Google is no more than just a search engine. It has become an internet phenomenon with the word itself becoming synonymous with searching anything on the web. Google reigns the search engine market with more than 90% market share.
Google is the first thing that comes to your mind when you need to search for anything and everything. If you haven’t thought about Google advertising yet, you are already late to the show and should get on with Google advertising as soon as possible because the competition isn’t waiting for you to catch up.
But rushing into Google ads without its basic understanding will bring you very little returns. With Google, it’s not just the amount you spend on ads that matter; your ads’ quality and relevance are also important.
Let’s have a deeper look at Google ads and how you can get started.
What Are Google Ads?
If you have been running a website for a while, you would already be aware of SEO. SEO brings in new traffic to your site through slow organic growth. It does so by helping you fetch higher rankings in the search engine results pages through various techniques.
Now, consider a scenario where you want immediate results. Do you want your target audiences to check your recent promotions and ads when a relevant keyword search phrase is used? This is when you use Google ads.
Google ads are a type of PPC (Pay-Per-Click) ads that are charged based on the number of clicks the ads receive or by the number of impressions made. It allows for more focused marketing and reaching out to a wider audience than what usual search engine optimization can do.
The ROI on Google ads has been consistently high. The average return is estimated to be $3 for every $1.6 ad spent.
Types of Google Ads
Google Search Ads
Google ad results are usually shown on top of the search results just below the search bar with a small green square that says “Ad.”
Google Display Ads
This specific type of Google ads is called the Display Ads that are shown on the search results page and across Google Display Network, depending on the user’s search history. Google’s display network consists of apps like Gmail, mobile websites, blogs, and sites across the Internet that allow advertising.
Google Shopping Ads
These ads appear when a user is specifically searching for a particular product. For instance, if you search for a steam iron, you will be shown a similar product from an online store selling that product with its photo, name, price, and applicable promotions.
Google Video Campaigns
Google ads can also show up on YouTube videos. These ads are most likely to get the highest number of clicks.
Google App Campaigns
Google Universal ad campaigns can appear across Google properties like Google search, Google Play, display network, and more. This is a relatively newer ad type that allows you to save up time on manual testing of your apps.
Unlike traditional Google ads, these ads are created by the Google ads platform based on your inventory and assets. The algorithm will make sure to keep improving and showing the best performing ads to the target audience.
How Are Google Ads Charged?
Google ads are charged based on user clicks and impressions. You can choose the impression-based pay model if your goal is to increase awareness of your services.
Here are some of the factors that contribute to the cost of an ad:
- Keywords selection. High-value keywords can cost more
- The maximum bid you place for a keyword. Keywords are auctioned for every search made, and if your bid is the highest, it is given more preference for ad placement.
- The quality score of your ad. Google estimates your ad’s quality depending on the textual content, landing page, and user experience provided by your site. The quality score value is a number from 1 – 10, with 1 being the lowest score.
- The ad rank of competing bidders. If your competitor’s ranking exceeds that of your ad, the preference will shift towards a higher ranking ad. This ranking, too, will be calculated every time an ad is considered to be shown.
How to Place Google Ads?
A huge number of businesses use the Google advertising platform. According to an estimate, about 4 million businesses advertise on Google.
Hence, for the same keyword, there would be multiple people looking to place their ads. Google uses a keyword bidding system and several other parameters to determine which ad has to be placed.
There would be many bidders for a high-value keyword, so the corresponding ad cost will also be higher. Besides the keyword auctioning, Google also uses factors like quality of the ad and your ad content’s keyword relevancy to determine its priority over other ads. This is why you need a combination of good keyword planning and bidding strategy along with quality ads to get better returns from Google ads.
CTR and Conversion Rate
Speaking of returns, these two terms, Click-through rates (CTR) and conversion rates, will provide you the metric to measure your ads’ success and see if they are performing well.
CTR
A Click Through Rate is the ratio of the number of people who clicked your ad with respect to the total number of people who saw the ad (impressions). The CTR value is a clear indicator of your ads’ efficiency in bringing new traffic to your site. The benchmark value for CTR is set at 2.88%. Any value below this can be considered as bad as performance.
Conversion Rate
The conversion rate measures the next level of customer interaction. It is the rate of visitors who made a real interaction of business value with respect to the total number of visitors to your site. So, if around 100 people visited your product page, and only 10 people made a purchase, the conversion rate is 10%. You get higher conversion rates when you have an optimized landing page and relevant ads.
If you find these values to be lower than they should be, you will have to work harder on improving your ads and landing page content. You can also hire Google Ads Marketing Specialist.
How to Create Google Ads
Creating Google may seem to be a simple job, but it is better said than done. Creating ads that perform well requires good strategic planning and execution. Here are the steps to create a Google ad:
- Set up your Google Ads account. You can create a single account and use it to run multiple ad campaigns for various sites.
- Establish your metrics and goals.
- Identify your target audience
- Undertake keyword analysis and planning and come up with target keyword lists. Google provides a Keyword Planner tool to conduct keyword research. Make use of the tool to focus on the right keywords for your campaigns
- Set your bidding limits and budget limits.
- Create your ads. Make sure to craft quality ads and landing pages that are relevant and offer value to the user.
- Track your conversion data and monitor the performance of your ads.
- Build remarketing strategies, improve your ad performance, and use retargeting campaigns with the data you have collected from ad analytics.
Tips and Suggestions for Successful Google Advertising
Now, let’s show the right way to make your ads work.
Make use of automated bidding rules
You can set up automated rules from your Google ads dashboard. This option lets Google to automatically manage ad spend for low-cost keywords and helps increase your ad ranking.
Set up negative locations
There are certain cases where it will benefit if your ad did not pop up. This will help save some ad costs and also make sure your quality score remains high. You can enable this feature by setting up negative locations and instruct Google to not show your ads in such particular cases.
Maintain content consistency
The thing that puts off many users is that they click on an ad with particular expectations and then end up with an irrelevant landing page. This kind of inconsistency in ad copy, keywords, and landing page content will significantly impact your conversion rates.
Make mobile-friendly ads
Not just the ads, do make sure that your landing pages and call to action elements are user friendly and adapted to mobile platforms. You can also choose to cut down ads on mobile or desktop if one of them is providing fewer returns than the other.
Make sure your geographical preference is properly configured
Google provides immensely helpful users analytics data, which can all go down the drain if you failed to properly configure the geographic location.
Try using longer keywords that have lesser competition
Keyword selection is a big part of Google ad campaigns. When you feel your budget will not be enough to support high-value keywords and keywords with high competition, try to use unique and alternative keywords. Make good use of the keyword planners to know such keywords that have low bidding value but a much more niche market reach.
Make use of all types of keyword targeting
There are three types of keyword targeting, namely exact match, broad match, and phrase match. Make sure to include all of them for better reach.
Use negative keywords to reduce spends
Much like marking negative locations, you can specify the keywords related to actual keywords but are not related to your campaign. Doing so will make sure your ad does not get displayed for irrelevant search phrases.
Your Turn
As you can see, Google ads can provide the required exposure to your products and services. All you need to do is target them well, and keep a close eye on its CTR and other analytics to ensure its usefulness.
If you feel stuck anywhere or do not feel confident in running Google ads yourself, it is highly recommended to contact our Google ad professionals. From helping you in Google ads audit to search advertising – we do it all! Contact us today to learn more.
