rotation on “optimize” – unless you’re planning a lot of ad testing on a low budget.
Set up an ad schedule – show your ads when you’re able to capitalize off the traffic. Or take a more advanced approach.
Put Your Campaigns Live – But keep a very close eye on them for the first week to make sure they’re operating as intended.
Don’t set it & forget it. Continually optimize your campaign by improving your targeting, your ad copy, and your landing pages
Use the keyword Search terms report to find poor-performing keywords to negative match in the campaign or ad group. Review quality scores and cost per action.
Use the keyword Search terms report to find top-performing keywords to add to your campaign.
Move top keywords to their own campaign. Move unproven keywords to their own campaign with a fixed budget.
Optimize for target CPA. If no conversion data, then optimize for most clicks within budget.
Check quality scores and follow Google's recommendations to improve.
Make sure there are at least 2 ads per ad group. Test dynamic keyword insertion (DKI). Continually replace the poor-performing ad with new ad copy to test.
Make sure your offer is compelling versus your competition and congruent with your landing page.
Add all ad extensions: Call, Location, Sitelinks, Callout, Review, and Structured snippets.
Test your landing page headline to capture attention and get prospects to keep reading.
Make sure your landing page is 100% relevant to what the prospect is looking for (this is why the homepage is not a good landing page).
Add social proof like testimonials, case studies, before/after pics to your landing page.
Test different offers and calls to action.
Test short and long sales pages.
Test video to improve your sales message.