According to research, 80 percent of companies trust Google Ads as one of the promising paid advertising strategies. It offers a direct way to reach potential customers exactly when they’re searching for what you offer. With search campaigns, your Ads appear at the top of Google search results, increasing the chances that users will click through to your website. This boosts visibility and brings in highly relevant traffic, helping you target the right audience at the right time.
In this article, we will explore the basics of setting up and running a successful Google Ads campaign. But before that, I’d suggest you look into these interesting statistics about Google Ads.
Power of PPC Advertising
PPC stands for pay-per-click. Formerly known as Google AdWords, it is a type of digital marketing where you pay each time a user clicks on one of your ads. To see what PPC advertising looks like, run almost any search on Google (or Bing). You will see ads displayed at the top of the results page.
PPC will:
- Make your company visible,
- Provide data-Driven Marketing,
- Need a flexible budget.
Why is PPC important?
PPC campaigns have a measurable, immediate impact on traffic and conversions, making them an essential part of modern marketing strategies.
Here are the key benefits of PPC advertising:
Instant Visibility
Once your campaign is approved, PPC advertising goes live, placing your business right in front of your target audience.
Control Over Budget
It gives full control over the budget. You can take control of how much you want to spend on each campaign, or ad group. It ensures businesses don't overspend. They can monitor the progress and adjust the budget accordingly. Moreover, you only pay when someone clicks on the ad.
Custom Targeting
Google Ads allows precise customization based on specific demographics, including;
- Age
- Gender
- Device
- Interests
- Locations
- Search behavior
- Household income
High ROI
According to data, in 2024, businesses generated $8 per $1 spending. This high return on investment makes PPC a fascinating choice for businesses of all sizes.
How to Setup Google Ads and Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
Identify your goals
Identifying clear goals is the first step to setting up Google ads, and PPC campaigns whether you want to;
- Sell a product/service
- Create brand awareness
- Strengthen lead gen process
- Improve your conversion rates
- Or just reach interested leads through lead magnets like eBook, cheatsheets, demos, etc
Choose a type of Ad to invest in
Based on your business objectives, you can run several Google Ads:
- Search Ads: Text-based that appear on Google’s search results pages.
- Display Ads: Banners are shown across websites in Google’s Display Network.
- Shopping Ads: Visual with product images and prices, ideal for e-commerce businesses.
- Video Ads: Advertising shown on YouTube before or during videos.
Types of Google Ads
Determine your budget and bid strategy
The foundation of a successful PPC campaign is budget and bid. Google Ads offers both manual and automated bidding strategies.
- Manual Bidding: You set a maximum bid for your keywords. It provides greater control over your spending.
- Automated Bidding: Google adjusts your bids to maximize clicks or conversions. It saves time and improves performance.
A study by WebFX revealed that the average Cost-Per-Click (CPC) for Google Ads ranges from $0.11 to $0.50 on the search network but can be as high as $50 or more for highly competitive industries like insurance or law.
Customization
Google Ads allows precise targeting based on:
- Location - You can target a specific radius around a location or various location groups.
- Device - It includes targeting specific device users, including iPhones, iOs, android, desktops, etc.
- Search Intent - Identify high-intent keywords that you can use in the campaign to target serious buyers.
Organize your campaign into Ad groups
The goal of organizing your campaigns into different ad groups is to improve the ROI of your campaign. It improves the relevancy of your ad for a specific product or service that you are promoting. When the ad is tailored to the right audience, it improves ad performance, and people are more likely to buy.
Spotify levels up its advertising through customer segmentation. It runs campaigns for specific target audiences based on their unique intent. Customer segmentation strengthens conversion rates and improves the effectiveness of the campaign. The customer is segmented into various groups, including;
- Students
- Families
- Premium users
- etc
Keyword Research
We are familiar with our all-time favorite tool, Google Keyword Planner. It is particularly the best friend of Google advertisers. GKP provides easy ways to find highly searched keywords with low competition that you can include in your ad copy. Choose both long and short-tailed keywords with buying intent that can improve the ad efficiency. It would be a win-win situation if you can find the exact words that your buyers are looking for.
Use Google Keyword Planner
GKP helps you find relevant keywords with the following statistics;
- Search volume
- Competition levels
- Cost-per-click (CPC) estimates
- etc
Identify the Intent of Keywords
Apart from the statistics of the keywords, you will also have to look into the intent. Keywords with buying intent drive more engagement, clicks, and sign-ups rather than others. Firstly, understand the goal behind any query that your customer is asking.
For example, ‘Affordable lawn mowing services’ is a keyword that shows the user is willing to hire a service that is more affordable and cost-friendly. ‘Best thermal bottles’ or ‘Best insulated flask’ here again the users are looking for bottles available in the market to buy.
Long-tail keywords
Long-tailed keywords make your ad hyper-targeted to your audience. In the example given above, if you use the long-term keyword, “Affordable lawn mowing services in Austin’ it will specifically target people who are looking for services in their locality. Again, make the other keyword more specific by adding words like, ‘travel’ ‘winters’, and ‘school’ and the keyword would turn like, ‘Best thermal bottles for travel.’
Google Ads Structure
Setting up a campaign structure is easier said than done. It’s a lot of science, it includes several stages and each stage requires attention to detail.
