Google AdWords: The Quintessential Guide for You!

There are so many questions that can swamp your mind when thinking about creating a digital marketing strategy. Furthermore, the task of executing all of these strategies, keeping tabs on them, and improving each one can be a daunting task.

So, here's where we can begin our journey into the beautiful world of digital marketing.

This article is going to talk in detail about Google AdWords. To be clear, we'll be covering aspects like types, best practices, the reason behind advertising on Google, how to maximize your potential, and so much more.

So, brace yourself for a fun roller coaster ride where you can learn and soon become an expert on the topic. But before that, read our blog on 10 Unique PPC Advertising Ideas to Increase Revenue Of your Business.

What is Google AdWords?

You must have heard of PPC ads, right?

Well, then you've understood what Google AdWords is.

It is a pay-per-click platform that allows you to reach your target audience in the following two ways:

1. By using the Google Display Network
2. By using the Google Search Network

Don't make the silly mistake of comparing Google AdWords with another PPC platform like Facebook.

The systems mentioned above use a basic PPC bidding system where advertisers must bid to show their ads to their relevant audiences.

The platform helps businesses reach potential customers regardless of their location.

It's the Google Search Networks' responsibility to show your ads to all users who have searched for your selected keywords.

The catch here is that your keywords need to be strong.

We'll get into the details of this at a later stage of this Google AdWords guide.

Let's understand what happens when someone searches for something like "luxurious spas in Colorado."

If you are a spa owner, you will have to bid at the moment for your ad to show up.

Understanding Ad Rank

The basic idea behind the system is that a live auction is conducted for advertisers to place their bids on to secure an ad position.

Where the advertiser will get to display their ad will depend on the competition and their bids. That said, the advertiser's actual ad position depends on two factors, i.e., the maximum bid combined with the quality score.

Maximum bid is the amount you are willing to pay when a user clicks on your Google ad. The quality score determines your ad and landing page's optimization quality, along with the relevance of your ad to the search query and your click-through rate.

If your ad rank is higher or better than the other bidders, there's a higher chance of your ad being displayed in the Google search results.

Google offers a discounted per-clicks cost to the high-quality ads that are performing well on the AdWords campaign. Furthermore, it also provides higher ad ranking positions, and the possibility of the organic listing showing your business first increases tremendously.

Why You Should Advertise on Google Ads

Just because we understand what the platform is, does not mean we clearly understand what it offers.

Let's take a look at a list of some of the benefits you can reap with the power of PPC ads:

Higher ROI Every everyone wishes and works towards getting a higher return on investment, and that's precisely what you get with Google Ads. Since you are only paying for the ads that people click on, even if the users notice your ad and keep it in mind, that works in your favor.

All you have to do is be wise in optimizing your ad campaigns.

This may come with difficulty because every business is different, and the perfect campaign would differ. All the information you need to track the performance of your ad is readily available.

When you land on an ad campaign idea that is fetching you a good RoI, your efforts should be focused on improving it. On the other hand, if another campaign is not doing too well, you must replace it.

• Increase in Leads and Customers

Google adsoffer high potential to businesses who want highly targeted leads to reach their website, landing page, or any online property. It is considered to be one of the best tools available for lead generation. You can focus on people who are looking for precisely what you have to offer. With a deeper understanding of keyword research and other optimization methods, you can ensure that your ad only reaches people looking to buy your services or products.

• Find High-Quality Traffic Sources

We already know that Google has a vast customer base. It is a search giant that makes it possible for businesses to gain vast amounts of traffic every day. Their search algorithm is constantly improving to ensure the users are shown the exact information they are looking for. Google smart campaigns send you customers who have a higher chance of taking the action you want them to take after clicking on your ad.

Other advantages include:

• Finding out more about your market and target audience with the data collected by Google AdWords.
• You shall be able to see quick and transparent results that help you create better solutions.
• It is a flexible marketing platform that works for all kinds of businesses, regardless of their size, area of expertise, or target audience. 

If you are looking for a reputable digital marketing agency to handle your business's Google ads, contact us!

