👋 Hey L&D professionals - welcome to this weeks edition of Brainstormed.

Google Ads can be difficult to get right, but with the correct structure, you’ll be on the path to achieving great results.

In our recent paid ads report, we found that Google Ads was the most commonly used platform amongst learning businesses - Close to 90% of current advertisers in our research were using Google Ads!

But are they maximising their results from the platform?

Let’s get to it! 👇

Campaigns, Ad Groups and Ads

Let’s start with the basics.

In Google Ads, the account structure is broken down into three main levels: Campaigns, Ad Groups, and Ads. Here’s a simple breakdown:

Think of a Campaign as the overarching umbrella for your ads. It’s where you set the overall strategy and decide what you want to achieve. This is where you choose your main goal, like driving traffic to your website, getting more sales, or boosting brand awareness. You also set your budget at this level - usually how much you’re willing to spend per day.

Inside each campaign, you have Ad Groups. These are like the categories that help organise your ads based on themes or product types. Each ad group focuses on a specific set of keywords or audience characteristics. By grouping related keywords together, you ensure that your ads are more targeted and relevant.

Finally, we get to the actual Ads - these are what people see when they search on Google. Each ad is made up of headlines, description lines, and a link to your website. This is where you get creative and craft a message that grabs attention and entices users to click. Your ads should be tailored to fit the keywords and theme of the ad group they belong to, making them as relevant as possible.

How should I structure my campaigns?

You’ll hear marketers say that there’s no “one size fits all strategy.”

There’s an element of truth to this.

But we’ve worked with a lot of businesses in the learning & development sector, and we’ve learned what works best in most situations.

You always want to include at least two campaigns.

The first is a branded campaign. These contain keywords such as your business name and then your brand names. For example, if you’re an Edutech business, you might include your business name and the name of your product.

The second is a non-branded campaign. This campaign will include ad groups that are broken up by topic. An example for a manufacturing training provider could be:

• Non Branded Campaign

  • Lean Manufacturing Ad Group

  • Quality Control Ad Group

  • Technical Skills Ad Group

  • Compliance Ad Group

In many cases, it’s necessary to have multiple non-branded campaigns.

One reason to do this would be to target people at different stages of the buying cycle (so instead of a keyword being “manufacturing training”, a keyword higher in the funnel may be "how to improve production efficiency" or "benefits of quality control training.")

Another would be if you had lots of different programmes or services that you offer. Each offering should have its own campaign.

Location targeting is set at campaign level, so if you had different products or messaging for different regions, you’d break these out as well.

As well as the search campaigns above, you may also implement other campaign types. These include YouTube campaigns, Performance Max, RLSA or Display.

🤔 Why run branded campaigns?

Running branded campaigns might seem unnecessary at first—after all, if people are already searching for your company name, won’t they find you anyway? Not quite.

Branded campaigns ensure that when potential customers look for your business, they see the right message, direct them to the most relevant page, and position you above any competitors who might be bidding on your name.

Without a branded campaign, you risk losing valuable traffic and revenue to competitors who could swoop in on those high-intent searches.

Organic search results are influenced by algorithms and can be unpredictable, but with paid ads, you decide the headlines, descriptions, and landing pages. This level of control means you can highlight special offers, announce new services, or direct users to a tailored experience that better aligns with their needs, all while reinforcing your brand identity.

Thanks for reading! Hopefully you can take this information and use it yourself or amongst your team.

If you have an agency running your campaigns, hopefully this gives you some more knowledge to have discussions with them about your current campaign structure.

If you’re looking for an agency currently, consider Lucha!

We’re currently offering a free 2025 paid ads strategy for any new potential clients. Click here to check out our website, or reach out to Jonny on LinkedIn: @jonny-thompson