Starting a business online may be easy, but finding customers and making them buy from you can be quite difficult.
If you’re at this crossroads, then you need this guide.
It will show you how to advertise on Google with Google ads and hit a milestone of success.
This is in a bid to solve your marketing-related problems by showing you how to run Google ads for your products or services and generate leads.
But first of all, let’s see if running Google ads to promote your business really worth spending some extra bucks.
According to J. Clement,
Google was rated as the first busiest internet search engine with over 246 million daily unique visitors.
It generates 3.5 billion searches, which is equivalent to 2.5 million searches per second. It had more than 75% market share among the leading search engine providers in the world.
So, when you pay Google to advertise your business, what happens next is to see your campaigns going viral. And that can result in to increase in your web traffic, leads, conversions, and sales.
How is that so?
Your ads can display on numerous internet platforms depending on your ads settings – the type of ads you run and whom you’re targeting.
It can appear on Google assets or Google’s partner websites and apps…
However, users can discover your campaigns on top of the search engine results pages (SERPs) or other places like Gmail if they search for anything that is related to your business.
You can see that such paid campaigns tend to generate more than 10X of your usual leads and conversations.
WOW!
Running Google ads for your business, however, is worth trying.
In order not to waste your money, you need to know how to advertise on Google with Google ads.
Ultimately, this guide will help you catch up as a beginner.
It was designed to walk you through the most effective way to advertise on Google and succeed.
Generating leads for your business can be a bit technical.
But relax as that will be over soon!
All you need to know is in this Google ads tutorial for beginners.
Table of Contents
- What is Google Ads?
- Types of Google Ads
- Search Network
- When to use Search Network?
- Display Network
- When to use Display Network?
- How much does it cost to advertise on Google?
- Why advertising on Google
- How to Advertise on Google with Google ads
- Step 1. Create a Google Ads account
- Step 2. Set your advertising goal
- Step 3. Add your business
- Step 4. Audience targeting
- Step 5. Define your product or service
- Step 6. Create compelling Google ads
- How can you write compelling Google ads?
- Step 7. Set your budget
- Step 8. Set up your billing
- Conclusion on How to Advertise on Google
What is Google Ads?
Google Ads is a paid online advertising platform it runs on Google under a search engine marketing scheme called Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads to generate leads for a business.
If you have ever used Google, it’s possible you have seen or even clicked Google ads before and so are other internet users.
In October 2000 – two years after Google was launched, Google ads was released. But then, the network was called Google Adwords. It became Google Ads in 2018 after a serious re-branding.
The system can be used to attract new potential customers and increase the success of a business online.
Just as it sounds, “pay-per-click”, advertisers are charged based on the number of clicks they realize from the ads.
When you use this form of ads, there’s a high probability that visitors will buy your products or services after clicking on the ads.
Types of Google Ads
There are different types of Google ads, but they fall under just two major categories. Namely:
- Search Network
- Display Network
Search Network
Google Ads as displayed in Google Search Network – They appear only on search engine results pages (SERPs).
These are the types of ads that appear on Google SERPs. They’re usually in a text format. They’re tagged with the word “Ad”, which is written in green color.
When someone searches Google for certain search terms or keywords related to an ad, ads in the search network appear on top of the SERPs.
Let’s say you search for “WordPress Themes”, and the search engine will display ads related to “WordPress Themes” on the SERPs:
Both the two search results in the example above show how Google ads appear in the Search Network. They top the SERPs in a text or image format.
When to use Search Network?
There are a lot of benefits to running your ads on the search network. That is quite strategic. However, you need to have a product or service that you want to market.
Meanwhile, you can use this network if you’re under any of the following conditions:
- When You have a limited budget: When your business is still new and you can’t afford a big budget, you can stick to the search network. As a beginner, this network is okay to start with.
- When you sell a product that people don’t need every time. This is the situation when you’re in a service industry such as writing, plumbing, or repair. Customers only search for these kinds of services when they need them.
- When you’re on a low inventory: You can opt for search network ads when your inventory is low or when you quickly want to sell something in an emergency situation.
Display Network
Ads in display networks are the categories of ads you run on Google but which appear on Google’s partner websites.
