Google Ads for IoT Companies: How To Setup An Effective Campaign

Google Ads is a great advertising resource for IoT companies that are looking to grow by targeting businesses and organisations that are looking for their Smart technology solutions.

It has the tools to carry out research into your keywords and see where your competitors appear in relation to you.

And many advertisers are using these to reach these audiences at scale and achieve conversion rates above 10%.

IoT companies can setup the different campaign types in Google Ads to promote their solutions like GNSS, Smart metering, LTE Cat 1, 5G modules, antenna and so on.

I’ve included instructions here to help you setup an effective Google Ads campaign. And if you have any questions, use the contact form below to reach out to me.

 

Campaign objective

First, you’ll select the objective that is best for your Google Ads campaign. For IoT companies, this will be the ‘Leads’ objective because it helps to tailor the features to get leads and other actions by encouraging visitors to take action.

You can also setup your campaign without an objective. However, this is not the best choice for new advertisers because you won’t have as much guidance in updating the campaign features.

 

Campaign type

For an IoT business using the Leads objective, the best campaign type to create and launch is a Search campaign. With this you are able to target other businesses on Google that are actively searching for IoT products and services.

There are other campaign types to setup too like Display where you can target people that are browsing sites that relate to the IoT industry. This is harder to do because finding such sites in the Display Network can be a challenge, but when you do, the conversion rates can be quite good.

Also, setup a Remarketing campaign to target people that have been on your website, to bring them back again, especially if they did not contact initially.

 

Budget

The budget amount you set determines how much traffic and leads you get. A low budget compared to the competition usually leads to fewer clicks and fewer conversions. However, a low budget is not a bad thing especially when you are just starting.

It will help you to test the ads and keywords and see what returns you are getting. And it will help you to see who your competitors are at auction time and not just those you are aware of. Then you can start to increase it as performance improves.

A good budget to start wi3th is $1300 or £1000 the first month and then you can increase it from month two on as you update your campaign and block irrelevant searches.

 

Bidding

For IoT companies just launching Google Ads campaigns, it’s best to start with an automated bid strategy. It will set bids automatically and place ads in the best positions to achieve your campaign goals. And it will save you a lot of time and money and ensure that the campaign is efficient.

A good bid strategy to start with is Maximise Clicks, to get as much traffic as possible for your campaign budget.

A manual bid strategy like Manual CPC you can use later when you want to have more control over the bidding and want to bid more aggressively.

 

Keywords

Keyword selection and research in Google Ads is very important for IoT companies. It helps you to see the search volumes for different countries and that can help you decide who to target. And it also helps you to see how competitive your keywords are.

The Keyword Planner tool will help you with this. It’s a free tool that has many good features like forecasting which helps you get search volume and forecasts on how they will perform.

Also, consider using phrase and exact match keywords only at the beginning. And then add broad match later when you have built a good negative keyword list and now want to increase click volume and leads.

An example of a keyword in exact and phrase match type is below.

“gnss modules” – phrase match keyword
[gnss modules] – exact match keyword

 

Text ads

Your text ads are what people see on Google when their searches match with the keywords that you’ve added. The ads should be highly targeted to these searches and it’s important to include the keywords in the ads too, especially in Headline one. People are more likely to click when they see the keyword in the ad.

 

Locations

Most Google Ads campaigns by IoT companies target multiple countries. So, it’s common to see campaigns that target European countries, North America and many others. This is because these solutions appeal universally and work effectively for industries in different countries.

So, it’s not always necessary to create separate campaigns for different countries because that will lead to too many campaigns to manage.

One campaign will usually suffice. But you can split the campaigns by industries like Agriculture, Medical, Transportation and Medical. Or you can split them by categories like LTE, 5G, Smart Modules and so on.

 

Ad schedule

Because you’re targeting businesses, customers or engineers that are looking for an IoT solution, setting ads to run during working days and hours is important. So this means running them from Monday to Friday between 8am to 6pm or something similar.

Also, you can start by targeting all days and hours. Some people search on weekends and evenings and usually these people are decision makers.

Later you can check your Time reports to see which are your best days and hours and then focus on those only.

 

Where your ads appear

This is a competitive sector, so it’s important to make sure you come up in the right places when people are searching. Your ads will appear on Google next to other ads and that’s either above the Organic search results or below them.

Your ads are also eligible to appear on Search partner sites when you opt into the Search partner network. This includes hundreds of browsers and toolbars that include search results and also some of Google’s own properties like Maps, Play and Gmail.

You can also opt into the Display network if you want to show image ads on some of the websites and apps that are part of this network. Your ads will only appear there when you have budget left over from your Search ads.

 

Case Study

Soracom is an IoT company that offers global IoT network cellular connectivity to many industries. They had been running some PPC campaigns but could not reach the particular audiences that they wanted. After some consultation and research I was able to advise the best campaign types to setup and I set them up and conversions increased by about 200%. Read the full case study.

 

Get in Touch

A Google Ads campaign for IoT companies is the solution to getting quality business leads. Get in touch with me to discuss your requirements. Use the contact form below.