Creating your first Google Ad may seem like an easy task, but there are many factors that you should take into consideration to make it a successful and optimized campaign. Despite its challenges, it is undoubtedly one of the best ways to advertise your business.
If you are looking to create your first Google Ad to take your business to the next level, rest assured, you are taking a great step in the right direction. A marketing mainstay for many years, using Google Ads has proven to be efficient and relevant even in 2022. Why? It is simply because Google is now dominating the global search market at around 83%, easily making it one of the best, if not the best platform to advertise on.
Initially coming onto the scene in 2000 as Google Adwords, it was rebranded as Google Ads in 2018. It is a platform where businesses can advertise on Google and other partner networks to reach people exactly when they are interested in their specific products and services. Besides that, Google Ads can also be used to promote a business, raise awareness or visibility, and increase traffic to a website.
A Google Ad account is easily managed online, allowing advertisers to create and change an ad campaign at any time, including the ad budget, text, and other settings. With no minimum spending commitment, businesses can set and control their own budget, where the ad appears, and measure the impact of their ads. So far, you can select from one of five Google Ads campaign types:
These are text ads on the search engine results page (SERP). Its main benefit is that your ad will be displayed in the place where most searchers look to for information.
As its name suggests, display ads are media-rich ads displayed on the Google Display Network, allowing the advertiser to get their content in front of audiences to draw their attention.
These are video ads that run on YouTube and other video partner networks. With the right keywords and/or audiences in place, you will be able to put your video in front of a user to grab their attention.
Google Shopping ads are also displayed on SERPs and can include detailed information such as product images and prices. Your shopping campaign can be run through Google Merchant Center where specific info is entered to allow Google to use it to create your ad.
If you have a mobile application, Google App Campaigns can promote it through YouTube, Google Display Network, Google Play, Google Search Network, and more. These ads will encourage your target audience to install your app or perform an action in it.
In general, advertising your business gives you a competitive edge in your industry as it enables you to reach your target audience. Today, with the world being more technologically advanced, everything is more digitized, meaning that more potential clients are looking for products and services using a search engine.
While you can increase your traffic and search visibility organically through website search engine optimization (SEO), Google Ads gives you more visibility instantly. It connects you more with the people that need your business and services.
With Google Ads, you can:
By advertising online, you are automatically increasing website traffic, generating leads, and improving brand visibility and awareness. But again, why choose Google? Here are the top reasons why:
As previously mentioned, Google dominates the search engine market, making it the most widely used search engine in both the United States and the world, easily dominating over other rivals such as Yahoo and Bing. With Google Ads, you are reaching even the most specific and segmented audiences. This also means that you will have a high return on investment (ROI). Based on Google’s Economic Impact report, advertisers generate $2 for every $1 spent on average, doubling your investment. Once your ads are optimized, your ROI will increase even more.
With the different ad campaigns available, you have options on which ad type suits your business best. With different features in each ad type, any business or industry will be able to find success. Additionally, you can also use remarketing to bring back your target audience who have slipped through your sales funnel.
When time is not on your side, as is the case with most businesses as time is money, Google Ads can produce fast results with less work. It also allows you to track the impact of your ad campaigns in real time, allowing you to make adjustments and changes after testing out the campaign. Compared to search engine optimization (SEO) or growing a social media following, these are strategies that take up a considerable amount of time and effort with results that are not guaranteed. These strategies can also take some time before you realize if they are working, potentially causing you to lose out on sales and leads.
Google Ads is an online advertising platform. There are a wide variety of different campaign types (search, display, video, etc.) as we mentioned above. How Google Ads works will depend on what campaign type you start with. At the core of how Google Ads works, you’ll pay Google for showing your ads on its platform and other partner networks. To get started, you’ll need to give it inputs of text, budget amount, imagery and other information for it to begin showing your ads. Advertisers can display brief advertisements, service offerings, product listings, or videos to users online.
