Competing online to gain new customers is no easy feat. There are a lot of savvy marketers out there who know all the ins and outs of paid (PPC) marketing.
Naturally, this level of knowledge makes it a lot easier for experienced advertisers to gain that market share you have been struggling to capture.
But while this may be the case, you can get in on the action if you can learn to use the same tricks as the pros.
One of those tricks is learning how to use Google Ads to engage customers effectively and get them thinking about your brand.
Did you know? Paid campaigns drive 65% of clicks received by Google Ads. So, with the right approach, you can accelerate the growth of your business through this most popular of platforms.
Inspired? Here are some tips on how you can take advantage of Google Ads and get it working in your favor.
Yes, let’s find out how to do Google Ads.
What is Google Ads?
Google Ads is an online advertising platform developed by Google. It allows businesses to create and display ads on Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs), as well as on other Google-owned properties and partner websites. The platform operates on a pay-per-click (PPC) model, where advertisers bid on keywords and pay only when someone clicks on their ads.
Google Ads provides various campaign types, including:
- Search Network campaigns: These ads appear on Google search results when users enter relevant keywords. They typically consist of text ads with a headline, description lines, and a display URL.
- Display Network campaigns: These ads appear on websites, YouTube videos, and mobile apps within Google’s Display Network. They can include text, image, video, or interactive ads, reaching a wider audience beyond search results.
- Shopping campaigns: Designed for e-commerce businesses, shopping campaigns showcase product images, prices, and details directly on the search results page. They help drive traffic and sales to online stores.
- Video campaigns: These campaigns focus on video ads displayed on YouTube and across Google’s video partner sites. Advertisers can target specific demographics, interests, and placements to reach their desired audience.
Google Ads offers a range of targeting options to help businesses reach their intended audience. Advertisers can target users based on location, language, demographics (age, gender, income), interests, and more. Additionally, remarketing allows advertisers to show ads to users who have previously interacted with their website or mobile app.
The platform provides detailed reporting and analytics, allowing advertisers to measure the performance of their campaigns. Key metrics include click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate, cost per click (CPC), and return on investment (ROI). This data helps advertisers optimize their campaigns and make informed decisions about their advertising strategy.
Overall, Google Ads is a powerful advertising platform that allows businesses to effectively promote their products or services to a vast online audience.
Why use Google Ads?
Google Ads has something for businesses of all sizes with different budgets, advertising goals, and target audiences. The service offers many benefits to digital marketers:
- It has a huge reach. These days, when consumers have a query, their first port of call is Google. Your business could offer valuable solutions to some of these queries. When you advertise on Google Ads, relevant searchers are more likely to find you, click on your ads, and convert
- It’s not complicated to use. Google Ads makes everything straightforward and easy to understand
- It helps you build brand awareness by reinforcing your brand name and making it visible to consumers, which in turn helps to build trust
- It helps you to manage multiple client accounts efficiently and in one place
- It enables you to put constraints on your daily budget, so you don’t have to spend more money than you want to. You can decide how much you want to spend, and only pay when someone interacts with your ad.
How do you advertise on Google Ads?
Now that you’re up to speed on what the platform does and why it’s worth using, let’s look at how to advertise on Google Ads.
Step 1: Learn the basics
Before you start to create your ads, it’s important to get to grips with the platform basics. By learning the platform’s fundamental processes and functions, you will gain a better chance of choosing key terms, setting parameters, and creating content that will resonate with your target audience, earning you a consistently healthy return on investment (ROI) in the process.
Step 2: Setting up the account
In most cases, it’s best to begin with a manager account because it’s free and it allows you to build a number of child accounts within it. Even if you only need one child account at the start, you may find in time that you need a second one or a third one. These can be easily added within the manager account.
To create a Google Ads manager account:
- Go to this link: https://ads.google.com/home/tools/manager-accounts/
- Click Create a Manager Account and follow the instructions
- Sign up using your Gmail address
- Note: You can’t set up a manager account with an email address that’s already assigned to another Google Ads account. It must be an email address that’s not associated with any Google Ads account. Ideally, you should use a new email address to set up your manager account. Then you can link all of your other Google Ads accounts to your manager account, not to your email address.
- Add on additional child accounts as you need for your Google advertising efforts
Step 3: Finding keywords to target
When it comes to knowing how to advertising on Google effectively, targeting the right keywords is essential.
With the platform’s Keyword Planner Tool, you can:
- Gather search volume data on specific keyword and phrases
- Understand how much it will cost per click to bid on specific search terms for your Google Ads
- Discover new keywords and terms that could perform well in your ad campaigns and make a real impact with your target audience
To get your Google Ad keyword research just right and earn the best possible ROI for your efforts, explore our five-steps of keyword research infographic. You can also download our essential keyword research toolkit.
Step 4: Choosing the type of ad you want to run
The next step in setting up Google Ads for success is choosing which type of ad you want to run based on your specific marketing goals.
Here is a quick guide that will help you decide:
- Search: Text ads on search results page
- Video: Video-based ads on YouTube and Google search result pages
- Shopping: Product listings, usually displayed in a carousel at the top of a Google search results page
- Display: Image-based ads or ad-based content displayed on websites, apps, and platforms across Google’s extensive Display Network
- Discovery: Highly visual ads displayed on user feeds across the Google Display Network
- Local: Google ad content that is served to highly-targeted regional audiences.
Step 5: Strategize on budget and bidding strategy
To squeeze as much value from every one of your ads, you must choose the right bidding strategy.
When it comes to Google Ads, you can place your bids manually or with the platform’s automated bidding functionality.
If you have a limited ad budget, using a manual bidding process is a good idea as you can place a definitive cap on your cost-per-click (CPC). But, if you’re looking to save time and optimize your ads across multiple campaigns (and your budget is a little more flexible), automated bidding could offer excellent returns. Just keep in mind that automated bidding will cost you more to run your ads.