Having an online business is not easy, especially when you have to compete with giants like Amazon, who have an infinite budget for their advertising. The race to get to the first page of Googles results is very hard. Getting to the first page, even with excellent SEO can take months or even a year.
This is where paid ads (PPC) come into play. Google AdWords is Google’s advertising service that allows businesses to display their ads on Google’s search results pages. Ads usually appear at the top of the SERP (search engine result pages) of Google.
Using Google AdWords is a very common and effective marketing strategy used by all businesses that are looking for their first online customers. Today, we’ll talk about the basics of how to use Google AdWords for your business.
Google AdWords is a powerful tool when it comes to advertising an online business. What makes it so good? Below we will leave you some of the advantages that businesses can obtain in the Google paid marketing platform:
With the many targeting options of Google, business owners can ensure that their ads will only be seen by potential customers. Business owners can filter their audience based on geographic location, age, keywords and more.
Additionally, they may choose the time of the day on which their ads will be shown to the target audience. A common example that many businesses use is to put ads only from Monday to Friday from 8 AM to 5 PM. This is because most businesses are closed on weekends or are not as active. This can help at the expense of each ad.
This is especially beneficial for local businesses. Studies show that 50% of mobile users who did a local search on their cell phone ended up visiting a store on the same day, which gives local businesses the advantage when it comes to calling attention to being one of the first options in the SERP.
Focusing on specific devices
After an update in 2013, Google AdWords allowed businesses to choose the type of devices where their ads will be displayed. For the search network, you can choose between desktop computers, tablets, and mobile devices.
In this network, businesses can even be a little more specific and focusing on specific devices such as iPhones or Android. Bid adjustments automatically allow you to bid higher or lower on devices that could get higher conversions on your site. Tip: View the conversion data and the e-commerce data in the analytics.
Only pay for results
This is the most popular form of advertising in Google AdWords. With AdWords, businesses only pay if they receive a click on their ads, rather than impressions. This is called the pay-per-click or pay per click (PPC) advertising model. In this way, businesses save money, since they will only pay when a user takes action to see their website.
Performance tracking
Google AdWords allows businesses to track the performance of their ads. This means that you can track the number of users who see and click on your ad. AdWords allows you to track the number of users who take the desired action after viewing your website.
According to Google’s Economic Impact report, businesses make on average $ 2 for every dollar used in AdWords. At a time like this, using Google AdWords as part of your online marketing strategy will almost give you positive results. However, this is not always true for every industry. The best way to discover if AdWords will be profitable for your business is to test it.
If you are confused about how to set up your account and how to use AdWords profitably, this guide will help you achieve exactly this. Keep reading.
Preparing for PPC
Pay Per Click advertising is a powerful tool, but only when used wisely. Before you start the process of making your AdWords account, you should keep your goals in mind. While “more sales” might sound like a good goal, online advertising requires that it be more specific.
It is very unlikely that someone who is visiting your site for the first time makes a purchase. Online sales are more dependent on creating and growing a relationship of trust with your consumer. For this reason, there may be a number of goals for a business that uses AdWords. As:
Generate sales
Records
Registration by email
Generation of leads
Improve brand recognition and show value
While it is perfectly normal to have more than one objective, keep in mind that you will have to carry out different campaigns to achieve different objectives (we will talk more about this at another time). In addition to identifying your goal, there is another important prerequisite to having advertising in AdWords, having a landing page.
Landing Page
A landing page is a URL or a website where your user “lands” when he clicks on his advertising. A landing page is a unique page, distinct from your main website, designed to focus on a specific goal. A good landing page is crucial to the success of your AdWords campaign. A well-designed and optimized landing page will help you convert visitors to leads or even customers.
Keep these things in mind when designing your landing page:
Landing focused pages: Design individual landing pages for individual offers. A landing page that focuses on many objectives could end up confusing your visitors.
Design individual landing pages for individual offers. A landing page that focuses on many objectives could end up confusing your visitors. Call to take action: Do not forget to include an appropriately highlight the button called to take action on your landing page.
Do not forget to include and appropriately highlight the button called to take action on your landing page. For mobile devices: With the growing number of mobile users on the internet, it is crucial to ensure that your landing page can be used on mobile devices.
With the growing number of mobile users on the internet, it is crucial to ensure that your landing page can be used on mobile devices. Deliver what you promised: Your landing page must honor any promise you made in your ad. For example, if your ad speaks of a discount, make sure your landing page includes this discount.
Review more information on how to design a landing page with a high conversion rate.
Until now, you must have a list of objectives, and dedicated landing pages that serve to meet each of these. Now it’s time to set up your Google AdWords account.
Establishing a Google AdWords Account
Step 1: Enroll
Simply go to the Google AdWords site and sign up with your Google account. If you do not have a Google account, you will have to create one. Do not worry, it should not take more than a couple of minutes.