With Google Search Ads, you may notice that ads are displayed in a certain order, just as you would see in organic search results. Depending on your ranking, it can affect the traffic and conversions you bring in. These rankings are determined by Ad Rank, a value created by Google to determine the position of your ads. Here's what you should know about how the auction works:
PPC is a model in which advertisers pay ad platforms like Google every time their ad is clicked. The amount you pay depends on how much you bid. Naturally, to get your ads at the top of the page, you have to bid higher but Quality Score also plays a role.
Indeed, you aren’t the only business that uses Google ads – you will have competition. There can be more than ten ads listed in response to a user’s query and the keywords. How then is it determined who comes first or makes it to the list?
When a user does a search, Google uses auctions to determine the position of an ad’s position that relates to the keywords. If the search is “fixing a roof in Philadelphia,” an auction is carried out amongst the carpentry workshops in Philadelphia registered under Google Ads. The following factors come into play during the auction.
On Google Ads, you bid on keywords relevant to your business and that a potential customer is likely to search. Depending on the range of services you provide, there are several keywords you may bid on. Philadelphia is the state you work in, so you can add that keyword. Other keywords may include “fix,” “repair,” “roof,” etc. Advertisers with higher bids are given preferences.
Take note that placing the highest bid does not always guarantee that the highest ranking. Your ranking also depends on your quality score. Google calculates the position your ad occupies using this formula:
Maximum cost per click * Quality Score = Ad rank.
Your ads should also have a high Google Ads Quality Score determined by expected clickthrough rate (CTR), ad relevance, and landing page experience.
Your quality score is calculated by considering the following:
This is Google’s effort in bringing the best ads to the top as ads with a higher quality score will have cheaper clicks and lower final acquisition costs. The amount you pay also depends on how much you bid. Note that the highest bid does not always guarantee the highest ranking as it ultimately depends on your quality score.
Before building your first Google Ads, start by creating your free Google Ads account by signing up using your email and website URL. Once you are done with signing up, here are the following steps:
What do you want to achieve through your ad campaign? Is it to increase website traffic, generate leads, encourage sign ups? Ask yourself why you want to invest in Google Ads and what you want out of it.
Start with a small budget as you always have the option to increase it later. Set a budget your business is comfortable with to help you bring in traffic and improve conversion rates without breaking the bank.
Some products and services are more common or specific within a certain gender or age group. Google Ads enable you to choose who sees your ads through your buyer persona. You can even be specific to the point of choosing a certain radius within a location you want your ads to be displayed, a handy option for companies that provide products or services only in a limited region.
There are two networks to choose from. The Search Network includes Google search sites and non-Google sites that use Google as a search engine, typically more suitable for small businesses. The Display Network includes Google content sites and non-Google content partners that show ads. You can also choose both and change your preferences later.
What keywords do your potential clients search for when looking for your services or products? Pinpointing keywords with buyer intent can be the difference between a campaign that only breaks even or one that is hugely successful.
When it comes to creating your ad copy, make sure it is compelling, appealing, and relevant to your audience to encourage them to click and visit your site. Your best keywords should be in your headline and description. Also, don’t forget to use a Call To Action (CTA) to trigger your desired results.
The landing page is the web page visitors are directed to once they click on your ad. This page is incredibly important as it determines if your visitors stay or leave. Even if your Google Ad is perfect to the point that it attracts all these visitors to your site, without a good landing page, your guests will just leave, causing you to waste money and resources.
One of the best features of Google Ads is the ability to track your conversions and measure how well your ads are doing. You also have the option of integrating Google Analytics to help monitor your funnels and reveal aspects of campaigns that can be further optimized to make your campaign a success. This step is a must as accounts without conversion tracking leads to faulty and unreliable data and reports.
As mentioned briefly, remarketing re-engages visitors who have left your site without converting on the first visit. By showing your ads on other websites, they are reminded of abandoned carts, actions that were not taken, or products that were viewed during previous visits. This is a proven technique to redirect visitors back to your site. You can also offer discounts and bonuses to help them make a decision.
