In the perfect scenario, you would be able to advertise to potential customers at the exact moment they show purchase intent. That is exactly what Google Ads does. Google Ads allows businesses like yours to display their product or service to users when they are searching the internet for the things you offer. The Google Ads Guide will help you better understand the elements and strategies that will get you going with Google Ads quickly!
‘But Google Ads is too complicated and definitely too expensive.’ You’re not alone in having these two major concerns, but ROI Amplified is here to help you crush it with Google Ads and meet your marketing goals. Just as importantly, we’re not going to waste any time getting your first campaign running by making this guide any longer than it has to be, so you can start seeing that glorious Return On Investment by utilizing Google Ads.
Thinking of starting Google Ads? Schedule a free consultation with one of our experts today.
Google Ads Guide: Introduction
To begin, let’s answer a few basic questions that will help you understand the more complex topics that our Google Ads Guide will cover later.
Is Google Ads right for my business?
Yes. Nearly any business can benefit from utilizing the many advertising tools that Google Ads offers. You can reach your goals, no matter if you want more brand awareness or to increase revenue. Google Ads can be utilized by brick & mortar businesses and online-only services alike.
How does Google Ads work?
When marketers want to advertise their product or service, they often turn to Google Ads. This leads to competition in nearly every product or service category– so how does Google decide which ads to show to potential customers? An auction!
What is Google’s Auction?
An auction happens every single time a Google search is performed. Its purpose is to decide which ads will appear for a specific search and in which order those ads will show on the page. The ads that ultimately win the auction and are placed highest among the results have the highest Ad Rank.
What is Ad Rank?
Ad Rank is the value that determines your ad position – where your ad shows on the page in relation to other ads. Ad Rank is calculated by using your bid amount, the components of Quality Score and the expected impact of extensions and other ad formats.
What is Quality Score?
Quality Score is an aggregated estimate of your overall performance in ad auctions that takes into account the quality of your ads, keywords and landing pages. Quality Score is not what determines when your ad is triggered by the auction or which spot it is displayed– that is Ad Rank.
What are Extensions?
Extensions are additional pieces of information that accompany your ads. There are numerous types of extensions including Location, Sitelink, Call, Structured Snippets and others. These add-ons typically increase an ad’s click-through-rate, while not costing the advertiser a penny more than what they would have paid for a normal click on an ad.
Take our quick quiz to see if Google Ads are right for your business.
Google Ads Guide: Creating Your First Campaign
So, you’re ready to tackle Google Ads yourself? This is the point in the Google Ads Guide that you will want to have Google Ads open so that you can follow along. If you still need to create a Google Ads account, start here. Once your account is created, the first thing you will need to do is create a campaign. When creating a campaign, you will be asked which campaign type you would like to use.
Setting a Goal
Google will direct you to choose a campaign based on a specific goal to help guide you in setting it up. There are six goals to choose from, or you can create a campaign without a goal’s guidance.
Campaign Types
Below is a breakdown of the different campaign types that are available.
Search Network Only
Show text ads to potential customers next to search results when they perform a Google search. This is generally what people are referring to when they say “PPC” or “Pay Per Click”. This campaign type is good if you have a good idea of what customers will be searching on Google for when they are looking for your product or service.
Search Network with Display Select
Show text ads to potential customers next to search results AND on Google Partner’s websites. This campaign type is good for reaching additional potential customers.
Display Network
Show visual ads to potential customers wherever on the internet they may be, by showing them images or videos. Google states that the Google Display Network reaches more than 80% of all internet users, so this is a great option if you are looking to create brand awareness and help consumers learn about your business.
Shopping
Give shoppers detailed information about your physical products before they even click your ad to promote your inventory, boost traffic to your website or local store and find better-qualified leads. These ads are shown at the top of Google search results and are good for companies that have defined physical products that they are trying to sell.
Video
Engage consumers with a range of video ad formats on YouTube and across video partner sites. This campaign type is good for increasing brand awareness and is especially beneficial if you have a product that would benefit from further explanation.
Universal App
Promote your app across Google’s largest properties including Search, Google Play, YouTube and the Google Display Network. This campaign type, obviously, is best used when your business has an app that you are trying to promote.
