Online advertisements are powerful for businesses to market their products to their audiences. Consumers are becoming smarter and like to research various products or services online. With online advertisements businesses aim to target such consumers who are looking for a product or service that they offer. There are many different tools and platforms available which can help businesses advertise their products to their target audience. Google Ads is one such advertising tool that is widely used by many marketers to reach millions of users through Google Search, YouTube, Google Maps, and more.
Google Ads can get complicated for first-time users. Which campaign types to choose? How much bid to set? Which keywords to use? These are the questions you will catch yourself asking when you are about to set your campaign. If you want to learn the basics of Google Ads or get started with creating your own campaign this guide will help you. We will discuss all the basics of Google Ads which will make you more confident about using this platform.
Before we discuss different AdWords campaign types, let us understand Google Ads and its benefits.
What are Google Ads?
Google Ads is an advertising platform that uses pay-per-click (PPC), where you pay per click or per impression on an ad.
Google Ads can enable you to drive quality traffic to your website by targeting those consumers who are looking for products or services like the ones your business offers. With Google Ads you can get more leads, increase your brand presence, and drive conversions.
Why should you use Google Ads? Let’s take a look at some of the benefits of Google Ads.
Key Benefits of Google Ads
Targeting
Google Ads allows you to target people who are interested in the type of products or services you sell. These users are shown ads that are relevant to their search queries. There are various ways on how you can target your potential customers. You can use relevant keywords, demographics, time, and frequency to target the right audience at the right time.
Control Your Budget
In Google Ads, you can set your own budget and have full control over it. There is no minimum value you need to set. You can choose how much you want to spend in a day, month, or per ad. You only pay when someone clicks on your ad.
Measuring and Tracking
You can measure and track the progress of your campaigns with Google Ads. You will get an in-depth report on the number of clicks, impressions your ads received. Also, you can track your conversions and expenses easily. All this data is available in a form that is easy to understand.
Recommendations
Google Ads will also show you where your ads need improvements for various features and settings to meet your goals. You can see various auction insights and make improvements to your keywords. Also, it can provide other recommendations on budget, landing pages, and ad groups.
There are many more tools available that can help you manage and monitor your account easily.
Google Ads has different campaign types that you can use as per your advertising or business needs. When you get started the first thing you will have to set up will be your goals and campaign type. You can select your goals based on the actions you want your audience to take. Based on these goals you can select which campaign type will work best for you. You can always choose if you want to change a goal or stop using it without disturbing your campaign settings.
Here are the different types of campaigns you can use.
Type of Google Ads Campaigns
Search Campaign
Search ads are text ads that are displayed on the Google search results page. They show up when users search for a particular query and are displayed on top of the page. Users can locate these easily when searching for your products or services. Search campaigns enable you to place your ads across Google’s wide network of search results. These ads are easy to set up and don’t require any special assets.
You will need to focus on writing an interesting title and description to catch the attention of your audience. In a search campaign, you can select from two different types of ad groups which are Standard and Dynamic. In Standard, you can use a set of relevant keywords and create ads to match them. While in Dynamic, Google uses your website content to automatically create ads and target searches.
Display Campaigns
Display ads are image ads that can easily grab the attention of the user while they are on a website. These ads are displayed on Google Display Network that can allow reaching users on various websites, YouTube videos, Gmail accounts, or on mobile devices and apps. These ads are made to find your potential customers. With various targeting options, you can choose who sees your ads and target the right people. You can use appealing visuals and ad formats to engage your audience.
You can use Responsive Display ads and create ads that are partially automated. Enter your text, add image and logo, and Google will automatically optimize the ads. Another format is Uploaded Image Ads where you can use images of different sizes to create and upload your ads. With Display campaigns, you can use remarketing to target people who have previously shown interest in your products or visited your website or apps.
Shopping Campaigns
Shopping campaigns are used by retailers to promote their online and local inventory. This can help them to get more traffic to the website as well as local stores. First, you will need to update all the product information on the Merchant Center and then proceed to create the Google ads. Shopping ads include text and visual elements. You can use an image of your product and write a short description along with the price of your product.
