Are you looking to increase the visibility of your business? Google Ads is a powerful tool that can help you do just that.
With Google Ads, you can create targeted ads that reach customers who are actively searching for products and services like yours. With its powerful targeting capabilities, you can reach potential customers who are more likely to be interested in what you have to offer. This guide will provide an introduction to Google Ads and what it can do for your business.
What Is Google Ads?
Google Ads, formerly known as Google AdWords, is an online advertising platform operated by Google. It offers businesses of all sizes the opportunity to advertise their products or services on Google’s search engine result pages (SERPs) and across its network of partner websites. Google Ads can be an effective way to reach potential customers and generate more leads and sales. It allows you to target specific audiences based on demographic information, such as age, location, gender, and interests. You can also set a budget that is comfortable for your business.
Benefits of using Google Ads
- Reach a very targeted audience – show up when people search for what you offer
- Ability to set a budget and track ROI
- Ability to adjust campaigns quickly
- Target a specific location, language, and device at specific times/days!
- Ability to measure success with analytics tools providing you with valuable insights.
Crafting the perfect ads to achieve your advertising goal
By crafting effective ads, businesses can get their message across to a greater number of potential customers.
The process of creating successful Google Ads begins with understanding your target audience. You will need to identify who your target audience is, what they are looking for, and where your ads should be placed to be seen by them.
By understanding the customer journey you can adapt the ads to improve your conversion rates as much as possible to increase online sales or reach your other business objectives.
Setting up your budget and bidding
When setting up your budget, you should decide how much you’re willing to spend each month. You can enter a monthly budget amount, or you can set a daily limit for your ads. This amount will determine how often and where your ads are displayed.
Optimising your advertising campaigns for maximum efficiency
You can maximise your return on investment by ensuring that your ads reach the right people at the right time by delivering the right message in your ad text.
How Google Ads can help you grow your business
When people search for terms related to your business, you’ll be able to show them an ad with a link back to your website, product page, or more. Doing so can help you grow your business by bringing in potential customers who might be interested in your offerings.
The 5 types of Google Ads
A Search Network campaign will make your ad visible not only on Google Search and Maps, but also on hundreds of other Google search partners including YouTube and Google Shopping. Your ad will be displayed when users search for specific terms related to your keyword on any of these sites.
A Display Network campaign allows you to target people who use Google products like Gmail and YouTube with visible ads regardless of whether they are specifically searching for a certain keyword or not.
With Google Shopping, your web store’s product data is used instead of a user’s keywords to determine how and where to feature your advertisement and your products will feature in a product carousel at the top of search results.
Video Campaign. Your business can be advertised via a video advertisement that will appear on YouTube and other platforms of the Google Display Network using a Video campaign.
With an App campaign, your ad can be seen on Google Search, YouTube, Google Play, the Google Display Network, and other sites that feature app ads.
How much does Google Ads cost?
Google Ads pricing is simple. You pay when people click on your ad, so the price depends on how much you’re willing to spend for each click.
This is known as the Price Per Click (PPC) and varies from keyword to keyword depending n demand and the price competitors bid for the same keyword. The price per click can be as little as a few pence or as much as a few pounds!
In addition to the actual cost of the ads you will pay a management fee of around 10%-15% per month plus the cost of the initial set-up of around £275 (depending on complexity/requirements). As a guide you should look at spending about £250 (in ad spend) as a minimum per month if you’re running a managed campaign. This will give you the best opportunity to see a positive return on your investment.
Google Ads terms to know
Bidding Type
Google Ads uses a bidding system in which advertisers select the maximum amount they are willing to pay per click on their ads. A higher bid will result in a better placement. You can choose from CPC, CPM, or CPE when bidding.
- With CPC, you pay a certain amount each time someone clicks on your ad.
- CPM stands for cost per mille, and is the cost of displaying an ad to one thousand people.
- With cost per engagement (CPE) advertising, you pay when someone takes a specific action with your ad.
Impression (Impr)
Anytime your ad is seen, it counts as an impression, even if the person doesn’t click on it. If your ad appears in a lower SERP position your ad won’t be shown unless the searcher scrolls down to view it, resulting in no impression being made. Views of your advertisement are usually free unless you decided to pay for impressions rather than clicks. The same person can also give you multiple impressions.
In any PPC scenario, impressions can provide insight. For instance, if you’ve got a lot of impressions but few clicks or conversions, this indicates that people are likely not engaging with your ads and you may need to improve ad copy, targeting, or other aspects.
