Google Ads Campaign
A complete guide to Google Ads for beginners: how to set up contextual advertising
This guide will show you how to work with Google Ads and its services.
What is contextual advertising from Google
Contextual advertising is a demonstration of advertising messages to the audience that correspond to their interests. For example, when a user enters the query “buy bitcoin” into the search box, he sees site ranking results and Google Ads ads on the search results page. Also, classified ads are displayed on sites that are part of the Google advertising network.
In this case, the subject of advertising is determined taking into account the interests of the user and the content of the web page.
Why GooIf you don’t have an account, you’ll be prompted to create a smart campaign.
Create a campaign using the wizard
This method is the easiest and is suitable even for those who have never set up advertising campaigns.
First you need to choose the main goal of the campaign:gle Ads
- Simple campaign management. Thanks to a convenient and intuitive interface, you do not need special knowledge to work with the Google contextual advertising system.
- The ability to quickly attract the first target visitors to the site. Setting up the first advertising campaign usually takes no more than an hour.
- Flexible budget settings. Advertisers have the ability to set a daily budget and adjust it depending on the results of the campaign.
- The impact of ad quality on positions and cost per click. Due to high click-through rates, your ads can appear in higher positions than competitors’ ads with higher CPCs.
- Possibility to choose platforms where ads are displayed. You can choose suitable sites that are part of the Google Display Network.
- Lower cost per click compared to other search engines. Direct. Competition in the other search engines contextual advertising system in Runet is sometimes higher, so it is more expensive to attract traffic in it. Please note that this pattern does not work in all business niches.
When should you use Google Ads? Contextual advertising can be useful at any stage of project development. It helps to quickly attract targeted visitors to a newly created site, draw the attention of the audience to a specific product, promotion or content. You can use Google Ads ads as part of your integrated online marketing campaign . Also, contextual advertising can act as the only way to attract new customers on the Internet.
Below you will find a step-by-step guide to using Google Ads. For ease of understanding, the information is grouped into the following sections.
How to create a Google Ads account and set up your first campaign
Go to the service website . First, make sure you have a work account with Google, or create one. Click the “Start” button:
For example, let’s take the most demanded goal of the campaign – calls. Specify the name of the company:
Then you need to specify the site that we will advertise:
Next, a preview window will appear (mobile devices and desktop):
We need to fill in the main ad settings (titles, descriptions, phone number).
Google Ads algorithms will crawl the site and fill in all the required fields, and without errors:
Alt: Autofill ad parameters when creating a smart campaign
Compose the ad text. It can include three headings and two descriptions. Note that titles may appear in searches on one or two lines. Headlines are up to 30 characters long, descriptions are up to 90 characters long.
After setting, select the “Next” item and add keywords so that your ads are as relevant as possible to search phrases:
The next step is to choose the geography of impressions. You can simply specify the address and at the same time set the radius or search for users by a specific index / city / country:
Now we specify the budget by setting a specific value manually:
Or we use ready-made values that Google Ads itself has selected based on the subject and keywords of your ads:
The payment profile must specify the type of account (individual or legal entity), tax status (business or individual entrepreneur), primary contact, payment method (prepaid or otherwise), and the need for electronic document management.
You can transfer funds to your account using a bank transfer, ASSIST system or a QIWI account. It is also possible to replenish the account through Yandex.Money (which has now turned into YuMoney).
We accept the terms of the user agreement and send the data. Everything! The initial setup of Google Ads is now complete. Ad impressions will begin after the funds are credited to the account.
Now you can see other types of campaigns, as well as deal with the settings.
Before you start, create a plan for advertising campaigns. The output should be a document that defines the structure of the account. Campaigns in the plan play the role of a basic structural unit. Ad groups are structural elements of the second level.
Imagine that you sell shaving accessories and cosmetics. Create separate campaigns for classic razors, modern shaving systems, electric shavers, blades, cosmetics.
Add ad groups to your Electric Shavers campaign. Group them according to important features. For example, by device type or by manufacturer. Add groups “Rotary” and “Mesh electric shavers”. A Cosmetics campaign can have Shaving Creams and Aftershave Lotions.
Name your campaigns and ad groups so that you can identify their content.
