If you’re thinking about spending any amount on your ad to reach your target audience, it’s a good idea to spend it in the right place. In other words, there are more than 246 million unique visitors somewhere, 3.5 billion interactions per day, and an estimated return on investment of 700 percent.
Such as… Places like Google Ads.
Google Ads came just two years after it became the world’s most popular site, Google.com. The ad platform appeared as Google Adwords in October 2000, but changed its name to Google Ads in 2018 after a number of brand changes. Given Google’s extensive reach, you may see (and may click) a Google ad… The same is true for your potential customers.
In this guide, you’ll learn what Google Ads is and what you need to start running ads on Google. We’ll introduce features specific to the platform and teach you how to optimize your campaigns for optimal results with your ads.
What is Google Advertising?
It’s no secret that the more powerful your paid activity is today, the more focused you will generate —- the more likely you are to get new customers. That’s why Google Ads is becoming more popular with businesses from all walks of life.
Google Ads is a paid ad platform that is part of a pay-per-click (PPC) marketing channel where you (advertisers) pay for per click or impression (CPM).
Google Ads is an effective way to drive qualified traffic, or good customers, while they are searching for products and services like the products and services you offer to your business. With Google Ads, you can increase your website traffic, receive more calls, and increase your in-store visits.
Google Ads lets you create and share timely ads (via mobile and desktop) with your target audience. This means that your business will appear on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) when your ideal customer is searching for your products and services through Google Search or Google Maps. That way, when your target audience sees your ads, you can reach them.
Note: Ads from the platform can also span other channels, including YouTube, Blogger, and Google Display Network.
Over time, Google Ads will also help you analyze and improve these ads to reach more people and enable your business to reach all your paid campaign goals.
Plus, regardless of the size of your business or the resources available, you can tailor your ads to your budget. The Google Ads tool gives you the opportunity to stay within your monthly limit and even pause or stop your ad spending at any time.
Now, to another important question. Does Google Ads really work?
To answer this question, let’s look at a few statistics. Google Ads has a click-through rate of nearly%。顯示廣告每個月產生1.8億次點擊率。對於準備購買的用戶，Google上的付費廣告獲得了65% click-through rates. 43 users buy what they see in YouTube ads. So, yes, Google Ads works. By optimizing your ad campaigns and lead streams, you can create a high-ROI campaign.
Why advertise on Google?
Google is the most used search engine, receiving 3.5 billion search queries a day. Not to mention, Google’s Ads platform is nearly two decades old, giving it some qualifications in paid advertising. Google is the resource people around the world to ask questions that are answered by a combination of paid advertising and organic results.
And, according to Google, advertisers earn $8 for every $1 they spend on Google Ads. So, there are several reasons why you would consider advertising on Google.
Is there any other reason? Your competitors are using Google Ads (they might even bid for your brand words). Thousands of companies use Google Ads to promote their business, which means that even if your search terms are organically ranked, your results are pushed below the page, below your competitors.
If you use PPC to promote your product or service, Google Ads should be part of your billing strategy – there’s no way to get around it (except perhaps Facebook Ads, but this is another article).
Why your Google ads aren’t working
If you’ve tried to advertise on Google unsuccessfully, don’t give up. There are many reasons why your Google ads are not performing well. Let’s introduce some common offenders.
- The key word in a broad sense. When it comes to your keywords, you really need to pin it, which is why testing and tuning should be part of your strategy. If your keywords are too broad, Google will put your ads in front of the wrong audience, which means fewer clicks and higher ad spending. Review what is work (i.e. which keywords generate clicks) and adjust them to best match your ad to your target audience. You may not get the right combination the first time, but you should continue to add, remove and adjust keywords until you do.
- Unrelated ads. If your ad doesn’t match the searcher’s intent, you won’t get enough clicks to justify your ad spending. Your title and ad copy need to match the keywords you bid for, and your ad marketing solution needs to address any pain that searchers are experiencing. Such a combination produces the results you want, and this may just be a bit of fine-tuning. You can choose to create multiple ads for each ad campaign—- use this feature to test which ads work best. Or, better yet, use Google’s responsive search ad feature.
