A Brief Introduction to Google Ads

Google processes billions of searches every day, which is the most prominent indicator of commercial intent online. With Google Ads you can position your business in front of someone at the exact moment they are searching for your solution.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to setting up a campaign that yields results.

1. Step 1: Build Your Keyword List

The keywords you select determine where and when your ads show up. Before you even log into the Google Ads interface, spend some time building your keyword list.

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. What words and phrases would they use to find your product or service?

General keywords will bring in a very large but less relevant audience. Long-tail keywords will bring in a smaller but more relevant audience. The person searching for “women’s waterproof hiking boots” is more likely to buy hiking boots than someone searching for “shoes.”

If your business is dependent on geography, make sure to include location keywords. A plumber in Chicago should target “plumber in Chicago” as opposed to “plumber.”

Use negative keywords to make sure your ads don’t appear for irrelevant queries. If you sell high-end custom furniture, you may want to use the negative keywords “cheap” and “DIY” to prevent your ads from appearing for searches like that. A negative keyword list is one of the most powerful tools in Google Ads.

Using Google’s keyword planning tool, you can plan out the search volume, competition, and estimated CPC of any keyword.

1. Step 2: Configure Your Campaign

You have the following options for campaign type:

• Search Network: This serves text ads on the Google search results page. This is ideal for traffic with high commercial intent.
• Display Network: This serves image ads across millions of websites. This is ideal for brand awareness and retargeting.
• Shopping: This serves product listing ads that include images and pricing information. This is ideal for e-commerce.
• Video: This serves ads before and during video content. This is ideal for brand awareness.

In most cases, a Search Network campaign is going to give you the most direct ROI.

Set your geographic targeting to your service area. You don’t want to pay for clicks in places you can’t service.

For bidding strategy, start with manual cost-per-click (CPC) bidding. This allows you to directly control how much you spend on each keyword. Set a daily budget that you’re comfortable with, then adjust as you get the data.

1. Step 3: Write Effective Ads

With just a few short lines of text, you have to communicate relevance, value, and incentive to buy now.

• Try to include your target keyword in your headline. This communicates relevance to the user and can help improve quality score.
• Lead with value: a discount, free shipping, a unique feature, or proven expertise.
• Include a clear call-to-action (CTA): “schedule service today,” “shop now,” or “get your free quote.”
• Make sure your ad copy matches your landing page copy. Mismatched messaging can seriously hurt conversion rates.

Create multiple ads in each ad group. Google will rotate them and give you performance data on each variation.

1. Step 4: Schedule and Refine

Use scheduling to control when your ads run. If most of your conversions happen on weekday evenings, you may want to allocate most of your daily budget to those times. You can set an ad to run from a specific start date to a specific end date. This is useful for promotions and sales. For ongoing campaigns, aim to check performance once a week.

1. Step 5: Track, Measure, and Optimize

Just because your campaign is live doesn’t mean your job is done. Here are the key metrics you need to track:

• Click-through rate (CTR): If your CTR is low, it may be a sign that your messaging or targeting is off.
• Conversion rate: If your conversion rate is low, it may be a sign that your landing page experience is poor.
• Cost per conversion: This is the only metric that will tell you whether your campaign is profitable or not.
• Quality score: This is Google’s rating of how relevant your ad and landing page are to the user. Generally speaking, the higher your quality score the lower your cost per click will be.

Make sure to check your search terms report on a regular basis. You can use this report to find opportunities to add new keywords to your campaign and to add irrelevant searches to your negative keyword list. Pause any keywords that aren’t performing well and shift their budget to the top performers.

Final Thoughts

The key to Google Ads is patience, attention to detail, and a commitment to perpetual improvement. Start with a tightly focused campaign and let the data inform your decisions moving forward. The companies who succeed with Google Ads approach it as a process of perpetual optimization, rather than a set-it-and-forget-it solution.