Online advertising with Google Ads is one of the most effective ways to reach new customers and grow your business. However, before you can get started, you’ll need to know how to use Google Ads effectively to maximize the return on investment from your advertising spend and avoid making mistakes.
Table of contents
- What is Google Ads?
- Why use Google Ads
- How to use Google Ads in 10 steps
- Three tips to use Google Ads right
- How to evaluate the strength of your Google Ads account
Let us help you start with this beginner’s guide to running ads on Google.
What is Google Ads?
Google Ads is a pay-per-click advertising platform owned and operated by Google. It is also the world’s largest and most widely used online advertising network. Millions of businesses use Google Ads to reach new customers and reach their sales, marketing, and revenue goals.
Advertisers who choose to use Google Ads can target users across multiple networks.
- Search ads: On the Search Network, advertisers create text ads that target keywords, words, and phrases people search on Google. It allows them to appear in Search results when their customers have the highest intent to engage or buy. While it is just one type of PPC advertising, Search ads are what people refer to when they use this term. It is also known as paid search.
- Display ads: The Display Network offers advertisers the option of placing visual banner-style advertisements on websites that are part of the Display Network. The Google Display Network reaches approximately 90% of global internet users, a vast potential audience. When it comes to Search vs. Display, they’re ultimately best when used together.
- Shopping ads: With Shopping campaigns, you connect a detailed product feed to your account, and Google will display your products that match searches on Google Search, the Google Shopping tab, and other placements across the Google Shopping network. Viewers can buy directly from the ad or click through to the product page.
- YouTube ads: Since Google owns YouTube, you can also use Google Ads to create videos or display ads that appear on YouTube videos and search results.
Each ad type offers its benefits and can help hit different objectives. And within these networks are various campaign types, placements, formats, and more. Even campaign types allow you to advertise across multiple networks at once.
Why use Google Ads?
PPC offers many benefits to businesses, but Google Ads has extra advantages.
- Fast results: While SEO is essential for any business, it takes time for your content to rank. PPC ads, on the other hand, can start appearing as soon as your campaign is set live.
- Data and insights: The data you collect in your campaigns allows you to make optimizations to maximize your budget and gain invaluable customer insights.
- Full funnel-friendly: Between Search, Display, Shopping, and YouTube ads, and the targeting capabilities, you can use Google Ads throughout every step of your funnel.
- High ROI: With how Google Ads works, PPC is one of the highest ROI channels to marketers and advertisers, earning an average of $2 for every $1 spent.
How does Google Ads work?
Search and Display advertising campaigns are managed via Google Ads; “Google Ads” typically refers to the Search Network. On the other hand, digital marketers usually refer to the Display Network by its name. In short, Google Ads works on an auction system, where costs are not determined just by bid but also by the quality and relevancy of ads.
How to use Google Ads in 7 steps
- Establish your foundation
- Set up your Google Ads account
- Identify your keywords
- Create your campaign
- Create your ads
- Report on results
- Optimize and adjust
- Establish your foundation
First and foremost, make sure you have a firm grasp of your audience and your goals.
Goals
Why are you using Google Ads? Lead generation? E-commerce? Brand building? The campaign types you choose and the structure of your account will hinge on this. To learn more about establishing realistic goals for your Google Ads account, check out these resources:
How to use Google Ads in 7 steps
- Establish your foundation
- Set up your Google Ads account
- Identify your keywords
- Create your campaign
- Create your ads
- Report on results
- Optimize and adjust
1. Establish your foundation
First and foremost, make sure you have a firm grasp on your audience and your goals.
Goals
What are you using Google Ads for? Lead generation? E-commerce? Brand building? The campaign types you choose and structure of your account will hinge on this. To learn more about establishing realistic goals for your Google Ads account, check out these resources:
- How to Develop a PPC Plan that Aligns with Your Goals
- Everything You Need to Know About Marketing Objectives
Audience
Developing personas is essential. What do your ideal customers do? Where do they do it? When are they actively searching? On what device? To learn more about developing customer personas and defining your audience, check out these resources:
2. Set up your Google Ads Account
Setting up a Google Ads account is easy and takes just a few minutes.
You have the option of creating your account using an existing Google account, or you can create a new account specifically for use with Google Ads. Then, you’ll specify some basics for your account, such as your location and time zone. Finally, you’ll set up billing details, so Google can accurately bill you every month.
OH. And don’t forget conversion tracking!
Developing personas is essential. What do your ideal customers do? Where do they do it? When are they actively searching? On what device?
Setting up a Google Ads account is easy and takes just a few minutes.
