Google Ads for Architects: How To Setup An Effective Campaign

There are great benefits to running a Google Ads campaign that helps architects to reach their targeted clients. It means acquiring a good stream of leads each week and month, that allows you to increase your client base.

Google Ads is the most effective channel for architects because it targets people that are actively looking for these services. And it gives you great control over ad relevance, budget controls and performance results.

Getting started is easy. First you’ll need to create a Google Ads account at ads.google.com, if you don’t have one already.

Next, you will create your campaign and below I’ve included guidelines for how to set the main features of your campaign like keywords, objective, location and others.

 

Campaign objective

Most Google Ads campaigns by architects focus on acquiring leads and enquiries. So, the ‘Leads’ objective tends to be the best to go with because it helps you to pick the right campaign type and features that you can use to promote your architecture business.

This objective encourages visitors to take action from your ads or websites, whether that is calling, filling a lead form, downloading a white paper or any other similar action.

And you can then setup conversion or goal tracking to see how many leads you are getting each month.

 

Campaign type

Now that you’ve set your objective, you move on to setting the campaign type that you need. A Search campaign is the best for architects that want to reach people that are searching for their services.

There are other campaign types that you can run like Display and Remarketing, but these are not as good as Search campaign for an architectural business. However, the Remarketing campaign will help you to bring back people that have been on your website.

 

Budget

Budget setting is one of the features many new advertisers struggle with. As an architect looking to get leads, it’s important that you set the right budget that will help you reach your campaign’s objectives.

You can start with a small budget to test your ads and keywords to see what returns you get. This also helps you to block any searches that are not relevant and as the performance improves you can increase your budget.

A budget of at least $500 or £300 per month is a good amount to start with and then gradually increase it each month as you manage your campaign and as it improves.

 

Bidding

A Google Ads campaign for architects should focus on the right bid strategy to achieve the best bids at each auction. There are automated and manual bidding strategies that you can choose from at different stages of your campaign advertising.

Start with an automated bid strategy like Maximise Clicks to get as much traffic as possible. Later, you should check the Recommendations page in your campaign for any bid strategy changes that it recommends.

And if all looks good, you can change to the new strategy and test it for some time to see how the campaign performs.

 

Keywords

Many people looking for architectural services online are looking for a local firm. So, it’s important to have location-focused keywords and other keyword variations to target your market.

Use the Keyword Planner tool to carry out your research and create a list of targeted long tail keywords to target.

Also, start with phrase and exact match keywords and not broad match. You can add broad match type later when you have fully optimised your campaign.
An example of a keyword in phrase and exact match is below:

“architectural planning” – phrase match keyword
[architectural planning] – exact match keyword

Your keyword research will help you find many keywords that you can bid on and can add in the match types mentioned above.

 

Text ads

Create at least one targeted responsive search ad in each ad group that you create. And focus on the benefits of the architectural service that your potential clients are looking for.

And make sure to include an effective call to action in each ad, in the headlines most preferably. This will make it more visible and will encourage visitors to click-through to your website and make contact.

 

Locations

There are multiple location types available to you to target your prospects, including country, city, town, postcodes, counties and more. Choose the most relevant location to ensure you are targeting the right audiences.

And you should add some excluded locations if there are areas where you don’t want your ads to appear in. For example, if you want to target all of the UK except Wales, then you can set the UK as your targeted location, and exclude Wales.

Also, update your Location options to only target people who are in your targeted locations or are regularly in your targeted locations.

 

Ad schedule

One of the benefits of running a Google Ads campaign for architects is that you can run your ads on any days and hours and can pause them at anytime too. So, your ads can run 24/7 if you want to target people at all times

However, as an architectural firm you may want to focus your ads during working hours to maximise your budget and achieve a low cost per acquisition.

But, it’s important to be aware that people are searching for architectural services at all times and on all devices, and even on mobile while they are on the go.

So, you may want to start by running your ads at all times and then later narrow them down to the best performing days and hours as you check your segment reports.

 

Where your ads appear

Your ads will appear on Google when people search for an architect with the keywords you’ve selected. Your ads will also appear on the Google search network if you’ve included the Search partners in your targeting.

Search partners include hundreds of sites that have partnered with Google to display search results. Some of these partners include Google-owned properties like YouTube and Maps Search.

There’s an option to target the Display network too as the image above shows. This network includes millions of websites and apps that have partnered with Google to display text, image and banner ads.

However, your ads will only appear there if you have budget left over from the Search targeting.

 

Case Study

A9 Architecture approached me to setup new ads for their business to help increase their enquiries. They’d worked with many ppc experts before but weren’t achieving a good return from their ads. I helped to setup a new Search campaign quickly and within weeks their conversion rate had increased to 10% for enquiries. Read the full case study.

 

Get in Touch

Want to find out if a Google Ads campaign for architects is right for you? I’d be happy to help. Use the form below to contact me to discuss your requirements.