Naming Your Campaign
Create a name for your campaign that will make it easily identifiable. If your campaign is a remarketing campaign, name it Remarketing. The more specific you are, the easier it will be to navigate your account later.
Locations
If you offer location-sensitive services (i.e. tree trimming or legal services in Chicago) or sell products at a brick and mortar location, this is where you will define the locations you want to target. Google gives you the ability to target or exclude all the way down to zip code, which allows for great control over the customers you attract.
Choosing Your Bid Strategy
Google offers multiple bid strategies to best suit each individual user’s needs. These strategies can be broken down into two main categories; Manual and Automatic.
Manual CPC
This bid strategy is just what it sounds like– manual. It grants you full control over your campaigns and requires the most time to manage. Each keyword or Ad Group will have the same bid unless you go in and change them. As a digital marketing agency, this is the bid strategy we use, but do not recommend it for everyone. If you are a first time Google Ads user, have a very tight budget, or simply do not have the extra time needed, this is not the Bid Strategy for you. Once you’ve mastered all of the strategies in the Google Ads Guide, go ahead and give Manual CPC a shot!
Enhanced CPC
Enhanced CPC will be turned on by default when you create a Manual CPC campaign. This is an automatic bid strategy that adjusts your manual bids to help maximize conversions. We recommend turning this off to ensure you retain complete control over your bids.
Automatic CPC
These bid strategies are for people that are new to Google Ads and people that just don’t have the time to constantly update bids for each campaign. These strategies require a lot of trust in Google, as you are putting a lot of control in their hands. There are multiple versions of Automatic CPC strategies that are broken down below.
Target CPA
This bid strategy sets bids to help get as many conversions as possible at the target cost-per-acquisition (CPA) that you set. If you have a well-defined CPA, this may be the automatic bid strategy for you.
Target ROAS
This bid strategy sets bids to help get as much conversion value as possible at the target return on ad spend (ROAS) that you set. When ROAS is your main concern, use this bid strategy.
Maximize Clicks
This bid strategy sets your bids to help you get as many clicks as possible within your budget. When you’re trying to get as many people to your site as possible, this bid strategy is a great place to begin.
Maximize Conversions
This bid strategy sets your bids to help you get the most conversions within your budget. It uses machine learning to optimize bids for searches that are most likely to lead to a conversion for you. Use this bid strategy when you want to increase your total conversions, with not much regard for any other metrics.
Target search page location
We really like this bid strategy, as it is very aggressive. It tells Google to set your bids to help get your ads to the top of the page on the first page of search results. This is a great way to get your ads in front of a lot of potential customers — albeit at a pretty penny!
Target outranking share
This bid strategy allows you to choose a domain you want to outrank in search results and how often you want to outrank it, then automatically sets your bid to help you meet that target. This strategy is also very aggressive and would be a good choice if you have a main competitor that you are looking to outbid.
Setting Your Budget
Google will ask you to enter the average you want to spend each day. To do this, determine how much you are going to spend on a monthly basis. Divide that number by 30.4 to get your Daily Budget. That’s it!
Note that Google will sometimes allow your spend on a particular day to go over your Daily Budget amount to better respond to fluctuations in traffic. Rest assured, Google will not allow this tactic to make your spend go over your Monthly Budget.
The Google Ads Guide does not go into how much you should set for your budget, that is up to you. Feel free to contact us if you want help making this decision.
Delivery Method
Google gives you two options for how to deliver your ads; Standard or Accelerated, with Standard being the default.
Standard Ad Delivery
With Standard Delivery, Google Ads aims to deliver your ads in a way that evenly distributes your budget throughout the entire day. Two drawbacks of this delivery method are it’s possible for you to not use up your entire budget and you may miss out on potential customers if there are times when your product or service are searched more frequently. We recommend using this method to begin with and until you have data that clearly states you need an accelerated approach.
Accelerated Ad Delivery
With Accelerated Delivery, your ads are displayed as soon as the day is started and at a more frequent rate. The risk with this delivery method is the high likelihood that you will run out of your budget too quickly. If you have a large budget or are not concerned about reaching your customers throughout the day, this may be the method for you.
