Google search ads are one of the most powerful marketing tools which business owners and digital marketers can use to boost brand awareness, acquire target customers, gain subscribers and ultimately grow revenue at speed.
Additionally, with google processing approximately 5.6 billion searches per day (Source – Hubspot), search ads on google are one of the most recommended digital marketing strategies for businesses.
So, if you are starting online or planning to launch your google search ads campaign, check out this step-by-step practical guide to optimize the performance and get the most out of your google search ads campaign!
What are the different types of Google Ads with examples?
Google ads ecosystem is constantly evolving to keep pace with the emerging online browsing trends. There are 4 significant buckets of Google Ads campaigns that you can leverage as an entrepreneur or digital marketer to grow leads or sales for your online business.
Google Search Ads
This is simple yet one of the most potent performance marketing tools for digital marketers. In this article, we will explore Google Search Ads in detail to equip you with everything you need to run your first profitable ad campaign from scratch.
Google Shopping Ads: Google Shopping ads are a variation of search ads and are a great way to showcase your best or relevant products in your target customers’ google search journey. These ads perform very well for online shopping or e-commerce stores.
Display Ads
Display ads are visual advertisements you see when reading an article on a blog or a news site, for instance. They can also appear while watching videos on YouTube or even when using a mobile app.
Google display ads are served on websites belonging to the Google Display Network (GDN), which comprises over two million websites and apps that reach almost ~90% of internet users.
Display ads tend to have approximately one-fourth of click-through rates and conversion rates compared to google search ads, in my experience. This can work like a two-edged sword for marketers – on the one hand, it gives you the ability to reach millions of audiences, but you can also end up wasting your precious moolah on tons of irrelevant audiences.
So, targeting similar high-affinity categories is a must while planning for display ads in your performance marketing campaigns. Also, Display Ads work well for awareness generation campaigns.
Youtube Ads
Youtube is the world’s second most popular website, drawing 2 billion logged-in visitors a month. No wonder then that digital marketers worldwide use this channel to target the relevant audience. It’s a great way to complement google search ads with a social media marketing mix.
Types of YouTube ads
Below are some significant types of Youtube ads you can review for your next marketing campaign.
Skippable in-stream ads
Non-skippable in-stream ads (including bumper ads)
Video discovery ads (formerly known as in-display ads)
Non-video ads (i.e., overlays and banners)
Google App Ads
Advertisers use Google App campaigns to promote more app or game installs or drive in-app conversions.
Creating a Google App campaign can generate buzz and engagement if you have an app you want to promote. A great alternative to google search ads when you want to drive app installs.
How are Google Search Ads different from SEO?
Google search ads are pretty different from Search Engine Optimization. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the organic act of optimizing your website and content (Comprising of Onsite SEO, Offsite SEO and Technical SEO) to achieve the best possible ranking in organic search results.
Top organic search listings appear first because they are highly relevant to your search and Google recognizes the website as the authority. Advertisers cannot pay to place their site higher in organic results; hence, it is a long-term sustainable approach to building traffic.
On the other hand, google search ads require a spending budget to acquire leads or customers for your online business.
How to get started with Google Search Ads?
Creating a google ads account is very simple. Just head to this Google Ads link and follow the step-by-step guided approach and your account will be ready in no time. If you are an agency, you can also create a master account. Additionally, you can add other people to your account if you need to co-manage the google ads account with someone.
How to claim free credit with google search ads?
Google continues providing fantastic offers to acquire new spenders on the platform. So, if you are starting, you can check google ads offers, and apply the coupon which will be mailed to you. Once applied, you can check the promotional offer criteria in the billing section within your google ads account.
Google search ads In-Depth Example
I have taken a use case of a T-Shirts store here to provide a practical step-by-step approach for you to create your google search ads campaign from scratch.
Brand – www.quirkylook.com
Category – Online Family T-Shirts Store For USA customers
Competition – https://www.grandpatee.com/, www.etsy.com, www.teepublic.com
Campaign – Grandma T-Shirts
Google Keyword Planner – Key to optimizing google search ads targeting
Keywords are phrases people type into search engines like google to find what they’re looking for. For example, if you were looking to buy a new t-shirt, you might type something like “t-shirts for men” into Google. Even though that phrase consists of more than one word, it’s still a keyword.
To run a profitable google search ads campaign, its critical to find the right keywords. It would be best if you aimed to pick keywords that are high in volume, have low-medium competition, and have a low to medium bid range.
Various tools like Google Keyword Planner will help you find the right keywords for your campaign.
Keyword match types
Talking about keywords, it’s also essential to understand the keyword match types, as they can impact your marketing budget significantly and hence need a more thought-through approach.
Broad match
As the word suggests, a Broad keyword match allows your ad to show up when people search for the keyword, variations of it, and other related topics. E.g., if you have “Samsung S22” as a broad keyword, your ad will appear if a user searches for any variation of it. If you have “Red slippers” as a keyword with a broad match, your ad may appear even if a user is searching for pink slippers.
Phrase match
This is slightly stricter in terms of the relevance of the ad to user searches. The keyword needs to appear in a suffix or prefix. For example – “taxi near me” can be a phrase match keyword, where it can appear as-is, before or after other content in user searches.
Exact match
An exact match is the most strict form of a keyword related to user searches, as your ad will appear when a user searches for precisely the same keyword.
Step by Step walkthrough of the creation of high-performing google search ads.
Step 1: Select Campaign without Goal, as it is better to manually create your google search ads basis these steps to optimize your ad performance for better ROI.
Step 2: Select Search Campaign.
Step 3: Don’t select conversion goal; we will do this at an account level – We will share this in another article.
Step 4: Don’t give info as it will complicate the setup, select inside the campaign.
Step 5: Give a relevant campaign name and start creating your new campaign.