Once you have entered the necessary details, you will reach the next page to create your first campaign. In this, you can choose your budget, target audience, put your offers, and write the content of your ad.
Step 2: Establish Your Budget
As you can see, defining a budget is the most important task in this list. Defining the daily budget will ensure that you will never cross the spending limits. The best way to define a daily budget is to first understand the number of visitors your landing page can convert into customers. If it is just beginning, it is good to work with averages.
According to WordStream, the average conversion across industries is 2.35%. This means, on average, only 2.35% of users take the desired action after clicking on an ad. Taking into account the average conversion for your industry, you can discover how much you intend to spend for each visitor. This is also known as cost per acquisition (CPA).
After choosing the currency and the desired budget, click on save and go to the next step.
Step 3: Select Your Target Audience
In this step, you can specify the geographical location of your target audience. This option will make your ad only shown to users who did a search using the keywords for which you bid (more than this at another time) and are present in the geographic location specified by you.
By using the advanced search option, you will have access to “the guidance radio”. With this option, you can target anyone in your zip code. Depending on the nature of your business, you might want to focus on the entire country, or maybe just a few cities if you sell something local. I could even make different offers for nearby locations. For example, you may want to bid more in an area no larger than 10 miles in radius, but smaller in a 30-mile area.
Step 4: Choose a Network
The next step is to choose between Google’s Search Network and the Display Network. The Search Network places its ads on the Google SERP, while the Display Network puts its ads on any site that displays ads.
For beginners and small businesses, it is recommended to choose the Search Network since it shows your ads to users who have specifically searched for the keywords that are relevant to your business. Display ads can be good for branding, focus on another market, and get a lower CPC. But they do not have such a concentrated focus on requests.
Step 5: Choose Your Keywords
Keywords are search terms or phrases that a user enters in the Google search box when searching for something. Google allows you to choose between 15-20 keywords that could cause your ad to appear in the SERP. Do not worry, you can always add more keywords at another time.
It is recommended to choose some keywords that are giving you results, instead of choosing 20 that you think are relevant. Having said that, you should also pay attention to the search volumes of the keywords of your choice. It might be tempting to choose a keyword that has a search volume of 450,000, but that might not be the best idea.
As I mentioned, AdWords works with a bidding system. Keywords with high search volumes are extremely expensive. Choosing more keywords or choosing keywords with a high search volume could end up being an extremely expensive activity.
Keep your costs down by choosing some relevant keywords with moderate search volumes.
Types of keywords and determining the correct “keyword relationship”
There are four types of keyword pairs that determine how you want to show your ad.
Broad relationship: This is the base option in AdWords. According to Google, it “allows your ad to be displayed for searches on similar phrases or relevant variations, including synonyms, singular and plural forms and possible spelling errors.”
This equal allows you to reach the widest part of your audience. However, since the broad relationship also shapes your ads for synonyms and for a part of your keywords, your ad could appear in searches that are not relevant.
For example, you could be focusing on “fine restaurants in Manchester”, if you use broad pairing, your ad could also appear in the results of “pizza in Manchester.”
Wide relation modifier: This modifier gives you more control. Simply adding a ‘+’ before a term, you can attach it to that place. Only when the search contains the terms contained in the phrases or words after the ‘+’, will they appear in your results.
For example, if you bid for “+ Manchester fine restaurants”, your results will never appear in the search for “pizza in Manchester.”
Phrase relationship: The phrase relationship offers even more control for business owners. When you choose a relationship by phrase your ad will only appear in the results for the search terms that are in the same order as your keyword.
This means that, if you choose “fine restaurants in Manchester”, your ad will only appear in the search for “fine restaurants in Manchester”. To be able to specify this, simply add quotes between the keywords.
Exact relationship: As the name suggests, this option will ensure that your ad only appears when someone searches for exactly the same thing you put in your keywords.
If you chose the exact relationship and your keyword is “fine restaurants in Manchester”, your ad will not appear in the search for “The best fine restaurants in Manchester”.
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To specify an exact relationship, put braces around your keywords. (For example: [fine restaurants in Manchester]) Tip: Using the exact relationship may be the safest, but slowest way to grow your campaigns when you’re just getting started.
Negative keywords: Negative keywords are the terms that will help your ad not be shown to an irrelevant audience. This AdWords option is very useful if you have a product/service that could share keywords with something that is not related.
Learn more about making offers by type of relationship.
Step 6: Put Your Offer
As I mentioned earlier, AdWords uses a bid model. An offer is the amount of money you are willing to pay for each person who clicks on your ad. If you and your competitor are bidding on the same keyword, and you are willing to pay more per click, your ad will be reflected in a better place than your competition.
