There is a reason why the phrase “Google it” has ingrained itself into languages all around the world. Google has evolved from a search engine to a knowledge source. Users swarm to the website daily to do more than 4 billion searches for goods, services, information, and so much more, making it an essential channel for advertising worldwide.
You probably also discovered us there. Welcome to the Ultimate How to Run Google Ads in 2023 Guide, a comprehensive guide on how to use Google Ads (formerly known as AdWords)
Let’s go on to the exciting part, which is campaign creation, since setting up your Google Ads account is simple and user-friendly.
During the early phases of a campaign, many decisions must be taken, including those on the campaign’s goal, budget, and bid strategy. Additionally, you may employ innovative and in-depth targeting to connect with the audience that is most useful to you thanks to Google’s rich user data.
You only need to add a name for your account (which only you will see), billing information, a payment method, and your time zone to create it.
Go to ads.google.com and select “get started” to begin if you are creating a brand-new account from scratch. As soon as you create your account, Google will walk you through creating a Smart campaign. This is tempting for advertisers that don’t want to put in the effort, but it’s worthwhile to take the time to develop your own tailored advertising.
Therefore, instead of selecting your “Main advertising goal” as Google requests, select “Switch to expert mode.”
The good news is that you don’t need to be an expert to follow the instructions in this manual. I’m here to help, so feel free to ask any questions!
Your Google Ads account is similar to a kitchen. Do you only use it to create scrambled eggs? Let’s hope not! For example, you might cook enchiladas when you want something spicy or a steak supper when you want to raise the protein. There are various campaign types for various reasons, just like there are various meal varieties.
What different types of campaigns are there?
Google will ask you to select an aim before prompting you to select a campaign. The available campaign kinds will then be displayed to you based on your goal. Let’s choose website traffic since we’re going to make a Search ad for this tutorial.
Now we can see what’s available:
As you develop your account over time, a pro suggestion is to avoid focusing solely on one kind of campaign. You should conduct a variety of campaigns that support your PPC objectives. A healthy Google Ads account has a diversity of ads, just like a healthy kitchen produces a wide range of foods.
Once you have decided on the campaign type, this is where you’ll choose your campaign’s general options, such as:
Name of the campaign: This is completely up to you and has no bearing on how well you perform. You’re good to go as long as your campaign is simple for you to remember and arrange within your account.
You have the option of choosing to have your advertising appear on Google’s partner networks. These are Google-owned subsidiaries that are permitted to display your advertisement. This can increase your reach for less money, but it will be more difficult to attain a high impression share.
To ensure that you only spend money when it matters, you must tell Google when to show your advertising, just as you must inform your visitors when your dinner party is. For instance, you might steer clear of running your advertisement in the early morning hours when viewers might not be motivated to convert.
Select your start and finish dates as well as the ad schedule by clicking “display more settings” to set your schedule.
Caution is advised! If you want to advertise to audiences in multiple time zones, you’ll need to do some arithmetic because the schedule defaults to the timezone that your account is configured to. How to properly set up ad scheduling is described here.
You don’t invite everyone you’ve ever met to your dinner party. You pick a select group. You may tailor the experience to their unique tastes and interests in this way. You also don’t want your Google Ads campaign to be visible to everyone. You select your language and location here.
Expert Tip: Tick the presence box to prevent showing to those who aren’t actually present but are “interested” in your chosen area. Find out more about location-based advertising here.
The section on audience parts will appear, but you can skip it. Although this is not a typical approach for search ads, this is where you would add your remarketing lists.
It might be challenging to season food when cooking. The dish is forgettable if there is too little. Overdoing it will make your taste buds uncomfortable. Your budgets for Google Ads are the same: if you spend too little, you’ll never move past the learning stage. Spend excessively and you’ll go through your entire monthly budget in just one week.
You must first estimate your monthly spending in order to create a budget that works for you. To estimate your typical CPC or CPA, start by conducting some keyword research and looking at Google Ads standards for your sector.
To determine your daily budget, divide that amount by 30.4 (the typical number of days in a month).
Expert tips on setting your budget
Similar to how there are various ways to prepare a dish, Google can use your budget in a variety of ways based on your objectives. Choose “Or, select a bid strategy directly (not advised)” to choose your bid plan.