How to Use Google AdWords

Are you ready to begin your journey towards a brighter future?

Let's go!

Step 1: Getting Started

The Google AdWords home page has a pretty straightforward button that says "Start Now," so that's exactly what you're going to do. 

Add your Gmail account and the URL of your business's homepage to open your AdWords account.

Begin setting up your first campaign now!

You're going to see the following points mentioned on the screen:

• Decide how much you want to spend
• Choose a target audience
• Set your bid
• Write your ad

Since you're new to the world of paid media advertising, we'll begin with the basics and cover each of these points.

Step 2: Calculating Your AdWords Budget

The easiest way to go about deriving a number that suits your pocket is to go about the process backward.

You want to take into account two primary aspects:

• The profit you'll earn on every sale (since you must know how to calculate your profit, let's move on to the next point)
• The conversion rate (this is the percent of people who end up buying something from your website)

Let's say that for every 1000 people who visited your site, ten people bought something; then your conversion rate would be 1 percent.

Now, since you've advertised on Google, they'll get a part of your profit too.

This is where you determine how much you'll give them.

For instance, if your total profit was $100 and you were okay with getting $80 on it, you'd pay Google a 20 percent commission fee for every successful conversion you got through Google AdWords.

Note down this formula:

Max. CPC = your profit x commission for Google x your conversion rates

In our case, that would be $100 x 0.2 x 1% = $0.20

See where we're going with the calculation?

You can spend $0.20 for every click on AdWords and make that $80 on every sale as long as your conversion rate does not change.

The CPC can now be scaled to determine your daily budget.

Once you get into using Google ads and taking advantage of the data collection, you'll be able to create a more suitable strategy.

This will take time, so be patient.

Step 3: Choosing Your Target Keywords

This is where you begin thinking like a customer. What would you type in the Google search bar if you were looking for something?

Type that into the Google keywords planner and begin your search.

Under the 'Targeting' option, you'll see that you can choose a country, language, a platform to display the ads, and much more. Pick these out depending on your goals.

Click on the 'Get Ideas' option, and you will find the monthly search volume for the keywords used in the location of your choice, as well as the average CPC for each of them.

From here, you determine which keyword not only fits into your budget but will also work in your favor.

You must keep in mind that you must invest in terms that are directly related to your business. This could be words or statements that solely belong to your company or the service or product you provide.

Although this might seem like a smaller market to target, it could get you many conversions.

Look into Google AdWords match types to ensure the right people are seeing you.

• The Broad match is built to pick any word that is related to the word you chose
• The Phrase match is made to select the word when it is used in a phrase
• The Exact match is built to only pick when the exact word of your choice is used

Step 4: Who's the Competition?

Your purpose is to outrank your competition by providing Google with some quality content. Make sure your ads are superb!

To find out who your competition is and what they're doing with their campaigns, you must figure out the CTR and how many businesses have used a particular keyword for their ads.

You also want to find the keywords related to your niche that have performed well in the past 3 to 4 months.

It won't be long before you get the hang of using PPC ads with strategies that have been formulated based on a massive collection of data.

Step 5: Create an Awesome Landing Page

If you want to ensure that the visitors buy something from you or profit somehow, you need to make it happen.

Since you'll be paying a certain amount to get the traffic, you want to convert them into leads.

With an appealing and purposeful landing page, you can convince them to buy from you.

Spending about $100 that would be recovered with a few sales is not a bad idea.

Before you go live with your ad campaign on Google AdWords, make sure you're painting yourself in good light.

Let's say you get 1000 people on your landing page by advertising on Google and convert at 1 percent; then you should be making $1000 with a product that costs $100.

Think about how much profit you'd gain if the conversion rate were to be increased to 2 percent!

But what should be included in your landing page?

Here's what:

• Your landing page should be simple with easy-to-read text and visuals.
• The headline should be impactful and evoke desired emotions.
• The copy your write to sell your product should give the reader a clear idea about what you have to offer.
• Try to use bullet points and images without going overboard.