How to manually create and set up Google Ads campaigns
The interface of the Google Ads advertising account looks like this:
The system will prompt you to create a new campaign or load settings from an existing one. Choose the first option.
There are nine types of campaigns available:
- search network;
- maximum efficiency (in beta and not available in all accounts);
- KMS;
- trading;
- video;
- Appendix;
- clever;
- local;
- discovery.
And there are also campaign goals, there are seven of them: Sales, Leads, Website Traffic, Interest in the brand and products and Brand awareness and reach, App advertising, Store visits and promotions :
- Sales. If you need to increase sales on the site, in the application, by phone and in a regular store. Suitable campaign types are search, display network, shopping. Can be used with any type, including discovery, smart campaigns, video campaigns.
- Potential clients. If you need to find potential customers and get conversions. The whole point is in the motivation for the final target action. Suitable campaign types are search, display network, shopping. Can be used with any type of content, including discovery, video, smart campaigns. You can also use this goal type with video campaigns.
- Site traffic. If you need to attract potential customers to the site. Suitable campaign types are Search Network and Display Network. Discovery, shopping, video campaigns also work well.
- Interest in the brand and products. If you need to attract the attention of all possible potential customers. Video campaigns are fine.
- Brand awareness and reach. If you want to reach the widest audience, as well as increase overall brand awareness. Suitable campaign types are Display Network ( Content and Display Network ) and Video.
- Application advertising. When you need to increase the number of installs of the application, interactions with it and pre-registrations. The appropriate campaign type is app.
- Shop visits and promotions. When you need to convince a visitor to choose your store, not a competitor’s store.
You can create a campaign without specifying a goal, or choose the one that suits you best.
Select the Search Network campaign type. Take advantage of the “Use Goals” feature enabled by default.
The next step is to select campaign optimization goals. They will be available only if they are configured in the “Tools” – “Conversions” tab. The choice of goal affects how Google’s algorithms will optimize ads. If you select the goal “Page visit”, the system will try to show ads more often to users who are ready to click on the ad. When choosing the “Registration” goal, ads will be seen more often by those who are ready to go to the site and leave an application. The goal should be in line with your marketing or business goal.
Select the task you want to solve with the help of contextual advertising. For ads on the Search Network, the options available are Site Visits, Phone Calls, and App Downloads. The system will offer options for settings and optimization in accordance with the selected scenario:
Select the Site Visit task and enter the URL. The system will automatically analyze the resource and suggest keyword options for ad groups:
Website visits are one of the most sought-after goals in search campaigns.
You should always distinguish between search campaigns and display campaigns (there are a lot of differences, first of all, bids). Otherwise, working on several fronts at once in one campaign, you will spend the entire budget very quickly. Separating campaigns is more convenient if you run ads on the Search Network and Display Network at the same time, for example.
In the next step, turn off impressions on the Display Network. Initially, our goal is to show ads only on search in response to user requests. Therefore, you do not need to create a mixed type of campaign at the start.
In advanced settings, you need to configure the tracking template. Here it is useful to register UTM tags, which will be substituted for all links in ads. UTM tags transmit data about ad clicks to various web analytics and end-to-end analytics systems. In the future, this will help evaluate the effectiveness of contextual advertising on Google and compare it with other sources of paid traffic. You can quickly and correctly create tags using the free UTM generator from eLama .
Also in the additional settings, you can specify the start and end dates of the campaign and set the schedule of impressions by day of the week and time of day. I recommend at the start not to limit impressions at night and on weekends, even if you really want to. Due to the fact that many advertisers turn off ad serving at this time, the auction cools down, the cost per click and conversion becomes cheaper. This is in your favor, so you should test the display 24/7.
Target your audience by location. Imagine that you provide services exclusively to residents of St. Petersburg and some cities of the Leningrad region. In the “Location” section, check the box next to the “Specify a different location” option. Start typing the name of the city. After a suitable hint appears, use the “Add” option:
Use the advanced search if necessary. Add target settlements and save changes.
