Fundamentals of Google Ads with Paid Marketing: A Step-by-Step Guide

If your website isn’t ranking organically in search, you may want to consider gear up your game with Google Ads. Why not use the world's top search-engine platform to reach specific audiences quickly and cost-effectively while simultaneously enhancing your brand?

Launched in October 2000, Google Ads–formerly Google AdWords–offers pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, a business model in which companies place their ads on a website and pay when users click on them. On any given Google search engine results page (SERP), these paid search results will appear above organic ones. To ensure the highest ranking possible (positions 1-3 are ideal), it's a good idea to complement organic with a paid search using Google Ads.

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Advertising this way can help increase visibility and enhance brand awareness through Google's vast display network and millions of daily users. It can help you retarget potential customers who are aware of your brand but who haven't made a purchase. And it can let you track and analyze audience data, measure keyword performance and website traffic, and take advantage of SEO.

The article is based on the following video:

Available Ad Formats

Google Ads are available in a variety of formats. They include:

• Text Ads 

  Include a website title and description, as well as extensions to get clicks

• Responsive-Display Ads 

  Selected by Google based on what visitors have already viewed on a website; can be text or images

• Image Ads 

  Can be responsive or static

• App Promotional Ads 

  Aimed at driving app downloads 

• Video Ads 

  Either stand-alone or within other streaming video content

• Product Shopping Ads 

  Show product and price details and appear under Google's Images and Shopping sections

• Call-Only Ads 

  Let users call a business by clicking on a phone number within the ad and track calls through Google

Available Google Ad Placements

Because there are many websites within the Google search network, there are many places where ads can place your ads. These include:

• Google Search Sites

  The vast network of all Google sites and search engines, including Google My Business, Google Maps, and more

• Google Search Partners 

  Third parties, like Amazon and The New York Times, or even other search engines that allow Google Ads 

• Display Network 

  Third-party sites you can choose to display ads on Google’s display network directly or by subject relevance.  This helps you to get in front of a more relevant audience, retarget customers, and optimize your campaign 

Creating Your First Google Ad

Before creating the ad, determine a campaign goal. Are you trying to drive sales, leads, website traffic, or something else?  Then, decide on your strategy to meet that goal. For instance, If it's to drive traffic or generate brand awareness, a display network is ideal. If it's to encourage action or direct response, Google search or search partners will work better.

Now it's time to set up the campaign. With Google, you’ll always have at least one ad group, which is made up of relevant, similar keywords. A general rule of thumb is to set up at least two ads so you can run them against each other. The one that ends up performing better will eventually be displayed more.

You can create up to three headlines and up to two descriptions, which will appear in the SERP link. You can also include a display path that shows up in expanded text ads. These can help improve search performance and give potential customers more context, so include information about your brand, product, or service. It’s also a good idea to create ad extensions, which let you add site links underneath ads that link to specific pages.

Once it's approved, Google will publish your ad. But, your work isn’t over. You should track the performance of your campaign through metrics the Google Ads platform provides. They include (but aren’t limited to):

• Impressions 

  Number of times an ad appears on a SERP 

• Cost 

  Amount of money an advertiser is spending on a campaign

• Clicks 

  Number of times someone clicks on an ad

• Average CPC 

  Total cost divided by the number of clicks

• Conversions 

  When a user clicks an ad and performs a specific action

• Cost Per Conversion 

  Total cost divided by the number of conversions

• Clickthrough Rate (CTR) 

  Total number of clicks divided by the total number of impressions

• Quality Score 

  How well keywords perform compared to the ads and landing page associated with them, and the expected clickthrough rate. The backbone of Google Ads

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Optimizing Your Google Ads

If you’re not getting conversions or if your Google quality score is too low, don’t panic! There are things you can do to up your score so you can rank higher and have a lower PPC (between 7 and 10 is ideal; if it’s four or below, try a new keyword):

• Add call, review, or price extensions
• Perform split or A/B testing
• Include a CTA 
• Perform extensive keyword research
• Increase bidding if your SERP listing is too low
• Advertise when your target audience is online
• Optimize for local search if applicable
• Use negative, dynamic, and branded keywords
• Leverage broad, long tail phrase, and exact matching
• Ensure landing pages are mobile optimized
• Focus on keywords that are converting
• Enable automatic bidding to maximize results

For more details about Google Ads, take a look at the video below - 

There’s no shortage of opportunity to get your products and brand in front of the right audience at the right time with Google Ads. Give it a try and see how far your business can reach.

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