Then you can select from the options available to you.
The two types of bidding tactics are as follows:
When using manual bidding, you must inform Google of the highest CPC bid you are willing to make for each keyword. This is the highest price you’re willing to pay to click an advertisement for that keyword. It’s critical to understand that this isn’t always the price you’ll pay; it may be less, but never more (more on how the Google Ads auction works here). This tactic allows you complete control, but use caution because lowering your bid too much may result in performance limitations.
Automated bidding: In an automated bidding technique, you temporarily hand over control of your maximum CPC bids to Google. Simply keep an eye on the data to obtain a sense of the cost per click.
Google will favor the ads that perform the best by default. That makes sense because you’ll want to maximize your return on investment with each advertisement Google decides to display.
However, you may choose to make an even rotation if you decide to test ads against one another equally or if you have ads with various sorts of material that you want seen.
There is also an area for ad extensions, but we’ll get to that later.
One of the most crucial steps in running Google Ads is the next one. Without ingredients, you can’t make a dish, and without keywords, you can’t run Google Ads.
The words and phrases that your target is entering into Google Search are known as keywords. With Google Search advertisements, you place bids on the keywords you wish to see your adverts for. Before we discuss keywords, have a look at what your screen would look like:
Ad group’s name. Ad groups, which keep your campaigns structured, are nothing more than storage bins for your advertisements and keywords. You should categorize these into topical categories and give them descriptive names for the best Google Ads account structure.
Default bid. When utilizing manual bidding, you will need to set your maximum CPC bid for each keyword that you add to your ad groups.
You can get expected CPCs for your chosen terms by using our guide to keyword research and the suggestions below.
Expert tips for PPC keywords:
Do plan out your core terms based on their monthly search traffic and average cost per click using keyword research tools, such as the Keyword Planner in your Google Ads account or our Free Keyword Tool.
Don’t choose keywords without a clear commercial purpose. These phrases include “cost,” “for sale,” and others. Target location-based keywords like “divorce lawyer boston” if your PPC strategy is local.
Don’t only use keywords instead of other targeting possibilities. The Kardashians of PPC are keywords. Despite their enormous fame, they don’t support themselves.
Don’t: Ignore your bid when configuring your keywords (we’ll cover this soon). Your bid strategy objectives may have an impact on how you approach your keywords and targeting, even if you are not required to set a Max CPC price for each term.
Keep low-volume versions of your main keywords off of your keyword list. You can spare yourself the hassle and reduce the number of keywords you use by using the appropriate match types
You must also choose the match type you want when you enter your keywords. This is due to the fact that there are several searches that a person could make (referred to as queries) that aren’t exact but are still extremely related to your keywords. Match types aid Google in determining which of these keyword variations you want your ads to appear for.
To give yourself flexibility, you should vary the match types you use. The three match types are listed below in order of least to most restrictive:
Broad match: enables your ad to appear for any keyword-related search.
Phrase match: selects queries that contain your term and its synonyms.
Exact match restricts the display of your advertisement to searches that have the exact same meaning as your own.
Expert Tip: There is no right or wrong match type because it all depends on your objectives. My greatest recommendation for keyword optimization is to experiment with all three and discover what works best. But phrase match is a definite thing if you’re really doubtful. It strikes a balance between maintaining relevance and casting a wide net.
Negative keywords are words you choose for which you don’t want your advertisements to appear. For instance, if I’m promoting CDL classes, anyone looking for work in the sector could use the phrase “CDL.” Therefore, I might make “jobs,” “positions,” and “openings” negligible to deter those who prefer employment to education.
Once you’re up and running, you can use the Search Terms Report to check which searches you’ve showed for and develop your negative keyword list. You should have some negative keywords to start.
Okay, everything has been cooked and prepared. It’s time to start serving. Hells Kitchen, a popular cooking program, emphasizes that plating aesthetics is just as important as flavor. Even if it tastes excellent, no one will eat something that doesn’t look appetizing, and no one will click on a boring advertisement regardless matter how amazing the offer is.
The only standard Search advertisements you can generate after June 2022 will be responsive search advertising, thus your ad creation window will resemble this:
Google Ad Copy Expert Tips
Do adhere to standard practices for responsive search ads. Since the display of these adverts to users is automated, you must make sure that every line of text or image has impact.