In addition to adding target regions, their exclusion is also provided. For example, if you provide services in St. Petersburg, but are not ready to travel to Pushkin and Kolpino. Find these cities and click the Exclude button:
Be sure to check out the location options. Here you can specify who exactly you want to show ads to. By default, ads will be seen by people who are in the targeted locations, who visit them regularly, or who are interested in them. That is, the ad will be shown to a person outside of St. Petersburg, who added the word “Peter” to his request. If you need only those who are in St. Petersburg right now or often, select the second option. This is a very common mistake that beginners make.
Specify the languages that customers use. For Russia, the system recommends adding English to the Russian language. This allows you to cover users from the Russian Federation who have selected English in their browser settings.
At the next stage, the system offers to add audience segments. The main principle of audience targeting when searching is keywords, which will be discussed below. In addition to keywords, you can add audiences. Audience segments are categories of users grouped according to some criteria. For example, audiences of interested buyers of used cars or parents of infants under one year of age. In addition, you can create custom audiences based on your website visitors. For example, those who visited the site in the last 30 days, but did not make a purchase. These user segments can then be added to a search campaign in one of two modes: Targeting or Observation.
“Targeting” means that the reach of the advertising campaign will be narrowed: each user must meet two criteria at the same time: enter a query that matches the keyword and be in the specified segment. If one of the conditions is not met, the ad will not be shown to him.
“Observation” , in turn, does not narrow the reach. The ad will be shown to all users who enter queries that match the campaign’s keyword list. If the user belongs to one of the audience segments selected in the campaign, then information about this will be available for analysis in the advertising account statistics.
It is recommended that you add several segments in Watch mode that match your target audience. For example, I have indicated users who are interested in buying used cars and cars of various types. This won’t affect my ad serving in any way, but it will help with optimization in the future.
Proceed to bidding. Advertisers can use automatic strategies or manual price management. At the start of an advertising campaign, it is recommended to manage bids manually or use the “Clicks” strategy.
After choosing the “Clicks” strategy, you can specify the maximum cost of the transition. This feature protects the advertiser from overpriced clicks, but may limit the effectiveness of ads during times of high competition. Do not quote rates higher than you are realistically willing to pay.
Set your daily budget. It is desirable that it be enough to spin ads throughout the day without stopping.
Be sure to add additional links to sections of the site. The system shows users from two to eight links, depending on the device type and ad position.
Click the “New Sitelink” button. In the window that opens, add the text, URL, and link description. In the Sitelink URL Options section, set up tracking templates. In the advanced settings, if necessary, specify that the links are created for display to mobile device owners. Specify a display schedule.
After adding sitelinks, you can see how they will appear in the ad. To do this, check the necessary items and click on the “View” button.
Add clarifications. This is additional information about products or customer service terms. Clarifications are added, as are additional links.
Add a phone number. Optionally, indicate that the ad is for mobile device owners. Leave the Call Reporting feature enabled. Google Ads displays call forwarding numbers in ads, through which the system collects call data. In the advanced settings, you can specify the schedule for displaying the extension.
Start with structured descriptions. This information is displayed below the ad. Structured descriptions further inform customers about your business and products.
For example, if you sell insurance services, you can use structured descriptions to talk about specific insurance products. To do this, select the type of description “Insurance protection” and add types of insurance.
If one of the objectives of the advertising campaign is to stimulate app installs, add links to the app at the campaign level:
This extension directs potential customers to the program’s installation page.
Use forms for potential buyers:
To get to this section, first select the “Ads and extensions” item (this item is located on the left side of the Google Ads account, where pages are selected), then select “Extensions”, click on + and select “Affiliate Address”.
Just add the addresses you need right at the account level. You will also need to specify trade (including retail) networks. The rest of the work will be done by the Google Ads algorithms.
In the “Ad Rotation” section, leave the default option “Optimize top-performing ads” enabled. In this case, the system often shows the most effective ads that generate the most clicks to the site:
The “Don’t optimize ads, rotate without time limit” option is fine if you want to test the performance of your ads yourself. It is still better for beginners to entrust this function to the system.
Save your settings and move on to managing ad groups.
How to set up ad groups in Google Ads
Ads in the Google contextual advertising system are combined into groups. This makes campaign management easier. You can include ads with similar keywords in a group. Follow the steps below to create a group and announcements.
Name the ad group. Add keywords. Use the system tips from the “Get keyword options” block.