Step 6: Select Bidding strategy – I recommend starting with the “maximize clicks” strategy to begin your campaign, as you would need more data to work on the conversion goal effectively.
Step 7: Set up a maximum Cost Per Click bid, so you can limit the maximum spend per click basis of your budget and avoid high spending basis the competition bids.
Step 8: Remove the display network as it will spread your budget thin, and your creative for the search ad will not be optimized for the display campaign.
Step 9: Select relevant Location – Remember to Select the Option of People Living in this location to avoid irrelevant audience reach, which can impact your budget.
Step 10: Select Language – Google does an excellent translation job here, but keep it English unless relevant; e.g., If your website is also in some local language, you may want to add the same language in google search ads to target relevant audience.
Step 11: Select Audience – This is useful in display targeting campaigns. I would recommend using keywords to zero in on where your google search ad should be shown.
Step 12: Keywords – Enter targeted keywords, post your research on google keyword planner or other relevant tools. Remember to enter one keyword per line and the necessary match type (Broad Match, Phrase Match, Exact Match.) Also, remember to add negative keywords to ensure your budget is not spread thin.
Step 13: Ad Copy – Enter 15 Headlines and 4 Descriptions that are unique as google may select any combination of these to optimize your ad by making it relevant basis user search intent. Ensure the right landing page, display path, and headlines are unique, as any combination of headlines can be triggered.
Step 14: Google Search Ads Extensions – extra piece of information we add to our google search ad, like sitelink extensions. Can be at account, campaign or ad group level – advice to keep it at the campaign level.
Step 15: Review – if there are any errors, google will call out – correct those and publish the campaign.
Google Keyword planner – Research is Key to building high-performance ads
Google Keyword Planner is a free yet powerful tool for keyword research. You can access it from your google ads account by selecting Keyword planner from the top menu and selecting the “Discover new keywords” option.
After selecting Discover new keywords, you’ll see two tabs: Start with Keywords and Start with a Website. I recommend starting with Keywords.
To start with keywords, you can enter words (for example: Grandma T-Shirts) or phrases (for example: Best Gifts for Grandma) to find keywords.
As mentioned above, you must aim to find High volume, low competition, and low start bid range keywords if you are starting.
Tools to optimize google search ads
There are multiple tools you can use to optimize google search ads performance. Google Keywords Planner, Keywords Everywhere, and SEMRush is some potent tools for keyword research. For your Ad copy content, tools like Peppertype work wonders, as you can design the headline and description with just a click!
Use Google Ads Extensions to Optimize Google Search Ads
Google Ads extensions extend your ads, claiming more real estate on search engine results pages (SERPs) and helping searchers make decisions. So try to Add as many eligible extensions as possible, of which some are clickable while some are not.
Below are the types of google search ad extensions available, along with some examples related to the above use case of the T-Shirts store.
- Location Extensions
- Product Extensions
- Sitelink Extensions
- Seller Rating Extensions
- Callout Extensions
- Structured Snippets Extensions
- Call Extensions
- Affiliate Location Extensions
- Price Extensions
- App Extensions
- Promotion Extensions
- Lead Form Extensions
- Video Extensions
- Image Extensions
In the example of the T-Shirts store above, these google search ads extensions can be very relevant to optimizing the ad performance.
Sitelink Extension Example
Callout extension Example
Promotion extension Example
Google Search Ads Bidding Strategies
There are various bidding strategies you can use while designing your google search ads campaign, depending on the desired result. Let’s explore the 7 Key Bidding strategies below:
- Maximize clicks – To increase visits to your site.
- Target Search Page Location – Increase visibility on the first page of a Google search results page or show in one of the top positions
- Target Outranking Share – Increase visibility over other targeted competitor websites.
- Enhanced cost per click (CPC) – Increase conversions while controlling your manual keyword bids.
- Target Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) – Meet a target return on ad spend (ROAS) when you value each conversion differently.
- Target cost-per-acquisition (CPA) – Get more conversions with your target CPA
- Maximize conversions – Get more conversions for your ad spend
You can start with maximizing clicks for your first google search ad and eventually experiment with other bidding strategies.
Expert tips to optimize Google Search Ads
- Start a campaign with a broad match, which will help trigger ads for a good audience, but ensure negative keywords are selected, so you don’t show the ad to an irrelevant audience. E.g., the Samsung s22 keyword can trigger your ad even when someone is searching for a “Samsung s22 wallpaper” or “Samsung s22 cover”, so you can have wallpaper, cover and similar words in the negative keyword list.
- Choose one type of keyword, so you don’t end up duplicating the keyword. E.g., Samsung s22 and “Samsung s22 price” are duplicated so that you could choose either.
- This is an incredible hack – Use keyword insertion using {} for one of the headlines to have a magical headline basis user search. This does mean that google will show the exact keywords as the user search in your google search ad headline.
- Review the search terms where your ad appears every day post your ad goes live, and keep adding a negative keywords list to make your ad more and more relevant to desired user searches.
- Don’t go for the smart campaign, as you will waste money if you start out. Instead, switch to expert mode and create an account without a campaign, enter billing info and you can manually create a campaign and optimize it basis the step-by-step approach in this article.
- Use all the options provided by google for your google search ads, like headlines, descriptions, extensions etc. to bring down acquisition costs and increase your ROAS (Return on Advertising Spend.)
- Google doesn’t like grammatical errors. Ensure your Ad Headline and description is error-free, else can get rejected.
- Once you receive decent data with initial ad performance, you can set up a conversion campaign for better results.
- Data is critical – Continue to review your campaign results in the Google Search Ads dashboard, and keep optimizing!
Hope you will find this step-by-step article on creating your profitable google search ads campaign helpful. Let me know via comments if you have any queries about creating or optimizing your Google ads.
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