Setting up your account
The first step is to set up your accounts. Your accounts include details of your business, including payment plans, language, time zone, etc.
Campaigns
You can then set up different campaigns. Each campaign contains a different set of ad groups based on goals. Identify both short and long-term keywords for the ad groups and create ads accordingly. At this stage, you’d decide on the kind of campaign you want to run. You will also do targeting and retargeting of your ads.
Define Ad groups
Once you define your campaign, you’ll work on creating specific ad groups. If you have an ecommerce store, you’ll group ads based on specific keywords like ‘insulated water bottles for travel,’ ‘best water bottles for school kids’, etc.
Identify right keywords
Precisely word on the keywords for each ads group. Your keywords for the ad copy and the ad copy should align. This kind of alignment improves the quality score, which results in your ad ranking well, and it also impacts CPC.
Design a highly converting landing page
The last thing you’d work on during the Google Ads campaign structure is your landing page. Create an engaging landing page with great copy, call to action, visuals, etc. This is going to define your conversion rates.
Delivering the Perfect Message: Key to Creating Compelling Ads
While visuals and other technicalities of your ads are crucial, you’ll also have to work on creating a compelling message that convinces your target audience to take action.
The three aspects of an action include:
- Short, compelling headline - the headline should include your main keyword. Aim for a headline that grabs attention and is precise.
- Clear messaging and short description - talk about the uniqueness of your product. Give a brief description of the service, and product and mention how it addresses the pain points. Use easy-to-understand language and simple words.
- Call to action - Your call to action depends on your service and product. You can add words like sign up, buy now, get a free demo, etc.
Improve the effectiveness of your ads with a highly converting landing page
A landing page is the last thing you’d like to put your efforts into your Google ads campaign. Once your audience clicks on your ads, they have to be directed to a place where they can get information on your offer/services, and that’s why businesses need a landing page.
Create a great landing page using some SaaS tools that provide free built-in templates to quickly design one. Choose visuals that are intuitive and engaging. Avoid making too many clustered landing pages otherwise, they will negatively impact your quality score.
More like an ad itself, the landing page has the following three aspects that improve the effectiveness of your ad.
- Great headlines - The landing page headline is the first thing that your audience is going to notice. Use attention-grabbing headlines that keep your audience stuck to your landing page.
- Engaging copy - Add relevant and engaging copy and optimize it using relevant keywords.
- Call to action - On your landing page, if you add a simple call to action, you’ll be able to keep your audience engaged.
And, if you go to the second ad, it takes you to the following landing page.
This landing page has honestly everything you can look for, including:
- A great copy
- Great customer reviews
- Keywords
- Service details
- Call to action
- Contact details
Bidding Strategy for your Google Ads
You’ll have to play smart to align your bidding strategy with your goals. Closely monitor various performance metrics like click-through rates, conversion rates, and return on investment to craft a seamless bidding strategy.
A great bidding strategy can help you control how you do your ad spending. Choose any of the following ways to have an impactful Google Ads campaign. Different businesses have different kinds of campaigns and advertising goals, and choosing the right bidding strategy based on the goals is crucial. For example,
- Cost-per-click (CPC) bidding would be great for you if you’d like to have more traffic to your website.
- Cost-per-view (CPV) is perfect if you run a video ad and you want some serious interaction with your video.
- Cost-per-thousand viewable impressions (vCPM) are great to consider if you’d like to have brand awareness.
Optimizing and managing your Google Ads Campaign
Improving your Google Ads campaign is crucial for continuous results. The following tips can help you do that:
Use Negative Keywords
This one is a little tricky but very helpful. So, how do the negative keywords work? They help the user to find the most relevant product/service and exclude those that don't serve the purpose.
For example, if someone sells eyeglasses or spectacles, he can add ‘wine glasses’ as negative words.
A/B Testing
Test, change, improve, and adjust everything time and again to monitor the performance of the ad. For example, you can change the ad groups, the CTAs, copy, geo-targeting, etc. Regular A/B testing is a key part of Google Ads campaign analysis, helping you identify what resonates best with your target audience.
Quality Score Optimization
It depends on three things, how relevant are your ads, the expected CTA, and your landing page experience. Focus on improving all these factors to improve the performance of your Google Ads and improve ROI.
Conversion Tracking
Conversion tracking is a free tool provided by Google that helps to identify how your target audience interacted with your ad. Actions include a signup, form submission, making a call, playing a demo, or making a purchase. Monitoring these actions can help you monitor ROI of your ads campaign.
Audience Targeting
Play around with the advanced targeting and retargeting options that Google provides. You can try changing factors like interests, income levels, historical buying behavior, etc. Narrow down these parameters for better results.
Ad Extensions
This feature comes without any extra cost. Extensions help you improve CTA and ad visibility Ad extensions allow you to add more value to your ad without additional cost by providing more information about your product, site links, contact details, etc.
Conclusion
Getting better brand awareness, more leads, and better clients through Google Ads is a very promising strategy. That’s why most small businesses rely on Google Ads for scaling their business. The average Google Ads spending of small to medium businesses is around $100-1000 per month.
Play smart as you set up your Google Ads, and be vigilant with your spending. Start experimenting with Google Ads if you are a naive digital marketer, or hire a digital marketing agency. In any of these cases, this guide will help you design your first Google Ads campaign seamlessly.
