Google AdWords advertising allows you to show your ads to the people who are most likely to be interested in your products or services, and filter out those who are not.
You can track how many people your ad was shown to, how many of those people clicked on your ad, and more by integrating your account with Google Analytics. By measuring your ads, you’ll quickly see where to spend your budget and increase your return on investment.
AdWords is most commonly based on a cost-per-click system, where the cost-per-click is the minimum amount required to outperform a competing advertiser. Using a very simple example, if a competitor’s advertiser’s budget per click is $1 and yours is $5, they’ll only pay $1.01 for that click.
When you’re just getting started with AdWords, it can be a bit overwhelming. Google AdWords itself is huge, and every slip up can blow your budget. I know quite a few people who have been burned trying AdWords without really understanding it.
To help you get started, I’ve created some helpful tips I’ve learned over the years.
Starting
Create your Google AdWords account
Google has put together a 7-step getting started guide for creating an account that covers the basics, like creating a login, setting up billing information, and a daily budget.
Resist the urge to activate your ads for now
Google’s goal at this point is to encourage you to maximize the amount you’re spending on your advertising. This is the first trap for beginners. You’ll put in a few keywords, Google will suggest a lot more keywords that are mostly helpful, but the next thing you know, you spent $150 in one day with no sales or leads.
research your keywords
Thorough keyword research is very important to the success of your AdWords advertising: if you target the wrong keywords, you can be almost certain that your advertising will not be profitable. Start with your website to create a list of relevant keywords, look for the main words that describe what you do, your products and your services. Align the structure of your AdWords account with your website.
Use the Google keyword tool
Once you have your keyword list, you can use the Google Keyword Tool to find related words and phrases to get a comprehensive list of potential keywords. People may use different words or phrases when searching for your products or services.
The tool will then show you the average search volume per keyword (there’s no point in bidding on keywords that no one is searching for) and the average cost per click so you better understand the budget required and what you can afford.
From my experience, the lowest cost per click I’ve seen is around $0.80c and the highest was $16. Therefore, choose wisely. Choose general and specific keywords, and group similar keywords into ad groups (get 5-20 keywords per ad group).
Choose keyword match types
This is another beginner trap. Google’s default setting is ‘broad match’, which allows you to reach the most people, but gives you the least control over when your ads are shown.
For example, if I were a personal trainer and I bid on ‘personal training’ to attract new clients using broad match, my ad would show to people who are also searching for ‘personal training courses’, ‘personal training certification’ and ‘ personal training’. salary.’ Clearly none of these people are looking to hire a personal trainer. I would get a lot of irrelevant clicks wasting my budget, or no clicks at all, which is just as bad because Google will punish me with a low quality score and I’ll have to pay more.
Basically, the higher your Quality Score (on a scale of 1-10), the less you have to pay per click. Relevance is the key. New keywords will be assigned a quality score in about a day.
Keyword Match Type Options
Broad Match – The broadest possible search that includes a number of keywords that may not be relevant to your business, for example, ‘Women’s Hats’ may match searches for ‘buy women’s hat’.
Phrase Match – A more specific option that will match people searching for the keywords you specified, for example, ‘Women’s Hats’ can match searches for ‘shop for women’s hats’.
Exact Match – The most specific option that will match people searching for your keyword, exactly as you typed it, for example ‘Women’s Hats’ can only match searches for ‘Women’s Hats’.
Negative match: Using negative keywords can greatly reduce wasted clicks by excluding keywords that are not related to your business, for example, if you sell reading glasses and use “glasses” as your keyword, your ad will be it will show people who are also searching for “wine glasses”. ‘, adding ‘wine’ as a negative keyword would eliminate this problem.
campaign types
It is important to understand the differences because they work so differently.
Search Network Only: Target people who are actively searching for your products or services. This is recommended for beginners.
On the Display Network only: Target people who are browsing websites that contain content that is related in some way to your products or services. From my experience, this is effective for short-term campaigns for targeted promotions, for example, an online pet store ad with free shipping for the next 7 days may appear alongside an article on handling puppy aggression. .
Search and Display Networks: It’s a combination of the two, I personally prefer to keep the campaigns separate for more effective performance monitoring.
Shopping: This is a must if you sell products online and require the creation of a Google Merchant account and some setup to create a product feed. This allows your products to be presented visually with text search results.
write your ads
Explain why a potential customer should buy your products or use your service instead of a competitor. Include your keyword to attract attention. The character limit is strict, but do your best to stand out from other ads.
Google has strict advertising guidelines to ensure ads are of good quality, but I’ve seen dodgy grammar mistakes. ‘I will give you the best advice’, will determine people who know the difference between advice and advice.
A call to action is also important for potential customers to understand what action you want them to take and to filter out people who are not ready to take the desired action, eg buy now, call today, request a quote, get more information, browse now.
The page you link to on your website is also important, create a custom page if necessary to match your ad. If your ad is promoting toasters that are 20% off, make sure your ad is targeting the toasters category with a banner highlighting 20% off. Make it easy for people to take the action you promised in your ad.
Link to Google Analytics for conversion tracking
Access to analytics is essential to managing AdWords efficiently; Without them, there’s no way to know if you’re achieving your goals or which campaigns, ad groups, and keywords are successful and which aren’t. When you create a Google Analytics account, you’ll need to add a small tracking code to your website, and then you can link the accounts.
Conversion tracking provides important data related to what a person does after clicking your ad. Do they buy, send an inquiry, download your app? This information helps you determine your success.
AdWords is not a “set it and forget it” platform, and it should be carefully monitored and managed, especially when first starting out.
I generally recommend running AdWords for at least 2 months and monitoring weekly to determine if it’s a good fit for your business. You need time to give it the best chance of success.
Where to get more information
It is not possible for me to cover everything about AdWords. I spent 3 weeks studying around my full-time job for the Google AdWords Fundamentals, Google Search, and Google Display certification exams to make sure my knowledge is up to date.
I recommend that you at least read the Google AdWords Fundamentals study guide to learn more about structuring your account, bidding strategies, Quality Score, and location targeting.
Once you’ve activated your ads, I recommend checking your progress every day for the first week to understand how fast your budget is being spent and what the bounce rate is for your keywords. A high bounce rate usually indicates that your web page is not relevant to the search, try adjusting the keyword, match type or just stop it.