Introduction

Google Ads can be the difference between 5 and 5,000 customers interacting with your business. Whether you are looking to increase website traffic, build brand awareness, or convert customers, Google Ads has built tools that can help you achieve any objective. 

From where you can run ads, the key components of an ad campaign, and what will make your ads successful, this brief guide will walk you through the basics before you begin your Google Ads journey.

What Is Google Ads and How Does It Work?

Google’s advertising platform operates on a “pay-per-click” (PPC) model. This means exactly as it reads: as the advertiser, you pay when someone clicks. To add a little more context, you bid on keywords. When users search these keywords or related terms (depending on how your campaign is structured), you will be among a pool of advertisers competing to appear next to the users’ search results. 

As a general concept (this is explained in detail later on), the keyword, your set budget, and the quality of your ad will determine where/if you show up next to the users’ search results. 

This is the ideal place to be, and it’s why Google has been the go-to place to advertise online. Rather than force users to view your advertisement, you can capture users who are already searching for the good, service, or solution your business can provide. This concept is called “intent-based” advertising. 

Key Components of a Google Ads Campaign

Campaign Type

Before diving into the first campaign, you will want to understand the various types of campaigns and how they can be leveraged to achieve your business goals. The main types of campaigns that can be run include the following:

• Search
  • Bidding to show in users search results
• Display
  • Bidding to show among websites apart of the Google Ads Network
• Video
  • Bidding to show before/during content on YouTube
• Shopping
  • Bidding to show in shopping results among users searching for products

When choosing to dive deeper, begin with Search. This will provide the most comprehensive overview of the Google platform. If you are familiar with Search, Display is the next step in the Google Ads world. 

Keywords

The next aspect of a campaign is your keywords. You want to make sure your business is visible next to content that is relevant – this means not running advertisements on gaming searches if your company produces snowboards. 

Building a set of keywords that your customers are searching for will be your key to success. You can get started using Google’s Keyword Planner tool and doing some research on common SEO mistakes and success stories. 

Ads

Running advertisements on relevant keywords is great, but if the advertisement itself is not good, it might be all for not. Luckily, Google has been hard at work building AI-driven tools that can build advertisements from the ground up – ad copy and all. It is still important to know that your ad must have a strong headline, accurate description, and have a relevant link to click through to.

Here is just one example of an effective Search ad: 

Landing Page

Once a user has committed to clicking on your advertisement, they will be moved to your website. Where you take them on your website is extremely important; this is called the landing page. If the user has clicked an ad promising supplements for vitamin A and they land on a page with vitamin B for sale, they will not be pleased. 

Not only did you spend money on the users’ click, but they may have not made a purchase, and if they leave the website quickly, this can actively work against your ads in the future. A high-quality and relevant landing page is critical.

Budget & Bidding

Rounding out the final aspect of a campaign is the budgeting and bidding process. Every business and campaign will have a different budget. There is no right or wrong budget to have, just ensure it falls within the constraints of your business. That said, pay close attention to the timeframe Google is using to base your budget (daily, monthly, etc.) and how you have your budget allocated (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, etc.) to align the two. 

When it comes to bidding, there are plenty of strategies (both manual and automated). The graphic below is a great starting point for understanding the plethora of automated options. (Check out Google’s content on automated bidding for a complete breakdown.

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Understanding Ad Rank and Quality Score

When it comes to bidding, many hold the age old view that “highest bid wins”. This is not true with Google Ads as there are plenty of factors that allow an ad to win the top spot in a search result. The general formula is: 

Ad Rank = Bid × Quality Score

The Quality Score has three main components: expected CTR, landing page relevance, and ad relevance. Their respective weights can be seen below:

A higher quality ad will result in better ad placement at a lower cost. This will save money and improve overall campaign performance.

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Google Ads is a tool that can generate outsized improvement for your business, but to see this return on investment you must have the basics down first. 

Do not be afraid to leverage Google’s resources at https://support.google.com/google-ads.