The third of our series of blogs on, ‘The World of Google’ is all about Google Ads. Google Ads can be a complicated area to fully understand so here we have outlined the basics of what Google Ads is and how to set up a Google Ads account. We recommend that you have a good comprehension of Google Ads and monitor your budget and daily spend regularly if you are new to using this method of digital advertising.
What are Google Ads?
Google Ads (which used to be called Google Adwords but changed its name in July last year) is a method of advertising your business, products and services on Google’s online advertising platform. Your adverts are displayed to Google users in Google Search and on Google Maps, and are paid for by CPM or cost per thousand impressions. Although this might seem like a simple process, Google Ads can be quite tricky to both set up and manage and some knowledge into how this works will ensure both your money and time is well spent.
How does Google Ads work?
Setting up a Google Ads account is free to do but you need to have a business email and web address. If you don’t yet have a web address, you can set up a Google Adwords Express account which is an easy and simple alternative option to Google Ads because Google will manage your campaign and select keywords etc. However, here we are just concentrating on Google Ads.
Billing
Once you have set up your Google Account you will also need to set up a billing account so that Google can take payment for your advertising campaign. Remember, you are only charged when someone clicks on your advert and Google will take payment either at the end of a 30-day period or when you have achieved your billing threshold.
Creating your Ads Campaign
Once you have completed all this information, you can then start to create your first advertising campaign. To do this you will need to choose how much you want to spend each day, who your target audience is, set a bid amount and create your advert copy.
- Daily Spend. Your daily spend is how much you are willing to spend each day and your campaign, and you can adjust this as you see fit and as your campaign progresses. It is essential to look at your campaign daily so that you are keeping on eye on your costs and how the campaign is performing. After the campaign has been running for a few weeks you will have some data and statistics to make informed decisions about how well the campaign has been doing and make any adjustments going forward to either increase or decrease spend.
- Target Audience. Here you can select what audience you want your ads to reach. You will need to select the geography and locations you want your advert(s) to target from the world, specific countries or further define by city, region, and even town. In target audience you will need to decide if you want your ads to run alongside Google’s search networks, the Google Search Network and the Google Display Network. At this stage you will also need to select the keywords which define your advertising campaign and should be the search terms you think people will use that will enable your advert to show in their search results. So, for example if your business sells Smart Watches, your keywords that define your business might be, smart watches, the brand of your watches such as Samsung smart watches, best smartwatch, kids smart watch etc. To help you select your keywords Google has a very useful Keyword Planner website which also tells you the cost of each keyword.
- Set your Bid. Here you need to set a bid amount which is based on how much you are prepared to pay per click for your selected keywords. This will be the maximum cost per click (CPC) you are willing to pay. In general, the higher your CPC, the more chance your advert has of being displayed higher up in Google Search results for that search term. The two options you have are whether you want Google to automatically manage the CPC for you, which is ideal for people who can’t or don’t want to invest time into doing this themselves and people who have little or no knowledge of how to manage a campaign. Alternatively, you can manage and set this for yourself using manual bidding, but this is recommended for people who will regularly monitor costings, so they don’t run away without you keeping an eye on them and for people with some experience, so they know what they are doing! For keywords which are highly competitive, there will be a higher cost per click. Selecting the right keywords is very important to ensure that your advert(s) are reaching the right audience, at the right time and not wasting time and money.
- Ad Copy. Finally, you will need to add some copy to your ad! This needs to be well thought out so that it is engaging to your audience to ensures you are achieving ad clicks. You need to write a main heading which should exactly match your keywords so that your advert is related to what your audience is searching for. Your advert will also need to direct your audience to a relevant landing page, so a page on your website which is related to your advert. So, for example, if you are selling Smart Watches on special offer, your advert should go straight to that special offer on your website. You can include special offers or promotions in your advert or information about a product launch or the latest news. Google recommends that your advert heading is capitalised at every first letter so that your advert stands out more.
Once you have done all of this, your advert is ready to be submitted to Google for approval before it goes live. Google take about a day to approve your advert and remember once it’s live you won’t be charged until the first person clicks on your advert.
Managing Google Ads
Once your ads are live, we recommend that to begin with you should manage your campaign on a daily basis as in the early stages you will be getting to know how your campaign is working and ensuring that your ads are reaching the right audience at the right time, that they are preforming well, and you are getting the most cost-effective results for your daily budget and spend. Once you are happy with your Ads campaign, monitoring at least once a week should suffice but its defiantly an ongoing job to constantly track and improve your campaign making tweaks to where necessary to gain the greatest results.
Within Google Ads, managing the results of your ads campaign can be quite complex and your campaign will generate statistics and data that you can look at and assess, such as conversion rates, which will tell you information about your customers and their activity, but we will cover this in more detail in the next blog about Google Analytics.
What are the benefits of using Google Ads?
So, after reading all this information you might be asking yourself what will a Google Ads campaign do for me and my business? Well, for your marketing strategy, Google Ads is another string to your marketing bow and something which you can dip in and out of using. Having a Google Ads campaign will benefit your online ranking for the short and long term and the flexibility it provides means you can turn it off and on at any time. It is a cost effective and quick method of making a positive impact on your business listing on Google and enables your business to be shown on the first page of search results, although it can be competitive for highly sought-after keywords. Once you have the knowledge and understanding of how it all works, it can be easily monitored, changed, reworked and adapted to suit your marketing and business needs.
More information
Although Google Ads isn’t a simple and easy area to explain, we have tried to provide a grounded source of information on this topic. However, if you would like to access more information about Google Ads visit https://ads.google.com/intl/en_uk/home.
Get in touch
As a full-service digital marketing agency and certified Google Partners we are fully qualified to set up and manage Google accounts and campaigns. To find out more about how we can help you, get in touch with us on 01323 735800 or email enq@barkweb.co.uk.
Coming up next…. Google Analytics!