See how much your competitors are spending on ads.
Creating Extensions
Easy-to-overlook tools that Google offers (and rewards you for using) are Extensions. We can’t overstate how important these are for your campaigns. We recommend utilizing every extension that is applicable to your campaign. There are a total of 11 Ads extensions to choose from and they are broken down here in the Google Ads Guide.
Sitelink Extensions
Provide links to your most popular pages, or pages you are trying to push, to potential customers. Make it easier for people to work through your purchase funnel.
Callout Extensions
Include additional text callouts with the purpose of adding context or explaining current offerings or sales.
Structured Snippet Extensions
List out specific options as they relate to your service or product. An example would be “Make of cars we offer” with the options being “Dodge”, “Ford”, “Honda”, and “Toyota”. This type of extension helps people discover more about your product or service instantly.
Call Extensions
Make it easy for people to call your business. Present potential customers a phone number or call button with your ads.
Message Extensions
Allow potential customers to contact you via text message. With one tap, people can contact you to book an appointment, get a quote, etc.
Location Extensions
Help people find your physical locations. Present potential customers with your address, a map to your location, or the distance to your business.
Affiliate Location Extensions
Help people find nearby stores that sell your products. This extension is used if you sell your products through retail chains.
Price Extensions
Give potential customers the ability to browse your products right from your ad, while showcasing your services or product categories with their prices.
App Extensions
Whether your app is for Android or iOS, this allows you to get your app in front of more potential users.
Promotion Extensions
Provide your current promotion/sale information to the customer right via this extension.
Review Extensions
Only available on desktop, this extension will add customer reviews or rankings from published sources.
Ad Rotation
This is where you tell Google in what order you want to display your ads. We recommend using the Optimize: Prefer best performing ads option, which will show ads that are expected to get more clicks. The other option is to Rotate ads indefinitely.
Ad Schedule
If you only want to show your ads during specific times and/or days of the week, this is where you will set that up. This is good to setup if you are closed on certain days of the week and do not want people to see your ads on these days.
Google Ads Guide: Creating Ad Groups for Search
Search campaigns are what we suggest most businesses begin with when they are new to digital advertising. The Google Ads Guide will go into further detail about Search campaigns than any other campaign type.
Ad Group Name
Just like with naming your Campaign, be sure to name your ad group as specific as possible. If your ad group is themed for your Fall sale, name your ad group ‘Fall Sale’.
Default Bid
This is where you set how much you are willing to spend each time someone clicks on an ad triggered by your keywords. If you do not know how much this click is worth to you, we recommend setting your default bid at $1.00.
Keywords
These are the terms, or searches, that will trigger your ads to appear. To come up with great keywords on your own, you need to consider what phrases your customers will use when they are looking for services or products similar to yours. For best results, group your keywords around one theme or idea. Google offers keyword ideas that can help you when you are first getting set up. Simply enter a related website or your product/service and Google will display suggestions that are at least a good starting point.
Want to see the top keywords in your industry?
Keyword Match Types
Utilizing keyword match types correctly is difficult to do, as they can be hard to understand. Each match type will control which searches can trigger your ads, from broad searches to very specific searches and phrases. To us, this is the most important section of the Google Ads Guide.
Broad Match
This is the default match type that Google will assign to all of your keywords unless you tell it otherwise. Using broad match keywords will show your ads to the most possible people. Synonyms, misspellings, related searches and relevant variations of your keywords can all trigger your ad.
Modified Broad Match
Our most-often-used match type, this allows you to select specific combinations of words that you want your ads to show for. The order of the keywords does not matter. The purpose of this match type is to show up for specific words, no matter what phrase they appear in. Modified broad match keywords are indicated by “+” signs before the keywords, such as +red +sneakers.
Phrase Match
This match type will limit the number of searches that trigger your ad when compared to broad match keywords. Phrase match keywords are indicated by quotation marks around the keyword, such as “black shirts”. Phrase match keywords will show your ad when a search contains your phrase, or a close variation, possibly being accompanied by additional words before or after the phrase.