- Low quality score. Your Quality Score (QS) is how Google determines your ad ranking. The higher your ranking, the better your ad ranking. If you have a low quality score, your ads will have fewer eyeballs and fewer opportunities for conversion. Google will tell you your quality score, but it’s up to you to improve it.
- Bad landing page. Your efforts should not just stop at your ads, but the user experience after clicking is just as important. Once a user clicks on your ad, what does your user see? Is your landing page optimized for conversion rates, which means that it uses the same keywords? Does this page resolve the user’s pain point or answer the user’s question? Your users should experience a seamless transition to conversion.
Google advertising terms to know
These common terms will help you set up, manage, and optimize your Google Ads. Some are specific to Google Ads, while others are pPC-related. Either way, you need to understand these terms to run an effective ad campaign.
AdRank
Your AdRank determines how much your ads run. The higher your value, the better your ad ranking, and the more your eyes will fall on your ad, the more likely it is that users will click on your ad. Your ad ranking is determined by multiplying your highest bid by your quality score.
Bidding
Google Ads is based on the bidding system, and as advertisers you choose the maximum bid amount you are willing to pay for clicking on your ad. The higher your bid, the better your position. You have three bid options. CPC, CPM, or CPE.
CPC, or cost per click, is the amount you pay for each click on your ad.
CPM, or cost per meter, is the amount you pay for a thousand impressions, that is, when your ad is shown to a thousand people.
CPE, or cost per engagement, is the amount you pay when someone takes a predetermined action on your ad.
Type of activity
Before you start paying ads on Google Ads, you’ll choose one of three ad types: search, display, or video.
Search ads are text ads that appear in search results on the Google Results page.
Display ads are typically image-based ads that appear on pages on the Google Display Network.
The video ad appears on YouTube in between 6 and 15 seconds.
CTR
Your click-through rate is your ad click-through percentage of ad views. A high click-through rate indicates that your ad is in line with your search intent and is high-quality with the relevant keywords.
Conversion Rate (CVR)
CVR refers to the proportion of form submissions to the total number of visits to your landing page. Simply put, a high CVR means that your landing page has a seamless user experience that matches your advertising promise.
Show the network
Google ads can be displayed on search results pages or on pages within the Google Display Network (GDN). GDN is a web of websites that allow space for Google ads on their pages — ads that can be based on text or images and displayed with content related to target keywords. The most popular display ad options are Google Shopping and App Campaigns.
Extended functionality
The Ad Extension allows you to supplement your ad information at no additional cost. These extensions belong to one of five types. Sitelink, Call, Location, Offer, or App;
Keywords
When Google users enter a query in the search bar, Google returns a series of results that match the searcher’s intent. Keywords are words or phrases that match what the searcher wants and that satisfy their query. You can choose keywords based on which queries you want to display your ads. For example, if a searcher enters “How to clean the gum on a shoe”, he or she will see the advertiser target keywords such as “gum on the shoe” and “clean the shoe”.
Negative keywords are lists of keywords that you don’t want to rank. Google pulls you out of the bidding for these keywords. Typically, these keywords are semi-related to your target search term, but are not part of the ranking you provide or want to rank.
Ppc
Pay-per-click, or PPC, is an ad type that advertisers pay for. PPC is not a specific Google ad, but it is the most common type of paid activity. Before you launch your first Google Ads ad campaign, it’s important to understand what PPC has to do.
Quality Score (QS)
Your quality score measures the quality of your ads by your CTR, the relevance of keywords, the quality of your landing page, and past performance on SERP. QS is a decisive factor in determining your AdRank.
How does Google Ads work?
Google Ads shows your ads to potential customers interested in your product or service. Advertisers bid on search terms or keywords, and the winner of the bid is placed at the top of the search results page, in YouTube videos, or on related sites, depending on the type of campaign you choose.
Many factors affect your ability to create effective and high-performance Google Ads. Let’s take a look at these factors.