Finally, make sure you keep track of your campaigns and keep making changes depending on the data you collect.

Step 6: Creating the Campaign

The kind of ad campaign you create will largely depend on your digital marketing strategy. As discussed before, this will include your overall budget (and the one you're going to use for AdWords.)

Next, you want to determine where your target audience is geographical.

So, you want to enter that information along with the keywords you've chosen to target with this particular campaign and set your bid price.

This campaign is going to include your Ad Groups and your Keywords.

As a beginner, the right decision would be to create a single campaign with one Ad Group and some keywords. This will be easy to manage.

Once you get the hang of it, you can add more campaigns and Ad Groups.

Set up a match type for each campaign. One will have a Broad match, the second will have a Phase match, and the third will have an Exact match.

This helps you determine clearly which of your PPC ads is doing well.

Pro Tip: In the future, when you're using several keywords, make sure you organize them with tools available online.

Step 7: Create Multiple Ad Copies to Choose From

There are quite a few things you want to take into consideration when creating an impactful Google ad.

The first thing is to ensure you convey your message in a sweet and precise manner.

Write one sentence that tells your customers about how they will benefit by buying your product or service.

So, create something that makes you stand out from everyone else in the market.

With practice, you'll figure out what works for your industry, and you can formulate that into your Google ads copy.

The same goes for your call-to-action button. Rather than opting for a generic line like 'Buy Now,' you should think of something a tad bit interesting. Include a powerful word in the mix that will trigger your viewer to hit the button and convert!

Step 8: Get into the Details

Once you've saved all of these (the ad copy, bid, and everything we discussed a while ago), you'll see the dashboard you're going to have to use quite often.

The first thing you want to do is to pause the ad campaign you just created.

In your campaign, Google has already created an ad group. Although this does not matter right now, it will prove helpful later on when you're running multiple ads with a ton of keywords.

You want to set your keyword to 'Phrase Match' instead of the default 'Broad Match' because you want to get just the right kind of people in without leaving too many out.

Make sense, right?

Step 9: Setting Up Conversion Tracking

If you want all of your efforts in Google AdWords to be fruitful, you want to make sure that you're tracking every single conversion without fail.

Google uses a snippet code to identify each page that a user lands on once they've purchased something from your business.

If you want to do this, you'll want to go to 'Tools' and then 'Conversions' on the main tab.

Click on the '+Conversion' button and pick 'Website' to add the name and conversion value.

Save the changes, and you'll be taken to a page that shows the code snippet.

You're going to copy this code and add it to the HTML code of the page that people see when they've purchased your services or product.

Within the next few hours or a day, the unverified sign will be removed from your dashboard. Finally, you can run your Google ads campaign.

In Google's Hands

The next step is for Google to follow.

Before your ad can go live, it will be thoroughly reviewed by Google. This should take about 24 hours.

You'll get a notification from Google saying that your ad has been approved and gone live.

Back to You

Once you see that your ad has been approved, you can move on to creating more ads.

To do this, you're going to go to your ad, click on Edit, and then Copy.

Paste it with both the boxes ticked (If ad already exists in destination, create duplicate + Pause new ads after pasting.)

Now, you can change the ad as per your digital marketing strategy.

Make sure you're testing your ads against each other to see which one is getting higher results.

In the End

Now that you know how to create an ad on Google AdWords campaign, you should go ahead and get on with the planning stage.

With proper planning and application, you'll see your business grow exponentially!

Remember, seeing results is going to take time. So, keep working toward increasing your conversions, but give every ad time to convert; a good ten days minimum works, after which you can edit the campaign to add more keywords or change the copy.

If you are keen on investing in Google ads, make sure you've got the time for it.

There is no doubt that you will gain a lot once you get used to the system, but to see the results of the efforts you put into creating a bang-on ad that converts will be a long road to walk on.

We at Max effect marketing is your one-stop solution for all your digital marketing requirements. We offer cross-platform advertising, custom web, app design, and advanced marketing automation techniques that will help you hit your marketing and business goals.