Google ads which was formerly known as Google Adwords, is a tool by Google made for digital advertising. Whether you own a small business or a large enterprise or you are a marketer, it helps you to get traffic, generating leads and also in boosting sales. Google Ads ensures, in reaching the target audience of the business in a correct and scalable way.
In this blog you will get to know everything about Google Ads from scratch, from creating to managing a successful Google Ads campaign.
What is Google Ads?
Google Ads is an online advertising platform by Google, which works on a bid based method for advertisement on a particular keyword. In which advertisers pay to display brief advertisements about their products and services, or video content to web users. Google Ads includes various formats such as text based search ads, display ads, shopping ads and video ads for targeting various types of audiences. Google ads appear in google search results and in various other websites of google.
It helps in targeting audiences on the basis of location, demographics and keywords. PPC model is the most common way used in Google Ads in which advertisers only have to pay when someone clicks on the ad.
Types of Google Ads
There are various types of Google Ads which can be used while creating campaigns,depending on the business type and nature various types of google ads can be used for effective targeting and generating traffic.
- Search ads
These are the text based google ads which appear whenever a user asks a query with a keyword, it appears on the search result. It covers the website name, meta description, title and favicon.
- Display Ads
They are different from search ads, as they are image based ads. Display ads appear on millions of websites which are within the Google Display Network (GDN).
- Shopping Ads
Shopping ads are useful for ecom business in promoting your products, appearing on search results and shopping pages on Google.
- Video Ads
These ads appear on youtube, in the start or in between the video and on website content. It is in various formats such as bumper ads, instream ads and outstream ads.
- App ads
App ads are made for increasing downloads of your app. These ads appear on search results, youtube, google play and Google display network.
- Performance Max ads
It covers overall strategy, it uses machine learning algorithms and other data and helps in getting best results by optimizing various ads and platforms.
- Discovery Ads
It is an automated ad campaign type which can be used for running ads across all platforms,including Google search, Youtube, emails and google app.
Why to use Google ads?
- More reach
Billions of people search over google everyday and this makes google the largest search engine. With this, advertisers can reach a large number of audiences effectively.
- Targeted advertising
Google ads help in reaching a group of audiences on the basis of location,search behavior and demographics.
- Measurable results
With the help of google ads analytics we can measure the performance of ad campaigns and ROI
- Cost effective
With the proper planned and optimized campaign, businesses can see measurable results without spending huge amounts of money.
Steps to create successful campaign
- Decide your goals
Before creating a Google Ads campaign businesses should identify their objectives and goals which they want to achieve with the help of Google Ads, whether it is generating traffic, leads, boosting sales or brand awareness.
Pre-defined goals help in proper creation of ad campaigns and achieving business goals effectively.
- Understanding your audience
Knowing about your audience before running an ad campaign is important. Classify your audience into different categories on the basis of demographics, location, interest and behavior.
Tools such as Google Analytics and Google ads audience insights help in collecting data of your audience.
- Keyword research
Keywords are required for running Google ads campaigns, without keywords we cannot run an ad campaign.
Tools such as Google Keyword Planner, Semrush or Ahref helps in finding relevant keywords for your ad campaign.
Keywords can be classified into three type
- Intent based keywords
Keywords which show the buying intent and include words like buy, shop, get etc.
- Long tail keywords
These are those keywords which are clearly defined and generally includes 4-5 words
- Negative keywords
Keywords which you want to exclude to avoid irrelevant clicks on your ads campaign
- Choosing the right campaign type
According to the goals of the business, select the appropriate campaign type for ads. Selecting the right campaign helps in achieving goals –
Search ads – for lead generation
Shopping ads – for promotion of products
Videos ads – from demonstration of product and storytelling
- Budget allocation
Deciding daily and monthly budgets for ad campaigns is important before running ads. Costs of ads can be control by-
- Setting maximum CPC (Cost-Per-Click) bids.
- Using bidding strategies like “Target ROAS” (Return on Ad Spend) or “Maximize Conversions.”
- Create ads
High quality ads help in grabbing the attention of the user and promote users to take immediate action. Proper alignments of all the events in your ad creative such as headlines, CTA and media is necessary for effectiveness of the ads.
While creating ads you should focus on-
- Headlines: make your headlines short and clear and relevant to the user’s search query.
- Descriptions: Highlight your unique selling proposition (USP) and include a strong call-to-action (CTA).
- Ad Extensions: Use sitelinks, call extensions, and location extensions to provide more information.
- Landing page optimization
Before starting the ad campaign, optimize your landing page with all the required elements such as hooking element, supporting element, CTA and media.
Also, optimize your website loading speed which helps in enhancing user experience.
- Conversion tracking
Include macro and micro conversions in your ad campaign to measure the effectiveness of ads. Trackable conversion like :
- Form submissions.
- Purchases.
- Phone calls.
- App downloads.
- Monitor and optimize
Regularly reviewing your ads tells about the campaign performance. Various metrics can be used for measuring performance-
- CTR (Click-Through Rate): Tells about ad relevance and engagement.
- Quality Score: Google’s rating of your ad’s quality and relevance.
- CPC (Cost-Per-Click): The amount you pay for each click.
- Conversion Rate: Percentage of users who completed the macro conversion.
- A/B testing
A/B testing means testing various ads to compare which ads work better. Run A/B tests to compare different headlines, descriptions, or images. This helps identify what relates most with your audience and also improves overall performance.
- Remarketing
Re- marketing allows us to connect again with the users which were not converted into customers earlier. For remarketing use personalized ads, incentives and coupons for conversions.