This strategy is to help you promote your business on third-party websites and generate leads from their own audience.
Ads under Display Network can appear in the header, body, sidebar, footer, or background of a website.
Other examples of Google ads that are classified as display ads are video ads, email ads, and In-app ads.
On YouTube, video ads appear as pre-roll videos.
Email ads display in your inbox like a normal email. But with the green “Ad” tag, you can identify them as ads.
Finally, display ads can also appear in Google’s third-party apps as seen in most free apps we download on Google Play Store.
When to use Display Network?
Marketers use display networks to promote their products or services mostly for the following reasons:
- Brand awareness: It’s suitable for aggressive brand awareness.
- Prolonged sales process: It’s suitable when a long sales period is required. That’s when you have a robust inventory.
- When design matters: It’s suitable in a situation where your design matters. Hence the ad may contain some graphics that can convert the audience in real-time.
How much does it cost to advertise on Google?
The cost of running ads on Google varies from ad to ad, marketer to marketer, and goal to goal. There is a tendency to run a very low-budget ad and realize a big success if your ads are well-optimized.
Many factors come into play to determine how much it will cost you to advertise on Google. The SEO quality of your website and how much bidding you do for your ads are key to successful Google ads.
Don’t be surprised, there is no fixed amount of money you need to pay for whatever business you want to advertise on Google, but to understand Google’s ad auction and ad rank systems.
When a customer searches for a keyword you are targeting in your ads, Google will automatically launch its auction mode and compare your Ad Rank with other marketers targeting the same keyword and present the best quality results for the customer.
No amount of bidding budget or Ad rank can help than having quality content that is most relevant to the customers.
Learning how to advertise on Google with Google ads, however, can help you create an effective budget-friendly campaign.
Why advertising on Google
The use of Google ads has been increasingly popular among digital marketers across all industries.
Since Google has the largest number of users, whatever products or services you promote using Google ads have a high tendency to get the following benefits:
- Traffic: Google ads can be used to drive quality traffic (people with the potential to buy your products) to your business.
- Customer engagement: What happens after running Google ads is experiencing great exposure on the web. As a result of this, your customer’s engagement rate will increase and you can start getting more in-store visits, calls, and orders.
- Faster than SEO: While SEO marketing takes time to take effect on Google for many reasons related to server, indexability, crawling intervals, and other SEO factors, Google ads can take effect from the moment it is launched.
- Brand awareness: Google ads make people easily find your brand the moment a search related to your business is made on Google or Google’s partner websites.
- Re-marketing: It can be used to re-engage customers with your business.
- Budget-friendly: Using Google ads is flexible. You can use it based on the size of your budget.
- Marketing analytics: Google ads give you insights into how your advertisement is performing, who clicked on your ad, how many leads have been generated, how much traffic from the ad, and which keyword is more effective.
These are just a few of the numerous advantages of running Google ads for your business.
According to Hubspot, advertisers make $8 for every $1 spent on ads.
Your competitors are using Google ads, you too should. It provides you with the best advertising strategies you need to meet your business needs.
How to Advertise on Google with Google ads
Before you can start advertising your business on Google, here are the eight most effective steps you need to take:
Step 1. Create a Google Ads account
This can be done by visiting the Google ads page and clicking Start Now.
You need a Gmail account that is up and running to create your Ads to account on Google. If there is none, then you can create one. All you need is to enter your Gmail address, and password and click Next.
Step 2. Set your advertising goal
There are three goals on the list and you need to pick one depending on what you want to achieve with your ads.
If anything goes wrong with your goal, you might end up wasting your time, money, and effort on the ads. Hence, it is crucial to know what you need the ads for before selecting a goal.
Is it to get more calls from customers, direct sales, or sign-ups via a website, or to get customers visiting you at a particular business location or office?
For the purpose of this “Google Ads Tutorial for Beginners”, you can select Get more website sales or sign-ups to sell products or services and click Next.
Step 3. Add your business
Fill out the form with your business name and website URL and click NEXT.
Step 4. Audience targeting
Audience targeting can be used to target a specific audience based on their respective locations.
The best practice is to be as specific as possible with the location you are targeting for your ads to reach your target at a very low budget.
