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When you are creating a very well planned Search ad campaign on Google Ads, there are seemingly endless things to consider. One of the most vital aspects to think about is your goal.
Do you want to increase brand awareness and traffic? Do you want to get more leads and sales? Are you promoting an App or an event?
Once you define your goal, Google Ads can help you set up a Search ad campaign that will make it happen. In this article, we’ll show you how it’s done.
So, without further ado, let’s get stuck in to show you how to set up a search ad campaign.
Follow the steps below:
First and foremost, log-in to your Google Ads account. Then, navigate from the dashboard to select + Campaign > New Campaign.
So, remember that goal you set? Here’s where it comes into play. You can set your campaign purpose according to your goal:
In most cases, advertisers want to convert traffic into leads. By defining your campaign purpose here, you and Google have a way to track user activity, so you can accurately gauge your return on investment (ROI).
As people search for products and services related to yours, you can reach them with text ads that appear in Google’s Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).
Make sure you use a logical naming format for your pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns so that it’s easy to tell them apart and understand their goals.
For example:
When you show your ads in the Google Ads search partner network, your Search ad campaign will reach users on hundreds of non-Google websites, as well as on YouTube and other Google sites.
Your ads may appear above or below the SERPs in Google, Google Play, Google Shopping, Google Images, and Google Maps – including the Maps app.
This option will be selected by default. However, studies indicate it can have an adverse effect:
As such, it’s wise to turn this option off if this is your first time managing a Search ad campaign.
It’s good practice to set a start and end date for your PPC campaigns. Otherwise, your budget may go to waste. Another problem is that you could attract click traffic and attention for a product that may no longer be on sale.
You can customize your final URL through URL parameters in the tracking template. Whenever a user clicks your ad, the information in the template creates your landing page URL.
With this information, you can fine-tune your campaigns and settings for enhanced performance.
Custom parameters are an advanced type of URL parameter that you can add to your ad’s landing page URLs. These parameters can be replaced with dynamic values when the Ad is clicked.
In the tracking template, enter your custom parameter’s name and the ValueTrack parameters, for example: {lpurl}? colour={_colour}).
After a click, Google Ads will replace the name with the value that you defined in your custom parameter. If this is your first Search ad campaign, it’s better to skip this section.
If you have keywords with low search volume, you can use DSAs to get more clicks. It will pull the words from the website content and will generate a dynamic ad heading. Google Ads determines your advertising costs by multiplying your ad clicks by the maximum cost per click (max.cpc) limit you set.
Warning: Don’t use DSAs if you have regular updates on your website. For example, if you run daily deals. Also, it won’t work well on gambling, adult, or pharmaceutical websites.
In your first Search ad campaign, you may be unsure of what areas to target. The first tip is to avoid selecting “All Countries & Territories” as your PPC budget will vanish with minimal ROI.
Should you use People in, or who show interest in your targeted location every time?
If you click on “Advanced search” you can also target your location by radius. For example, you are offering some study courses at your location then you have to target the particular radius of your city where your institute located.
If your ad is written in English, you should only target English-speaking users. If you have multiple versions of your ad, with different languages, you can change the language targeting for each one accordingly.
You must know your audience to succeed in marketing. If you don’t have a lot of data to work with, you can still run your ad for a while to gather some behavioral data.
After that, you can make adjustments to things like location targeting or keyword bids, depending on the search terms your target audience tends to use.
Combined audience allows you to reach the right audiences by combining various audience attributes, such as detailed demographics and interests that represent segments of your target audience. You can target your audience based on your advertiser’s background, needs,
Note: Combined Audience is Only Available For Search network campaigns.
For Example,
Let’s say you are doing business of rental cars before combined audience you are able to target the audience in-market and also to those who have interest in traveling. By Normal targeting you might be targeting those audience who have interest in traveling might have their own cars, so it will be waste of budget to show Ads to them.
Now here combined audience solves this problem. You can exclude the audience Who have their own cars but mutual include those audience who have interest of traveling, don’t own car and in- Market.
Under “Audience name”, enter a name for your new combined audience.
Under “Include people who match the following”, add the audiences that you want to target your ads to. You may enter a term or phrase, or browse based on: Who they are, what their interests and habits are, what they are researching or planning, or how they’ve interacted with your business.
At least one audience must be included before an exclusion is allowed. The exclusions only affect the combined audience and does not impact other audiences targeted in the campaign or ad group.
Targeting: it is “Target & Bid “
More Relevant audience = Less Wasted Clicks = Confirm Customer
For Example:
Make sure you have selected the right affinity audiences like Travel and Adventure are common but Travel and Technology are not, so it will not narrow your reach.
Observations: it is a “Bid only:
New audience = More Wasted Clicks = Unknown customer (But Chances to make them confirm)
Initially, it is recommended only so that you must get familiar with the audience and customer behavior of searching. Once you have enough understanding about your audience you can always go with targeting options.
