Google Ads, do you know about it ?
You know it’s the advertising you’re forced to see when you search on Google…
But regarding the issue of creating a campaign, what about it ?
What is the Google Ads Service ?
Google Ads is Google’s online advertising service that allows advertisers ( you may be) to accurately target their prospects and achieve their marketing goals.
Google Ads offers a variety of ad formats, including:
- advertisements in its Google search engine,
- display ads at partners
- and video ads,
All of this is so that you can reach prospects at different times and places.
What is it for ?
Google Ads is a highly effective marketing tool that allows you to precisely target your prospects with personalized ads, and measure your return on investment in real time.
You can choose:
- the keywords your ads will appear on,
- to target specific audiences
- or geographic locations.
You can also optimize your campaigns at any time by adjusting your ads and budget based on performance.
How to set your budget for a campaign
To set your budget for a Google Ads campaign, you first need to set the total amount you want to spend on the particular campaign.
Then, you can set the amount you want to spend per day or per month.
Take great care in choosing your bidding strategy.
You have several possible options depending on your goals, including manual bidding with a defined maximum cost per click or automatic Max Conversion strategies.
What are the different types of campaigns ?
Google Ads offers several different types of campaigns, each designed to achieve specific marketing goals.
- Google’s search campaigns are designed to help you reach prospects who are searching for specific products or services on Google.
- The display ads are designed to reach prospects at different times and locations at partners.
- Google’s video campaigns are designed to reach prospects on YouTube and other video streaming sites.
What are the steps to create a Google Ads campaign ?
To create a Google Ads campaign, you must first set a budget and timeline for the campaign.
Then, choose the type of campaign that best fits your goals.
Finally, start creating your ads and then run them.
You should also set up additional options:
- such as ad extensions,
- advanced targeting
- and conversion tracking,
All to improve, optimize, your performance.
1 / Why set up a conversion tracking system.
Conversion tracking is an essential tool for measuring the ROI of your campaigns.
Conversion tracking is the link that identifies a visitor to your site who came from your ad campaign as a result of it being displayed on their hardware and clicked on to learn more.
This then allows you to optimize your campaigns based on performance.
Note that this conversion tracking system is not foolproof.
All it takes is for the user to change hardware or browser for the tracking to become less certain.
2 / Why check that a campaign is using all its budget ?
It’s important to verify that your Google Ads campaigns are using their entire budget.
Imagine having 100€ of budget for flyers, at 1€ per flyer to simplify the calculations.
At the end of the month you find that you are debited 2€, great you saved 98€…
However, there were only 2 flyers distributed !
Do you understand now ?
With your budget properly spent you will need to verify that the expected returns are what you hoped for.
If not, you will need to make sure that you have the necessary resources.
If not you will have to adjust your parameters to achieve this, it is not an exact science.
You often have to go in incremental steps.
3 / Why use extensions and what are they
Ad extensions are a powerful tool that allows advertisers to add additional information to their ads to improve their performance.
Ad extensions can include information such as:
- links to specific pages on the advertiser’s website,
- information about location and hours of operation,
- links to downloads,
- phone number or direct contact form from the ad
- and much more.
Most importantly, they allow you to have a more prominent display and therefore more visible than your possible competition who would not use these options.
Note the SUPER extension, the image one !
MUST be used if it appears in your available extension options.
Indeed an image has the power to attract much more attention.
Choose your images carefully and opt for each image for the ‘square‘ AND ‘16/9e‘ formats.
4 / Why check search terms and exclude some ?
Think about checking the search terms for which users will view your ad.
In some cases you will have costs related to search terms that are not relevant to your ad, your expectations.
You must exclude these or you will continue to SPEND money as this is no longer your Google Ads investment.
This savings will be reallocated, as a result, towards your campaign to gain efficiency.
5 / Why use the ad effectiveness indicator
The Ad Effectiveness Indicator is a very useful tool that allows you to measure and evaluate the performance of your ads.
Check how you are doing: good, average, poor, mediocre.
It goes without saying that the goal is to be, as much as possible, at Good.
Still you ‘send’ the information to Google that you are a good student, which will work in your favor.
You have access to information about their impressions, clicks, click-through rates, and cost per click, allowing you to optimize your ads based on performance.
Think about using all the possibilities Google Ads offers for your ads, the 15 titles and 4 different descriptions.
This way you allow the Google algorithm to make the best choices for the best combination ( title / description ) to display the most often.
All for better results from your campaign.
Note that Google likes you to use the options it provides.
This makes you one of the “good” students and will get a better “grade.”
You’ll be in the “good” class and will be graded higher.
6 / Should we follow the proposed recommendations ?
Often the recommendations offered by Google Ads help you optimize your campaigns.
Recommendations may include advice on keyword selection, information on ad extensions, or advice on targeting configuration.
WARNING, not all recommendations made are necessarily to be implemented !
Check carefully the relevance of what is proposed to you, especially in terms of keywords or bidding strategies…
Are Google Ads campaigns effective ?
Google Ads campaigns can be very effective in reaching prospects and generating conversions.
If not, don’t you think they would have disappeared ?
For maximum effectiveness your Google Ads ( SEA ) campaign should be coupled with a website with a good natural search engine optimization ( SEO )
These are a great complement to other prospecting practices, for sure.
You need to set these up right, however, or else you’ll have average results.
Today, faced with the array of campaign choices and the panoply of adjustable parameters, one can admit that this is a real profession.
If you don’t have the required skills maybe it’s better to go through an agency whose specialty is this.
What are the direct competitors to Google Ads campaigns ?
The main competitors to Google Ads campaigns are:
- Bing Ads is an online advertising service similar to Google Ads that allows advertisers to target prospects on the Bing search engine.
- Facebook Ads is a social network advertising service that allows advertisers to target prospects on Facebook and Instagram.
- Amazon Ads is an advertising service on Amazon that allows advertisers to target prospects across Amazon products.
Prospecting is much broader than the world of online advertising.
Be open to other, different methods with even greater potential.