Many people would like to see their potential audience size very high. That’s natural but unprofessional.
While a high potential audience size can cost you much, it converts at a very low rate. To ensure your ads reach their target and generate leads and conversions very effectively, you need a very small potential audience size by selecting more specific locations for your ads.
Step 5. Define your product or service
In this step, there are three things to achieve – define your ad language, business category, and product or service you want to sell. It’s very important, that these three are clearly defined to make customers and Google understand your business.
First of all, define the language in which you want to run your ads. By default, this is set to be in the English language. If there is a local or foreign language you like to use, set it here.
Secondly, select your business category. If your business category is not listed among the categories listed out, use the form under the list to search for your type of business.
Lastly, enter the specific product(s) or service(s) you want to promote using the form as required.
Note that when you’re selecting your business categories and products, ensure you select the categories that are highly relevant to your business and products.
Each of the categories serves as a keyword or key term to help your potential customers find you when they use Google to search for a business or product.
For example, when a customer needs a running shoe and searches Google with the keyword “RUNNING SHOES”, Google will show him all ads that are related to that search term.
If your ad is meant to sell a “RUNNING SHOE” and you mistakenly select RAIN BOOT, which is not relevant to the product you intend to advertise, Google won’t show your ads to the customers.
As a result of this, you need to use highly relevant keywords or search terms related to the products or services you want to advertise to make Google understand your campaign and display it when customers make a relevant search.
Step 6. Create compelling Google ads
This is the stage where you play with words in advertising on Google with Google ads.
Before a customer can see your product in the search network, the first thing to see is the text comprising the headlines and descriptions of your ads.
Each of these elements is saying something about the product or service you intend to advertise.
And you must pay attention to them. Or don’t you love to play the game?
It’s germane that you spice up your ad headlines and descriptions with relevant keywords, power, positive or negative sentiment words, and possibly a number to trigger customer attention.
How can you write compelling Google ads?
That is very simple but somehow technical. Some of the technicalities involved in advertising on Google with Google ads include your consideration of the following four factors:
- Audience or Customers: Use words that are relevant to your target audience (customers) to grab their attention and make them keep abreast of your message.
- Search engine (Google): Optimize your ads for the search engines to play along with you in the game using SEO strategies.
- Competition: Research your competition and write a better Google ad.
- And the product itself: Don’t be a liar. Playing with words doesn’t mean claiming you’re a giant only for your audience to discover you’re a dwarf.
With all these four factors, you’re not just going to write an ad or product description for your ads but also create content that can motivate customer affinity.
When a customer sees your ads and can’t click on it, then there must be a problem with your ad description.
The bottom line is that to write a short description for the product or service you want to advertise, you need to use relevant technical words.
Look at the image below, and see places where you need to work on. As you fill in the gaps, the texts show in the top-right box as a preview of how your ad is going to look on a Google search engine results page (SERP).
Fill out all the necessary forms and ask two or three of your friends to check if the ad copy is captivative enough. Once you’re satisfied with the copy, click on the NEXT button to proceed.
Step 7. Set your budget
How much do you intend to spend on your Google ads? Here you can decide.
Google will display three budget options for you based on the kind of result each is going to render. But if none of the options is suitable for you, come slightly below the last option and click ENTER YOUR OWN BUDGET.
To set up your own customized budget, click on the bar and drag it to both sides until you have a desirable budget.
Review your Campaign settings
Check to see everything you have set is correct and click next.
Step 8. Set up your billing
Fill out the form as applicable to you. You may add a promotional code if you want to give a discount on the product or service you’re advertising. And when you’re done with it, click CONTINUE.
You have just completed learning Google ads tutorial for beginners. You have just learned how to advertise on Google with Google ads.
Conclusion on How to Advertise on Google
Whatever sales challenges you’re facing online, knowing how to advertise on Google with Google ads is one surefire way to increase your ROI.
If you’re ready to take your search engine marketing to the next level, SEO is not enough. You need to invest in Google ads as it works faster.
In this Google ads tutorial for beginners, we have discussed how effectively the use of Google ads can help boost your leads and conversions.
Read, implement, and give your feedback.
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