As you can see, you will have two options to choose from. The first allows you the amount of your offer to maximize the profits of your budget If you prefer to manually establish your offer, we suggest you do some research, using Google’s Keyword Planner.
If you’re just getting started, you may want to use automatic offers, until you become familiar with the AdWords system. However, setting bids manually may be the best option when it comes to savings. Although this requires additional maintenance.
Step 7: Write Your Ad
Writing your ad is one of the most critical parts of this process. We suggest you think this very well and make it very striking. Your message should clearly communicate your offer, in such a way that you convince people to click on your ad and visit your website. Here are some tips to start.
The best copywriting practices
Be brief: There will not be much space to put text. So go straight to the point.
There will not be much space to put text. So go straight to the point. The header is crucial: The header of your ad is the first thing the user will find. Make sure you get attention and convince them to click on the ad.
The header of your ad is the first thing the user will find. Make sure you get attention and convince them to click on the ad. Have a call to take clear action: A call to take action tells the user what to do.
Anatomy of an ad:
Header: AdWords allows you to put up to two headings in an ad, and a total of 30 characters. Be sure to use this space so limited wisely. Additionally, it is recommended to include at least one of your keywords in the header.
AdWords allows you to put up to two headings in an ad, and a total of 30 characters. Be sure to use this space so limited wisely. Additionally, it is recommended to include at least one of your keywords in the header. Description: The description space is 80 characters. Use it to convey your message clearly. If possible, include some offer or discount in this section to ensure that the user will click on your ad. Additionally, check very well for any spelling mistakes that may be.
Step 8: Create Your Ad
Once you have finished writing your ad, click on “save” and go to the last step of the process. In this section, Google will ask you about your business and payment method. They will charge you as soon as your target budget is over, or 30 days later, whichever comes first.
Multiple Ads at the Same Time
As I mentioned earlier, it is recommended to have several ads that focus on several objectives. This can be achieved by carrying out different campaigns at the same time. You will discover which are the best converts for your business.
Each campaign will consist of several groups of ads. Each ad group will consist of similar keywords, and the landing pages will have a similar theme. For example, for an appliance store, one ad group could be dedicated to televisions, and another to refrigerators.
However, both groups can be included in the same campaign. Ad groups in a single campaign will share the same budget, location and target device settings. If you want to focus on different locations or devices, you will have to create separate campaigns.
Campaign Evaluation
As I mentioned earlier, one of the great advantages of using AdWords is its tracking capabilities. By using these, you can determine if the ad you just created is performing correctly
In order to do this, the first step is to select a conversion source. For small businesses, the most common conversion areas are:
Websites: When a client clicks on his ad, he visits his landing page and performs the desired action.
When a client clicks on his ad, he visits his landing page and performs the desired action. Cell Phones: When a mobile user dials to the cell phone number mentioned in their ad or if they click on the call button on their website or landing page.
The first thing you will want to do is set up a Google Analytics goal on your website and then follow these additional instructions to set up Google AdWords conversion tracking (WordPress, WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads).
You can also track cell phone conversations in your ads. Tip: If your business depends a lot on phone calls, it is also recommended to sign up for a call reporting software, such as CallRail. This has a simple integration with WordPress and Google AdWords.
Google Quality Rating
Google also tracks how well your ads are doing, and uses this information to determine where your ad will appear on the results page. Using the following factors as a reference, Google assigns a Quality Rating (QS) to each of its keywords:
The relevance of Landing Page: The relevance of the keyword to the content present in your landing page.
The relevance of the keyword to the content present in your landing page. The expected range of clicks: The probability that a user will click on your ad after having searched for the keyword.
The probability of a user clicking on his ad after having searched for the keyword. Ad relevance: The relevance of your ad to the keyword.
Check the quality rating of your keywords by adding the “quality rating” column below the keyword tab of your AdWords account.
The quality rating not only helps determine the positioning of your ad, it also affects the bidding process and what you pay for each click. To determine the position of your ad, Google will multiply the quantity of your offer with the quality rating. For example, for a specific keyword, if your quality rating is 0.7, and you bid $ 1, your ad will be placed below your competitor which has a quality rating of 0.4 and a bid of $ 2.
“A rating of 7/10 is the recommended number and this is enough. Going beyond 7 is fantastic, but not always achievable and it might not be worth it. Anything below 7 is a sign that something is wrong and may need fixing. “- Tenscores
Summary
Google AdWords is a powerful tool when it comes to acquiring new customers for small businesses. However, if it is not used wisely, the platform could cost you real advertising money, without achieving respectable profits.
Apart from using the knowledge obtained with this publication, the key to success lies in the constant testing of your ads and the optimization of these to achieve better performance.
Also published on Medium.