Regardless of how big your business is, you’ll want to set a budget for your campaign. Use this calculation to determine your daily PPC budget:
(Monthly budget / Average number of days per month = Daily budget)
E.g. 1000/30.4 = $32.89)
Recommended budgets are based on the following factors:
In the early days, focus on the cost of a single keyword, its search volume, and your target conversion rates to hit your goal.
Manual bidding is a good choice for newcomers, as it helps effectively manage a daily budget. Automated bidding requires historical data, which will quickly drain your budget without savvy management.
When you start bidding, you can set your focus from the following aspects:
You can use Ad Extensions to provide additional relevant information about your business. For example, you can include your business location or phone number.
By clicking + ad extensions, you can also select different extensions for your campaign
On mobile devices, users will see a different layout:
Standard Ad Groups are the default setting in Google Ads, allowing you to create ad groups for your PPC campaigns with relevant keywords that trigger your product or services.
Dynamic Ad groups work with dynamic search ads (DSAs). These ads use a different form of targeting, so they require a separate Ad group.
In the case where you have multiple campaigns, you must select the right Search ad campaign to add your ad group.
1. Broad Match: As its name suggests, it is the keyword match type that allows you to reach the widest audience. When your keyword is Broad Match, your ads are eligible to appear whenever a user searches any word in your key phrase, in any order. It also allows misspellings and synonyms to trigger your ads to appear. It is the default match type.
For example: if you use broad match on the keyword “jeans”, your ad might show when a user searches for “jeans pants”, “denim jeans”, or “men’s jeans”.
2. Using Phrase Match: Your ad will only appear when a user searches for your exact keyword phrase, in its exact order, but maybe with some additional words at the beginning and the end of the query.
For Example: If you use the keyword “men’s jeans” in Phrase Match, your ads are eligible to show for users searching for “skinny men’s jeans”, “men’s jeans Nike”, “from where I can buy men’s jeans” but not for “men’s Nike jeans” or “jeans for men”.
3. Broad Match Modifier: Gives you the crazy reach of Broad Match keywords, but allows you to be more restrictive around the specific queries that will trigger your ad by appending a ‘+’ to the specific word in your keyword phrase that you want to lock in place. When you lock a word in place, you are telling Google that you only want your ad to show when that word appears in the search query.
For Example: if you use the keyword “+men’s +jeans”, then your advertisement is only triggered against those search queries in which the word “jeans” is present like “I want men’s jeans”, “men’s striped jeans” but not for “blue jeans”.
4. Exact Match: Triggers your ads when search queries match your exact keyword. However, your ad will show when people search for closely related terms to your product or service or use synonyms of your keyword. It may trigger for misspellings as well. This filters out a lot of irrelevant traffic, but sometimes sacrifices qualified users too. To use this type, place parentheses “[ ]” around your keywords.
For example: if you use keyword [Men’s Jeans]. than your advertisement is triggered against those search queries which exactly matches your keyword or may have synonyms like [Men’s Wearable] as your keywords.
Now, let’s look at the creation process.
This is the first part of your ad most people notice. With text ads in a Search ad campaign, you have three headlines, each of which offers you just 30 characters to compel users.
So, you must make it count!
Highlight information about your product or service here, and include a CTA to encourage people to take action. Whether it’s a promote to “Buy Now” or “Call Us,” a CTA can have a significant impact on consumers’ decision-making.
Include your business website URL to give people an idea of where they will land when they click on your ad.
The path fields are part of the display URL in search network ads, which is typically displayed in green text below the headline and above the description. This path text doesn’t have to match the exact language of your display URL.
Perhaps you’re already using an external analytics system to track key metrics like mobile clicks. You can set up tracking within Google Ads with the different URL options.
As mentioned earlier, you can add tracking information here, which will be added to your final URL when your ad receives clicks. Any tracking template created at the account, campaign, or ad group level will automatically apply to all other ads at that respective level.
Custom parameters consist of two parts:
The final URL suffix field allows you to enter parameters that will be attached to the end of your landing page URL to track information. So, when someone clicks on your ad, they will be directed to https://xyz.com/?x=y while the tracking is processed in the background.
In the end, before you launch your search ad campaign, you should review all your campaign settings, your ad, and the billing information.
Once everything is checked and confirmed, select continue to campaign.
If you spot something you want to change, select Go back and navigate to the area you wish to edit.
When you return to this step, select continue to campaign to run your successful campaign.
So, in 18 short and (relatively) straightforward steps, you can create a Search ad campaign in Google Ads.
Google Ads isn’t hard to get started, but you must be ready to monitor and test your campaign regularly. With this guide, your PPC ads will get off to the best possible start.
You can learn about campaign optimization through our Ultimate Guide: Ultimate Campaign Optimization: 5 Core Areas and 20+ Tricks.
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