Running an e-commerce store and still not have heard about Google Ads? Then let me tell you, you could be losing out on many potential customers. 

As claimed by the reports, people perform 63,000 searches on Google every second, and most of the search engine results pages (SERPs) include Google Ads. With different types of ads, Google is helping out a large number of businesses drive relevant traffic to their website. Consequently, helping in generating sales and building brand awareness. 

However, most businesses find it challenging to understand the mechanism of Google Ads. In this article, we will talk about Google Adwords or Google Ads, how it works, how you can setup a Google Ad campaign and the different types of ads.

What is Google Ads?

Google Ads, formerly known as Google Adwords, is an online paid advertising platform developed by Google for advertisers to reach out to their potential customers. The ads created by the advertisers using Google Ads are displayed on the SERP and other products of Google such as Gmail, Google Play, Google Map, Youtube, websites of Google search partners, and non-Google websites.

It is one of the significant ways to filter out the best-matched customers for your business and drive them to your website. Your ad appears on the SERP as soon as potential customers search for similar products and services via Google Search. After seeing the ad, the chances are very high that they click on it willingly. 

How Does Google Ads Work?

Google Ads depends upon four crucial things, i.e. keywords, the bidding strategy, the quality score and the ad rank. If you have mastered all three, your ad is bound to give more than your expected results. Let’s discuss all three in detail

1. Keywords

While deciding on keywords, you need to ask two questions – Is it the right keyword for your ad? If not, how to select the best keyword? Because keywords are the main factors deciding which search queries your ads will show up in the SERPs.

So, what are the characteristics of valuable keywords? 

  • First, it should connect or describe your products and services. So, think of keywords people might use to search for similar products and services. 
  • Secondly, your keywords should be relevant to your product and services for a better user experience. Relevancy decreases your bounce rate and helps you attend to the goal of your campaign.
  • Next, the keywords should have high monthly search volumes, as it will give your ad a chance to appear more on the SERP and thus, reach more people.
  • Lastly, Google Ad Grant Policy 2018 update, you must avoid using single-word keywords, generic keywords, or keywords branded by other businesses. 

Now, where can you find relevant keywords?

  • Google trends for trending keywords related to your products and services.
  • Google search console and Google Analytics to find out the keywords that are already bringing traffic to your website.
  • Google Keyword Planner to obtain keyword ideas, to checkout for historical trends and future forecasts for specific keywords.
  • Competitor analysis to find out which keywords bring more traffic to their website. 

2. Bidding Strategy

Once you have decided on the keywords, it is time to create the bidding strategy. Google Ads provide three bidding options,

  • Cost Per Click (CPC): You need to pay every time someone clicks on your ad.
  • Cost Per Mille (CPM): Pay per 1000 ad impressions, which means pay every 1000 times your ad appears on the SERP.
  • Cost Per Engagement (CPE):  Pay every time a user performs a specific action after clicking on your ad, like signup to your website, fill up a Google form, or watch a video.

You need to select any one of the options depending on the motive of your advertisement. So, if you want to generate sales, go for the CPC model. If you wish to create brand awareness, select CPM, and if you want people to perform a specific action like signing up or filling a Google form, opt for the CPE model. 

Subsequently, you have to decide the bidding price, i.e. the maximum amount you are willing to pay for an ad. You can also set a daily maximum budget to help you track your advertisement campaign. 

3. Quality Score

Before proceeding further, Google must inform you that the price you pay for an ad does not entirely depend on your bidding price. Moreover, it is based on Google’s analysis of your bid amount and quality score. So, the actual price you pay could be more or less than your bidding price based on the analysis. 

Quality Score is an approximate calculation of the quality of your ads, keywords used, and landing pages by Google, which depends entirely on the user experience and relevancy. The score can be between 1 and 10, with 10 being the highest and 1 being the lowest.

As already stated, your ad and keywords must be relevant, which means you cannot keep keywords as shirts and shoes if you are selling watches. And most importantly, your landing page must give your user a good experience, such as being easily scrollable, having a mobile responsive design, and being easy and simple to understand.

4. Google Ad Rank

Ad Rank is the position of any ad in the SERP for a keyword or group of keywords. With an ad rank of 1, your ad will show up as the first result in the SERP. Google takes your bid amount and analyses it with the quality score to decide the ad rank and the actual price you need to pay for your ad. In short, the higher the quality score, the better your ad rank and the lesser you pay for your ads.  

For example, if your maximum bid for an ad is INR 6, but after the analysis of Google, your ad gets a quality score of 9. In this case, you get the ad placement or ad rank of 2, and the price you need to pay might be lowered to INR 4.