Ad ranking and quality scores
AdRank determines where your ads are, and quality scores are one of the two factors that determine your AdRank (the other is the bid amount). Keep in mind that your quality score is based on the quality and relevance of your ads, which Google measures by how many people click on your ad, that is, your CTR. Your CTR depends on how well your ad matches the searcher’s intent, and you can infer the quality of your ad from three areas.
Relevance of your keywords
If your ad copy and CTA can provide what searchers expect based on search results
User experience of your landing page
When you set up your first Google ad campaign, your QS is the most important thing you should be looking at — even before you increase your bid amount. The higher your QS, the lower your acquisition cost and the more you run your ads.
Ad campaign type: search, display, and video
You can choose one of three types of ad campaigns on Google Ads: search, show, or video. Let’s talk about the best use for each type and why you might choose one instead of the other.
Search for ads
Search ads are text ads that appear on google results pages. For example, searching for a “pocket square” returns a sponsored result, or an ad like this.
The benefit of search ingress is that your ads appear on Google, where most searchers are looking for information first. And Google displays your announcements in the same format as other results (except for “ads”), so users are used to seeing and clicking on results.
Responsive search ads
Responsive search ads allow you to enter multiple versions of the title and ad copy (15 and 4 variations, respectively) to allow Google to choose the best-performing ads to show to users. In traditional ads, create a static version of your ad each time using the same title and description. Responsive ads allow you to automatically test dynamic ads until you find the best version for your target audience — for Google, that means until you get the most clicks.
Show ads
Google has a network of websites from different industries and audiences that choose to display Google Ads, known as Google Display. The benefit for site owners is that they can pay for clicks or impressions of your ads. The advantage of advertisers is that they can align their content with their role targeting in front of their audience. These are typical image ads that draw users’ attention away from the content on the page.
Other options for displaying ads include shopping and app activities, which appear on the search engine results page.
Video ads
Video ads appear in front of or behind YouTube videos (sometimes in the middle). Keep in mind that YouTube is also a search engine. The right keywords put you in front of the video, disrupting the user’s behavior and attracting their attention.
Place
When you first set up your Google ads, you’ll choose a geographic region to show your ads. If you have a storefront, this should be within a reasonable radius around your physical location. If you have e-commerce stores and physical products, your location should be set where you ship. If the service or product you offer is accessible globally, then this is the limit of the sky.
Your location settings will play a role in the delivery. For example, if you own a yoga studio in San Francisco, people in New York enter “yoga studio” and won’t see your results no matter what your AdRank does. That’s because Google’s main goal is to show the most relevant results to searchers, even when you pay.
Keywords
Keyword research is just as important for paid advertising because it is organic search. Your keywords need to match the searcher’s intent as much as possible. That’s because Google matches your ads and search queries based on the keywords you choose. Each ad group you create in your ad campaign will target a small number of keywords (1 to 5 keywords are the best), and Google will display your announcement based on those choices.
Match type
Match types give you a little leeway in choosing keywords — they tell Google if you want to exactly match a search query, or whether your ad should be shown to anyone with a semi-relevant search query. There are four match types to choose from.
Title and description
Your ad copy may be the difference between clicking on your ad and clicking on a competitor’s ad. It’s important that your ad copy is consistent with the searcher’s intent, consistent with your target keywords, and addresses the character’s pain points with a clear solution.
Ad extensions
If you’re running Google Ads, you should use ad extensions for two reasons: free, and other reasons to interact with your ads. These extensions belong to one of these five broad categories.
- Sitelink Extensions extends your additions – and helps you stand out – and provides additional links to your website, providing users with more compelling reasons to click.
- Call Extensions allows you to add your phone number to your ads so that users have an extra (real-time) way of contacting you. If you have a customer service team, be ready to participate and convert your audience and then include your phone number.
- Location Extensino includes your location and phone number so Google can provide searchers with maps so they can find you. This option is a good choice for businesses with stores, and it’s also very effective for search queries …. near me.
- If you’re in the current promotion, the Offer Extension feature comes into play. It can entice people to click on your ads instead of other ads, and if they see your options discounted compared to your competitors, it can entice users to click on your ads.
- App Extensions provides a link to app downloads for mobile phone users. This reduces the friction that users need to search again when they search for and download apps in the App Store.