As we have already established, Google Ads is a great option as it offers a high ROI. As one of the biggest advertising platforms globally, Google Ads continuously adapts and changes to suit consumer trends and needs. This means that you will be seeing Google Ads changes continuously. In 2022, Google Ads changes have three key themes: privacy, first party data, and artificial intelligence. In this section, we will be highlighting the most significant changes for Google Ads in 2022, so you can use them to your advantage:
If you are a regular internet user, you would be aware of the many privacy-related issues and challenges that both consumers and businesses are experiencing. Previously, businesses were able to leverage the cookies placed on a user’s device. However, due to data privacy and tracking issues, Google is planning to phase out browser cookies by 2023.
This means that remarketing will become more challenging due to the lack of data. Instead of being disheartened, you can start getting more creative about converting your leads, capturing their contact details so you can follow up with them for conversion or to build brand loyalty, and paying more attention to understanding the buyer’s journey and experience.
Google Ads’ machine learning technology, BERT or Bidirectional Encored Representations from Transformers helps to understand users better based on the context and intent of the search queries. In the update, BERT will change keyword matching rules where it will prioritize identical exact match keywords or if it cannot find an exact match keyword, it will use close variants.
While it is more challenging, it is a great opportunity to create an exhaustive list of possible keyword matches by diving into research and understanding the keywords your target audience will use. The changes will make it easier to reach the right customers.
Google has announced that it would be combining Smart Display and Display campaigns. This means you will be able to select the level of automation you want or even switch it off. These new Display campaigns will automatically optimize targeting, allowing Google to look beyond your target audience to find new leads that are likely to convert.
This can be greatly advantageous to advertisers who are new to the platform as Google may display your ad to an audience you have overlooked. Although it cannot replace in-depth research of your target audience, it can be a great first step for new advertisers. Note that an understanding of your own target audience holds more context.
Due to the changes where users are allowed to opt out of tracking, Google Ads started to lose data. As a solution, Google uses conversion modeling where machine learning analyzes trends and historical data. This means that it models conversions based on trackable users for people who opted out of tracking.
While it is not a complete solution, Google claims that it recovers up to 70% of lost data as it helps to put things into perspective. To use it to your advantage, you can install Google Tag Manager and set up Google Analytics 4 to understand your website visitors better.
Google has replaced Expanded Text Ads (ETAs) with responsive search ads (RSAs) as the default ad for search campaigns. This is part of Google’s effort to push for automation as they claim that RSAs are better at driving incremental conversations.
Even if this means that you are losing some control over your Google ad copy, advertisers have been loving the change as it allows you to enter options of up to 15 headlines and 4 descriptions, allowing Google Ads to personalize your ad using different combinations depending on the user viewing the ad. Note that it is up to the advertiser to ensure that every combination makes sense.
One of the most exciting changes is the improvement of travel ads as many individuals are now traveling again after being grounded over the past few years. If you are in the travel industry, make sure to take advantage of Google’s new “Things to Do” travel ad as Google’s Vice President of product management for travel has said that these ads will attract a lot of attention and drive additional revenue and bookings.
The new ad format allows you to expand on different elements such as pricing, images, maps, reviews, and tickets. While leads are only able to find information about a certain product or service, they can now book or buy a ticket straight away.
If you have come across an “about this ad page” in ad placements, this feature allows users to click on “see more ads by this advertiser” to view other ads the business has posted in the last month. For advertisers, this allows you to learn and understand what your competitors are doing.
It also allows users to learn more about your company, a helpful advantage as it can build company credibility especially if you are trying to establish your brand. With the multitude of new companies and scams, it can be hard for potential clients to determine your legitimacy. With this feature, your leads can be more assured if they have any concerns.
Now that you have learned the basics and what it takes to create your first Google Ad, you understand the advantage it offers when it comes to growing your business. At DDM Generation, our team of experts can help you make the most out of your ad spend by taking into account your business goals and creating an optimized campaign that has a high ROI to take your business to the next level. Instead of spending your time to create successful Google Ad campaigns and keeping up with the changes or updates, leave it to us to bring you customers and peace of mind while you focus on the important business decisions. To get started, contact us today to talk to one of our experts!