Keep in mind your CTA. The goal is to motivate your audience to take an action, after all. Always be explicit about the intended outcome of their click. To help enhance conversions, use phrases like “sign up today,” “call now,” and others.
Stay interesting. Market with emotion to stand out on the SERP, and get ideas from our ad content samples.
Don’t go overboard. Consider your advertisements as the “face” of your company. You want them to present your brand in a polished manner, much like a plate of presentation. This component of your copywriting shouldn’t be neglected in lieu of a barrage of forceful CTAs.
The main course is always the star of a delicious meal, but sides are always welcome. And occasionally they can enhance the entrée. Ad extensions are just like that. These are extra lines of text that you can add to your advertisement to “buff up” (no pun intended) it and increase CTR.
The worst case scenario is that they don’t display or generate clicks, but they won’t render your advertisement ineffective. Ad extensions are meant to improve your advertisement, therefore there’s really no reason not to use them.
Navigate to the Extensions area in the left-hand column to add extensions to your advertising. The Google Ads platform will then guide you through the procedure from there.
The best aspect is that Google constantly expands and enhances the selection of ad extension alternatives. Visit our Google Ads extension cheat sheet to learn about all the options available and see how they could spice up your ads.
Let’s have some fun! No matter if I’m practicing PPC or adding gravy to my potatoes, too much sauce is never enough sauce. Don’t hesitate to overdo it with your additional parameters, such as device targeting.
You can select to change how much you’re ready to spend for clicks coming from particular devices when using manual bidding on Search. However, you can completely omit them by lowering your bid by 100%.
Take pleasure in it. To identify your ideal audience, don’t be scared to combine a few different tactics. And don’t immediately rule anything out. For instance, excluding a device without evidence to support the claim that it is underperforming first could limit your results.
Expert Tip: In your campaign settings for Display campaigns, you’ll also find this choice in the form of a checkbox. You can check your performance by device for all campaign and bidding types in the Devices section of Google Ads, which is ideal for those wishing to modify their approach for mobile or desktop.
Without a landing page, what good is a fantastic Google ad? Failure.
It may sound harsh, but one of the challenging aspects of my job as a PPC expert is that occasionally I have to tell marketers things they don’t want to hear but must know. In the end, even with the best advertisements in the world, you won’t get any results if your landing page isn’t optimized.
The first part of the play is getting the correct person to click, but your website is what gets them into the end zone. My last piece of advice for setting up your Google Ads account is to pay attention to the landing page that you’re sending your visitors to.
Here are a few tips for creating the finest landing pages.
Discuss the technical details. Make sure the page is responsive and secure, and speed it up.
Emphasize the CTA: Make sure the button, form, or whatever your action is, is visible and simple to use. Talking about all the wonderful features that your brand offers can be confusing. However, if your visitors have a specific objective, make sure they can easily and quickly achieve it.
Have a neat, appealing layout: Take inspiration from these landing page examples!
The meal is ready! Before saving your campaign and making it live, double check your billing information. What’s next? The rest is just performance monitoring. My final advice is as follows:
To ensure success, become accustomed to PPC reporting. You can halt or modify your campaign at any time. Along with that, you should become acquainted with important PPC indicators to identify future opportunities for optimization. Additionally, you might want to keep an eye out for any annoying ad rejections that might prevent your campaign from succeeding.
Otherwise, you’re good to go on a cruise. Give your campaign some breathing room and a chance to gather data. The hardest aspect of PPC, in my opinion, is patience. Try not to modify anything more than once every two weeks to thirty days; for new campaigns, the window may need to be even longer. Therefore, unwind and take in this incredible new Google Ads campaign you just created!
You can always utilize our free Google Ads Performance Grader to obtain a thorough audit whenever you’re ready to check in.
Ready to take your advertising to the next level with Google Ads in 2023? Dive into our comprehensive guide now and unlock the potential of this powerful platform! For personalized assistance and expert advice, contact Savage Design Company. Connect with us on social media for daily insights and updates:
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Google Ads, also known as Google AdWords, is a powerful online advertising platform by Google. In 2023, they remain essential because they enable businesses to display their ads on Google’s search results pages and partner websites, reaching a massive audience actively searching for products or services. Learn more about their significance in our
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