These ads give users all the information they are looking for. Hence, you will get better-qualified leads as users have already seen the information they needed to and clicked on your ad. A single user can see one or even two of your Shopping ads at the same time. If relevant a text ad and a Shopping ad can appear at the same time. This can help you expand your reach in a single search.
Video Campaigns
Video campaigns allow you to show video ads within a video on YouTube and across the Google Display Network. There are different ad formats available like skippable in-stream ads, non-skippable in-stream ads, video discovery ads, outstream ads, and bumper ads.
Skippable in-stream ads play 5 seconds during a video and can be skipped. Non-skippable in-stream ads play for 15 seconds or less and cannot be skipped. These can allow you to deliver your entire message to the user. Outstream ads are only available on mobile and tablet and users can easily tap to play your video. These ads show on partner sites. Bumper ads are short 6 seconds long video ads that allow you to reach more customers and increase brand awareness with concise messages.
App Campaigns
If you have an app, this is the campaign that will get you more users. App campaigns can help you promote your app across Search, Google Play, YouTube, and Google Search and Display Network. For App campaigns, you would not need to design individual ads. Google Ads will automatically create ads while testing various combinations. You can provide the text, budget, images, location, and language.
Google can display your ads to people who search for terms and apps that are relevant to your app. Since these ads show on a wide network you can expect to get more downloads and new users for your app.
Important Aspects of Google Ads Campaigns
Here are some key points you should know about before you create your campaign.
Ad Groups
Ad group includes one or more ads that have similar targets. Each campaign includes one or more ad groups. An ad group will contain a list of relevant keywords and Google will display your ads based on these keywords. You can set a bid to be used when these keywords trigger your ads to be displayed. Within an ad group, you can organize your ads by themes for example types of products or services you want to promote. You can have three to five ads per ad group. The more ads you have the more options you can have for auction. This can increase your chances of success.
Keywords
Keywords are an important part of your Google Ads. Investing time in selecting your keyword list is always a good idea. Research keywords and take a look at their search volume, competition, cost per click, etc. You can use the Keyword Planner tool in Google Ads that can help you build a keyword list for your campaigns. Google Ads also gives various recommendations to add certain keywords to your campaign.
Headline and Description
Headlines and Descriptions are important for the success of your ads. Use a headline that is relevant to search queries of your users. It should also include relevant keywords that address the needs of your target customers. In the description, you can talk about what makes you unique and how you can solve the problems of your customers. Your ad copy should include all the solutions that your potential customer is looking for.
Bidding
You need to set a budget for your campaign. Your bid decides how your Google Ads rank. There are two options you can use in bidding on your keywords:
Automated Bidding: In this type of bidding Google automatically makes adjustments to your bid based on your competitors. You can set your minimum budget and Google will make bids within that range to increase your chance of winning.
Manual Bidding: Here you can set the bid amounts for your ad groups and keywords. This can help you reduce the spending on ads that are not performing.
Extensions
Adding ad extensions, you can give additional information to your users as well as more opportunities to interact with your ad. These are different types of extensions you can add to your ads.
Sitelink Extensions: These are additional links to your site that you can add so that users are more curious to check out other pages on your website and click on it.
Call Extensions: These are phone numbers you can add to make it easier for the users to reach out to you. Your customer service team can make these calls and convert these leads.
Location Extensions: Includes your location and phone number in your ad so that users can locate you on Google Maps. If you have retail stores, then this option is great for you.
Offer Extensions: You can add any offers, promotions, or discounts to your ads to make the users interested so that they click on them.
App Extensions: Add a link to your app download for mobile users. This will help you get more traffic to your apps.
There are different ways and strategies to use these campaigns. Once you select your campaign, Google Ads will provide useful recommendations you can use to improve your ads. Selecting these ads are based on your business types and goals. Now that you understand the basics of Google Ads you can start building your campaigns and monitor them closely. You can make improvements along the way and this will help you to learn more about Google Ads.
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