You have the option of creating your account using an existing Google account, or you can create a new account specifically for use with Google Ads. Then, you’ll specify some basics for your account, such as your location and time zone. Finally, you’ll set up billing details, so Google can accurately bill you every month.
OH. And don’t forget conversion tracking!
3. Identify your keywords
Advertisers use Google Ads by bidding on keywords that are relevant to their business so that their ads appear in relevant search results. There are many different ways to conduct PPC keyword research, and WordStream’s Free Keyword Tool is an excellent starting point.
Simply enter a search term or URL and it will generate a comprehensive list of keywords along with search volume, cost per click data, and competition level.
4. Create your campaign
Once your account is created and you’ve done your keyword research, it’s time to create your campaign. To create your Google Ads campaign, you’ll need to:
- Pick your campaign type
- Set your ad schedule
- Choose your location and language
- Determine your budget
- Select your bidding strategy
- Add your keywords
- Create your ad
Writing effective Google ads is particularly challenging, as you need more space to craft a compelling and persuasive message.
In general, a good Google Ads headline:
- Conveys value
- Contains the keywords you’re targeting
- Uses the language your customers use
- Elicits emotions
- Has a call to action
Furthermore, with responsive search ads being the only standard Search campaign you can create, you have to format your headlines and descriptions to be able to work in different combinations. Use these responsive search ad best practices to guide you:
You can also use this responsive search ad template to help you out:
- Conversion rate
- Cost per action (aka cost per acquisition or cost per conversion)
Depending on your campaign types and objectives, there may be other metrics to track, but those are the core ones. Not sure what constitutes “good” performance? Check out our interactive Google Ads benchmarks.
7. Optimize, test, & adjust
A perfect Google Ads campaign is never finished. The platform is always changing and so are your customers, so you should always be testing out different settings, ad copy, and offers as well as adjusting bids based on keyword performance and adding negative keywords to eliminate unqualified search queries.
Free guide >> PPC 101 has all the terms, tips, and best practices you need to get started with Google Ads.
How to use Google Ads RIGHT: 4 essential tips
Use these tips to ensure you get the most out of the platform—and your budget.
- Optimize your account structure.
A logical account structure can have a dramatic impact not only on how easy it is for you to use Google Ads but also on your campaign performance. Ensuring your Google Ads account is structured correctly has many benefits, including:
- More relevant traffic and clicks
- Higher Quality Score (and thus, lower cost per click)
- Making your budget easier to optimize and maintain
If you only plan to run a single campaign, your Google Ads account structure will be straightforward. But ideally, you want multiple campaigns running for different offers and objectives. The ideal Google Ads account into individual campaigns, each of which will have its ad groups. Each ad group will have keywords, unique text, and landing pages. The figure below illustrates how the account should be set up for optimal performance:
You can also learn more in our Free Guide to Google Ads Account Structure
You can structure a Google Ads account in several ways, depending on your needs. For example, you can structure your Google Ads account based on the structure of your website, the types of products or services you’re advertising, or geographic location, if your business operates in several individual markets.
- Stay on top of updates.
Google Ads is always evolving. New features are constantly rolling out, and you never know when Google will throw a curveball at us, such as by removing modified broad matches or sunsetting expanded text ads.
The Google Ads blog is the place to check for these announcements, but you can also get better explanations and opinions in publications like Search Engine Land and the WordStream blog!
- Optimize your landing pages.
This is where people who have clicked your ads convert or don’t! Follow these guidelines for high-performing landing pages:
- Minimize form fields
- Focus on benefits, not just features
- Use multiple, high-quality product images
- Make your call to action clear as day
- Make sure your landing pages work on mobile! (Or let users skip the landing page entirely and call you.)
To learn more about designing great landing pages, check out our best tips and tricks….ever.
- Build remarketing lists
Remarketing (or retargeting) is when you serve ads to audiences based on their previous behavior, such as on your website or other ads. Again, this is essential when using Google Ads! So start building these lists early and often to keep prospects moving through your funnel.
Evaluate the strength of your Google Ads account.
Taking the time to adjust and optimize your Google Ads account regularly is one of the most important things you can do as a paid search advertiser. However, even if you’re doing everything right, knowing just how well your campaigns are performing can be challenging. That’s why WordStream created the Google Ads Performance Grader.
In 60 seconds or less, the Google Ads Performance Grader performs a comprehensive audit of your Google Ads account. It will evaluate the strength of your account based on crucial PPC metrics and generate an easy-to-read report on your
- Quality Score
- Impression share
- Account activity
- Wasted spend
- And more.
No other free tool provides as much unique, individualized insight into your Google Ads account performance as the Google Ads Performance Grader.