Google Ads Re-promotion
In Google Ads, redirects, also known as remarketing, are a way to serve ads to people who have previously interacted with you online but have not yet converted. Tracking cookies track users online and target them as your ads. Remarketing is effective because potential customers need to see your campaign at least seven times before becoming a customer.
How to set up your Google ads
Setting up your paid ad campaign on Google is relatively easy (and fast), mainly because the platform will take you through the setup and provide helpful tips. Once you visit the Google Ads website and click “Start Now”, you will go through a series of steps to get your ads running. If you have your ad copy and/or image created, the setting should not exceed 10 minutes.
It may not be obvious that all the extra things you need to do to make sure your ads are optimally set up and easy to track. Let’s take a look at these. These are the steps your ads will take after they are submitted for review.
RELATED LINKS to Google Analytics
You may have set up Google Analytics on your site, so you can track traffic, conversion rates, goals, and any unique metrics. You’ll also need to link your analytics account to Google Ads. Linking these accounts will make it easier to track, analyze, and report between channels and activities, because you can view these events in one place.
Add UTM code
The Urchin Track Module (UTM) code is used by Google to track any activity related to a particular link. You’ve probably seen them — it’s a question mark in the URL (?”? the latter part. The UTM code will tell you which offer or ad is causing the conversion, so you can track the most effective parts of your campaign. UTM code makes it easier for you to optimize your Google ads because you know what works.
The trick, however, is that when you set up Google Ads, add a UTM code at the ad campaign level so you don’t have to manually add each ad URL. Otherwise, you can add it manually with Google’s UTM builder.
Set up conversion tracking
Conversion tracking tells you exactly how many customers or leads you’ve got from your ad campaigns. It’s not required to be set, but without it you’ll guess the return on investment of your ads. Conversion tracking lets you track sales (or other activities) on your site, the installation of apps, or calls from your ads.
Integrate your Google ads with your CRM
Keep all your data in one place, and you can track, analyze, and report it. You’ve used your CRM to track contact data and lead flows. Integrating Google Ads with your CRM allows you to track which ad campaigns are effective for your audience so you can continue to offer them relevant marketing initiatives.
Google’s Advertising Auction Strategy
Once you’ve set up your ad campaign and tracked it, you’re ready to bid. Keep in mind that your ability to rank in Google Ads depends on how you bid. While your bid amount will depend on your budget and goals, there are some strategies and bid settings that you should be aware of when you launch your paid ad campaign.
Automatic and manual bids
When it comes to keyword bidding, you have two options — automatic and manual. Here’s how they work.
Automatic bidding puts Google in the driver’s seat and allows the platform to adjust your bids based on your competitors. You can still set a maximum budget, and Google will work within one range to get the best bid within these limits.
Manual bidding lets you set bid amounts for your ad groups and keywords, giving you the opportunity to reduce your spending on low-performance ads.
Bid for brand search terms
Branding terms are those that bear your company’s or unique product names, such as “Rays Technology.” There’s a lot of debate about whether to bid on your brand word. On the side of the debate, the terms of the bidding may produce organic results that may be seen as a waste of money.
On the other side, bid on these terms to give you the domain name on these search results pages and help you convert potential customers to go further with the flywheel.
Another reason to bid is that if you don’t bid, competitors may bid on your brand word, taking up valuable real estate that should belong to you.
Cost per acquisition (CPA)
If the idea of spending money to turn a potential customer into a potential customer makes you uncomfortable, you can set up a CPA instead, paying only if the user converts to a customer. While this bidding strategy may cost more, you can rest assured that you only pay when you get paid customers. This strategy makes it easy for you to track and justify your advertising spending.
Start your ad campaign
Given its influence and authority, Google Ads should be part of your pay policy. Start with the techniques we’ve described, and remember to refine and iterate. There’s no such thing as a Google Ads campaign that doesn’t work – only those that need more work. With the policies and information provided above, you can create a successful Google ad campaign that drives click-through and conversion rates.
We can also manage your Google Ads for you if needed. Welcome to contact us!