In another instance, suppose your maximum bid is INR 8, but you got a quality score of 2, and the price Google decides for your ad to be more than INR 8. Then, your ad loses a chance to appear on the SERP. 

Types of Google Ad Campaigns

You must have seen various ads on your SERP when you visit a website or while watching a YouTube channel. But do you know what these ads are called? Let’s discuss.

1. Search Ad Campaigns

search ad campaigns

Search ads are the text ads you see at the top or bottom of your SERP when searching for a keyword using Google search. It helps you reach potential buyers when they search for any product or service by targeting keywords.

The position of your Google adwords depends on the bid price, quality score and ad rank. The better the position your ad claims, the chances of people responding to it increases. 

2. Display Ad Campaigns

display ad campaigns

Unlike search ads, display ads even allow you to target users who are not exactly looking for your product. It is an image-based ad that appears on different websites in banners while you are surfing them.

Google uses Google Display Network (GDN) having a network of more than 2 million websites, apps and videos to showcase the ads to relevant people. With GDN, you can expect to reach out to more than 90 percent of internet users globally. 

3. Video Ad Campaigns

video ad campaigns

Google uses Youtube, having a user base of 2 million as a platform to play your video ads. The ads are placed at the beginning, middle, or the end of any videos while someone is watching them.

Few of the video ads on Youtube are skippable, while few are not, but both forms help you target a large audience. In-stream ads will play for 5 seconds, which is enough time to grab your audience’s attention with an eye-catching ad. 

4. Shopping Ad Campaigns

shopping ads

Shopping ads are product-based ads displayed on your SERP while you search for a specific product on Google search. The product appears with the product image, product name, store name, price, and reviews on the top or right-hand side of your search engine result page. 

It gives the buyers or potential customers a detailed product description and also helps them compare it with your competitors’ products. So make sure that you enter all the relevant and correct information to allow Google to pick up your ad for relevant search queries. 

5. App Ad Campaigns

If you have developed any mobile app, you can easily advertise them on the Google Play Store, Google search, Youtube, and the GDN. People mainly use app ads to promote their apps to perform a specific call to action (CTA), such as install, signup, etc.

App ads are automatically created once you provide the description, bidding price, daily budget (if any), language and locations for your campaign. Google will use this info to design your ad and show it on different platforms. 

6. Discovery Ad Campaigns

discovery ad campaigns

Discovery ads is a new ad type recently launched by Google that helps you reach people through Google Discover, also known as Google feed and other Google products. It allows the ios and android users to personalise their Google feed by selecting the topics they are interested in.

Currently, Google discover has a user of 800 million, which is likely to increase in the coming years. Discovery ads aim to generate demand by showing people the products and services even before buying them. 

How to Use and Create Google Ads?

Creating and campaign on Google Ads is relatively easy and favourable for any beginner because the platform itself guides you through the setup and gives you suggestions at every click. You just have to click the “Start Now” button and the Google automatically takes you through the steps of setting up a Google ad campaign. If you are ready with your image copies then you are good to go at 10 minutes.

There are some important steps to be taken while setting up of a ad campaign, you will find the process of steps in detail below.

1. Link Google Analytics

Link Google Analytics

The first step will be linking your Google Analytics account to Google Ads so that you can track your website traffic, conversion, goals and other unique metrics. When you will link these accounts, it will be easier for you to analyze between channels and campaigns at one place only.

2. Add UTM codes

Add UTM codes

UTM is stands for Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) codes that are used by Google to track specific link activity. It seems like a part of URL that follows a question mark (“?”). The UTM code will help you know which ad can convert so that you can track it in the most effective way for your campaign.

The best thing about it is, you don’t have to manually search for any ad URL when you added the UTM codes at your campaign level. Otherwise it can be easily added manually with Google’s UTM builder.

3. Set up conversion tracking

Set up conversion tracking

Setting up a conversion tracking cell can help you know the report of converted leads or customers from your ad campaigns. Setting up the conversion cell is not mandatory as you can guess the ROI of Ads. This will help you in tracking sales activity on website, app installs, or ad calls.

4. Integrate your Google Ads with your CRM

Integrate your Google Ads with your CRM

When you keep all your data in one place, it becomes very easy for you to track, analyze, and report it. Integrating your Google Ads with your CRM is a smart move to track which of your campaigns are working for your audience so that you can market them with relevant offers.

I hope the article helps you choose the right Google ad for your business. For a quick takeaway, always track the performance of your ads via Google Analytics, and it will help you generate a high ROI. 

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