To increase impressions, you can try the following:
- Increase your budget
- Use broad match keywords
- Broaden your targeting
Campaign Type
Prior to launching a Google Ads campaign, you’ll have a choice between seven available options: search, display ads (image or text), video, shopping, app, smart, or performance max.
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
The click-through rate (CTR) measures how often users click on your advertisement in relation to the number of times it was displayed. A good CTR suggests that the ad is relevant and targeted to the right keywords, reflecting users’ search intentions.
PPC
PPC advertising involves paying for each click on an ad. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is offered through Google Ads, though it is popular on other platforms too. Knowing the fundamentals of PPC is essential before launching a Google Ads campaign.
Display Network
Google Ads can appear on Google search results or on websites part of the Display Network. Google Display Network enables websites to show text and image-based ads related to the target keywords of the website.
Extensions
Ad Extensions give you the opportunity to add additional info to your ads without any extra cost. There are five types of extensions: Sitelink, Call, Location, Offer and App.
Keywords
Google provides relevant results based on a user’s query in its search field – AKA keywords. Choosing keywords for your ad will determine what searches will show your advertisement.
- Broad Match Keyword
By using a broad keyword match, your ads can appear in search results related to the meaning of your keywords, even if it doesn’t include the exact words used.
- Phrase Match Keyword
This is similar to broad match but the search term MUST include your specified keyword somewhere within the search.
- Exact Match Keyword
Search terms that exactly match the entered query and contain all of the keywords. For an exact match, your advertisement will only appear for searches that use the exact phrase you placed as a keyword. Unlike with broad match, your ad won’t show for other related queries. This includes singular and plural forms, spelling mistakes, abbreviations and symbols.
- Negative keywords
These are words that you don’t want your website to show up for in search engine results. Google won’t be including your bids for these keywords. Generally, these are somewhat related to your desired keywords but are not 100% relevant to what you offer or want to rank for.
AdRank
AdRank is a key component in the Google AdWords auction, which is used to determine the highest bidding ad that is displayed in the search results page for any particular search query.
Quality Score (QS)
Your Quality Score is a metric that evaluates your ad’s performance using CTR, keyword relevance, the quality of your landing page and historical SERP data. Quality Score affects your AdRank and ultimately your ad position!
Setting up:
AdRank and Quality Score
AdRank, which determines the placement of your ads, is determined by two factors: Quality Score and bid amount.
Don’t forget, Google determines your Quality Score based on the quality and relevance of your ad, which is measured by your click-through rate (CTR). Your click-through rate is based on how closely your advertisement meets the user’s needs, which can be determined by a couple of things primarily:
How relevant your keywords are and whether your ad content and call to action meet the searcher’s expectations from their search query,
When getting started with Google Ads (formerly Google Adwords), your Quality Score should be your primary focus before increasing bid amounts. By increasing your Quality Score, your acquisition costs decrease and you’ll achieve a higher placement – often outranking those with a higher maximum bid price!
Location
In the initial stage of creating a Google Ad, you’ll choose the region you want your advertisement to be displayed. If you are running a physical store, your reach should be within a reasonable distance of the premises. If you sell physical products online, your targets should be located in the areas you ship to. Offering a product or service with a global reach opens up limitless locations to target.
Keywords
Try to make sure that your keywords reflect what people are looking for. Google pairs your advertisement with user queries based on the chosen keywords.
Ad Text
The words you use in your advertisement could determine if people choose to click on your ad or the ad of a competitor. For successful results, make sure the ad copy is relevant to the user query, includes the target keywords, and offers an effective solution to solve the user issue.
Ultimately, you want your advert to be seen by and clicked on by your ideal customer and through careful conversion tracking you can adapt your bidding strategy over time. Eventually, when you’re confident your campaign goals are being met you can slowly increase your daily budget.
By consulting the available reports to monitor activity on the account you can review relevant keywords used by your most valuable customers to compose a list of keywords (including long-tail keywords) to use in future digital marketing campaigns and check your position for organic search results and other forms of advertising.
** Also see if you’re displayed on Google Maps to your potential audience so relevant customers can find you to drive website visits and increase customer calls **
Google Ads Tips
- Have a clear goal and track your conversions.
- Use the right keywords.
- Use negative keywords to improve advertising efficiency.
- Measure and improve upon your strategy.
- As an additional step link it with your Google Analytics account for more insights on the generated traffic and conversions.
