Google Ads is incredible lead generation tool. But if you’ve dipped your toe into the water, it becomes overwhelming fast. Let’s simplify this effective strategy, so you have the knowledge you need to implement.
We are going to breakdown Google Ads, cover ad types available, which ones are best for your business, and provide you with some introductory tips to help you get started with Google Ads and create a campaign. Let’s get right into it!
What is Google Ads?
Google Ads is a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising program that was released by Google to help businesses better advertise themselves and receive more potential customers. With Google Ads, you create and run various types of ads, including:
What Types of Google Ads Are Available, and Which one is Best for My Business?
Responsive Search ads
Responsive search ads are the most common type of ads in Google Ads. These ads appear at the top or the bottom of the Google search results when someone searches a keyword related to your business. They’re easy to set up and can be tailored to target specific audiences looking for a product or service like yours. Responsive search ads are suitable for almost any type of business because they are displayed to users actively searching for what you offer.
Call Ads
As the name suggests, call ads encourage users to directly call your business. While they don’t stand out as much as responsive search ads, they’re an excellent choice if your goal is to receive more phone calls from potential customers. This ad type is especially effective for service-based industries where direct communication is essential.
Dynamic Search Ads
Dynamic search ads are unique because the ad copy is automatically generated based on the content from your website. Google uses the information on your site to create ads based on what users are searching for. If your website has extensive content, this ad type is a good option because Google has a wide range of information to pull from to create relevant ads.
Video Ads
We have all seen video ads pop up before every YouTube video. It is played before, during, or after the original video you are watching to show off your product, or services, or to raise your brand awareness. Video ads are like mini-commercials, and they’re perfect for businesses looking to explain their offerings or boost their visibility.
Responsive Display Ads
The unique thing about responsive display ads is they automatically adjust on where they’re shown, using the images and text you provide to create the best-looking, best-performing ad. This type is great for companies wanting to display their services and products, without taking up too much screen space.
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Where do I start with Google Ads?
Now that you know the types of ads available, it’s time to set up your first Google Ads campaign. Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you get started.
1. Switch to Expert Mode
Once you create a Google account and sign in into Google Ads, it will take you to a screen where it asks you about your main advertising goal. But you do not want to follow along with answering those questions because below this is a link that says “Expert mode”, which is what you want to click on.
You may be thinking, why switch to expert mode if I have no idea what I am doing? When you switch to expert mode, it gives you more options and will show you the various campaign objectives you choose from. Don’t worry! You will not be creating everything yourself, Google will still help you. if you do not switch to expert mode, you will not have the freedom to choose a more specific approach of advertising, which obviously no one wants.
2. Choose Your Campaign Objective
So from the various campaign objectives shown, choose one you would like for your campaign to have. Again, Google will be telling you what each campaign objective does, so there is no stress when figuring out which one works best for you. Once you choose a campaign objective, follow the steps and fill out what it requires to get you all set up.
3. Select Your Campaign Type
Decide which campaign type you would like to have for your business. There is a description for each campaign type, so choose whichever one you would like. While there are various types to choose from, a Search Campaign is the most common and beginner-friendly option, so let’s focus on that for now. A search campaign uses responsive search ads to help you appear in search results when potential customers are actively looking for businesses like yours.
4. Set Up Your Campaign
What ways would you like to reach your goal? Select all the ways you want to reach your goals, fill out the necessary fields, and then click continue. Usually, when we set up Search campaigns, we do website visits, phone calls, and lead form submissions.
5. Choose a Bidding Strategy
What kind of bidding strategy would you like to use? We recommend you first choose to maximize clicks, that way when you have your campaign running for a little bit, Google sees what kind of people click on your ad. After a while, once you start getting conversions, go and switch your bidding strategy to maximize conversions.
Why do this? After some time, Google begins to understand what kind of people click on your ads. It creates an audience and targets similar kinds of people. So when you switch to maximize conversions, it begins to target the same people as before except now instead of pushing people to click the ad, it pushes people to click and to convert those people into potential customers.
6. Ad Network Settings
In campaign settings, there is a section labeled “Networks” and it has two check boxes filled to include search network and display network, disable those. They may seem all good, but from our experience, having these checked brings in a lot of clicks and “conversions” but in reality, it is all spam and false leads.
7. Set Location Targeting
Choose a location you want to target. Preferably around your business or a radius of how far you want these ads to show. Then we come to the audience segments section. You can choose from various audiences similar to what kind of audience you are targeting. It isn’t necessary but it definitely helps Google with finding similar people to click on your ads.
8. Create Your Keyword List
Create a keyword list you want your ads to contain. This keywords list is everything you want to target with your ads, so if you are in the remodeling industry, you will want to use keywords like “home remodeling” or “remodelers near me” and the list continues with similar keywords. This is important because you will use these keywords in your headlines and descriptions when creating your ads.
Make sure when you are creating ads, you have a “Final URL” where you want customers to be forwarded to after they click on your ad. This is important because you want customers to be led to the correct page and if not, you could lose many customers.
9. Design Your Ads
Once you have a Final URL and you have filled out the headlines and descriptions with the keywords you want to use, we move on to the images, site links, and callouts. These things are not necessary but they will definitely help your ad stick out better and help you get more clicks and conversions.
10. Set Your Budget
How much money would you like to spend daily? Google recommends how much you should spend, but we recommend starting slow with a much lower budget than they recommend. Get your ads going and getting clicks before you go all out and start raising the budget.
11. Publish Your Campaign
Double-check your work and make sure everything is what you want it to be. Then click “Publish Campaign”. Congratulations! You have created your first campaign!
Monitor Your Results
Now that your campaign is live, it is important to check on performance. If you do not check at least weekly, Google will start doing its own thing and waste your budget.
Here are a few things to monitor weekly:
- Recommendations: Check your recommendations and see if they are applicable to helping your ads or not. (Google is always recommending to increase the budget, but don’t listen to them. You go at your own pace you are comfortable with.)
- Search terms. If what people search relates to your business, then you add those keywords into your list so your ads start using them. If they are not applicable, you mark them as negative keywords, and then your ad will not show up when people search that keyword.
- Conversions and Costs: Sometimes Google can go over your budget so you need to watch for that. You should be checking everything, but these three are important as they show how your campaign is doing.
Final Thoughts
There’s a lot to learn about Google Ads, but this guide covers the basics to get you started. With consistent monitoring and optimization, you can build successful ad campaigns that drive growth for your business.
At Based Agency, we love helping small businesses step into the digital world. Our mission is to help you grow, and your success is our success. Ready to take your business to the next level? Let’s get started!