Exact Match
This match type limits the number of searches that trigger your ad the most. Only ads that match your keyword exactly, or very close variations, will trigger your ads. Exact match keywords are indicated by square brackets around the keyword, such as [buy brown shoes].
Negative Keywords
When thinking about the keywords you want your business to show up for, try to think about which keywords you definitely DON’T want to show up for. Negative keywords allow you to tell Google which keywords and phrases do not relate to your product or service.
Create Your Ad
Here’s where the Google Ads Guide gets creative! Or more precisely, here’s where you get creative! The key to creating good ads is matching the ad language to the keywords that will trigger your ad, all while considering what the end-user is intending when they are using Google. If someone is searching Google to have their bicycle repaired, you don’t want your ad copy reading ‘New Bicycles For Sale’.
Final URL
This is where the user will be sent when they click your ad, oftentimes referred to as the landing page. You want to make sure your ad copy matches the content on this page, which will provide the user a seamless experience by sending them to a page with the information they were looking for when they clicked your ad.
Headlines
The most important parts of your ad copy are the headlines, which are broken up into headline 1, headline 2, and headline 3. This is what will grab the user’s attention and needs to clearly address their need. Headline 1 appears at the top of your ad and can be up to 30 characters long. Separated by a dash “-”, headline 2 appears after headline 1 and can also be up to 30 characters long. The same goes for headline 3. Keep in mind, on mobile devices, headline 2 may wrap to a second line. Headline 3 is a recent addition to ads from Google.
Display Path
This is the green URL that shows under your headlines. The purpose of this display path is to give the user a clear understanding of the page they will be sent to when they click your ad. You can use up to two (2) display paths, each being up to 15 characters long.
Description
The description acts as the support for your headlines. Here, you will go into further detail about your offering. The amount of information Google allows in the description has been more than doubled recently, due to the addition of a second description box being added and more characters being allowed in addition to a higher character limit. The two description boxes appear after the display path and can be up to 90 characters each, totaling 180 characters.
Google Ads Guide: Creating Ad Groups for Display
Now that you’ve set up your first campaign, the obvious next question is ‘what do I do now?’. Your next step will be creating an ad group, which will contain related ads and keywords. Each ad group should have it’s own theme. Themes can be a service or product category you offer, competitors, or branded for your business. The keywords in your ad group are triggered when you win a bid in Google’s Auction. Then, Google displays the ad you created for that particular ad group. Keep reading the Google Ads Guide to dig deeper into Ad Groups.
Audiences
A great ability that Google offers is targeting your ads by audience interests. This gives you the ability to reach people who are interested in products and services similar to yours. Audience targeting is a powerful tool for marketers, which will allow you to base audiences around Affinity, Intent or Remarketing. If you are unsure about your audience or believe your audience is broad, you should leave these options by default.
Affinity
This targeting builds audiences and shows ads based on people’s lifestyles, buying habits, and interests.
Intent
This audience type creates an audience based on the products and services your ideal customers are actively searching. You will need to provide related keywords and URLs to Google for this audience to work.
Remarketing
This audience is built by customers that have previously interacted with your business. Remarketing campaigns are a cheap way to get your business in front of potential customers a second (or more) time.
Demographics
Do you know exactly who your ideal customer is? Demographics will allow you to set parameters for who your ads will be shown to. If you know that your sales come from women, aged 25-40, who are not parents and make more than $40,000 per year, you are able to set this demographic up in Google Ads. Both Audiences and Demographics narrow down the net cast by your ads. It is up to you to determine if this is positive or negative.
Automated Targeting
This allows Google to analyze your audience and expand it to people that are similar to your most valuable customers. The default is Conservative automation, with No automated targeting and Aggressive automation also being options. We recommend using Conservative automation.
Create Your Ad
For Display Ads, you can use the ad generator provided by Google or upload your own images. We recommend uploading your own ad images.
Google Ads Guide: Conclusion
Google Ads can be daunting and requires continuing education and constant management. The Google Ads Guide was created to help you quickly get your ads in front of potential customers. We implore you to continue to monitor your ads and make tweaks as needed. Google Ads is a great tool that any marketer can benefit from, but it’s definitely not one size fits all.
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