Using Google Ads: The Beginner’s Guide

When Google AdWords was launched in 2000, it ran over twenty million searches daily. Now, renamed Google Ads, it runs billions of searches daily, and every advertiser is trying to make use of the platform.

A study by the Wall Street Journal stated that about forty percent of the money spent on digital advertising was used on Google in the year 2017 alone.

As with any platform, it’s important to gain an understanding of how to use Google Ads effectively before just jumping in a giving it a go. Taking time to learn the basics in the beginning will help you maximize the platform right from the start and save money that you might have unintentionally wasted.

What is Google Ads?

Google Ads is an advertising network run by Google that allows businesses to place bids on important keywords to make their clickable ads appear in the Google search results. Businesses pay Google based on how many clicks their ads get from searches. The ultimate goal for advertisers is to get more conversions — like purchases or website visits — by increasing their visibility to users.

Types of Advertising on Google Ads

There are different kinds of advertising that Google Ads currently offers, making it easy to have your brand show up on search network ads, video ads, display ads, and even app-based ads. Out of all of them, the search network is most commonly used.

Search Networks

The search network ads are designed to be displayed as a text ad whenever a Google search is done. It targets the keywords that your brand wants to be associated with. You optimize your ads and then place a bids on those specific keywords to increase your ad’s ranking. This allows your to capture visitors and convert paid traffic.

Display Networks

The display ads can either be banner or text ads that are known to be displayed on Gmail and those websites that are currently in display network.

Businesses commonly make use of display ads in their remarketing efforts as an attempt to bring back people that interacted with their previously, but didn’t convert.

Video-Based Ads

The next one on the line is the video-based ads. These ads permit you to easily craft out a video ad that can be displayed on YouTube videos.

App Ads

The last one is the App Ads, which permit you to show up on popular Google-based apps.

How do your ads get ranked?

Google Ads is based on a bidding system. The rank of your ad is influenced by your quality score and your CPC (cost per click). The CPC is how much you pay for every click on the ad you are running, while quality score is how well your ad has been optimized and if it is relevant to the person searching. Quality score is impacted by your landing page, ad relevance, past account performance and most importantly CTR (click-through rate). As your quality score increases, so will your ad rank.

Getting Started with Google Ads

Start by going to Google Ads to create an account then follow these steps:

Pick A Budget

When you are at daily budgets, choose an amount that you are comfortable spending as you first start using Google Ads. You will be able to scale this amount at any time, so we recommend starting with a smaller budget and then scaling up once you feel completely comfortable with the platform.

Choose A Target Audience

The next thing that you should do is to choose the location of your target audience. You can choose audiences based on interests, demographics, or a remarketing list.

Google Ads has a lot of custom audience methods that are effective and will help you properly target your audience based on the rules that you specify. You can choose to exclude specific audience traits in your targeting which keeps you from spending money on the people that you don’t want to reach.

Select A Network

At this stage, it is important to the network that you plan to advertise on. You’ll most like be considering a search or display network, but you can also consider the other types of ads that we previously discussed.

Look At What Your Competitors Are Doing

Once you have chosen the network you wish to run an ad on, it is important that you take a look at what your competitors are doing. What are they doing that seems to be working and what can you do differently to capture your target audiences more effectively.

Continuously Adapt Your Campaigns

Advertising with Google Ads is a dynamic practice and requires you to continuously adapt your targeting and bidding. Without keeping an eye on your campaigns it will be difficult to learn about your converting audiences and cater your advertising to fit their needs.

Trapicasuggest: Keyword Research Tool

AdEspresso Facebook Ad Examples