How to use Google PPC for New Marketers: Essential Guide to Google PPC
Whether you’re in the startup phase or anywhere in the growth stages of business, you would always choose to market your brand and products on a platform that gives the best benefits. The most common factors marketers and advertisers consider in choosing a platform are its cost-effectiveness and large customer base.
Google offers just that- and more! Global active internet users constitute 4.66 billion of the world’s total population, and Google has more or less 4 billion users. This large customer base contributes to approximately 5.6 billion searches or 63,000 search queries per second. This many prospective leads and customers, and Google’s continuous digital innovation to accommodate the marketing needs of businesses, are enough reasons to consider advertising with Google.
What is Google PPC?
When you search for any keyword or query on Google, you will see that at the uppermost part of its loaded results are advertisements.
These advertisements look just like any typical search result- complete with a webpage title, URL, and short Meta description. However, you will know that these are paid advertisements because of the word “Ad” beside the webpage URL. These results are called Paid Search.
Paid search is different from an organic search such that it involves advertising, and from its name itself, paid. Organic Search, on the other hand, is an unpaid normal search result affected by Google’s ranking standard.
Your search engine advertisements with Google will follow the Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising model. In a PPC model, marketers or advertisers only pay when customers click on their ads.
The advertiser has to pay the cost of each click. The payment depends on the cost-per-click bid you set on your advertising campaign.
You need to register your business on Google Ads and set a marketing goal for you to join a Google advertising bid and create an ad campaign.
Yet, it is important to note that Google PPC is not only limited to search engine advertisements. It offers five different campaign types that you can use to advertise your business.
What is Google Ads, and How Does it Work?
When you finally decide on doing a paid search or some other ad type on Google, you will use Google Ads to run your advertising campaign.
Google Ads, formerly named Google Adwords, is Google’s advertising service and platform where you can create and run your marketing campaigns.
You need to register your business on the platform by filling out the fields that follow the Get Started button to create an ad campaign.
In creating your ad campaign, you can set the reach of your ad, whether local or global. Another benefit of the platform is that you can set a monthly cap on your advertising budget and adjust it as you please.
How Does It Work?
Google PPC ads are very much reliant on keywords. When you finish creating your short text ads, you set a bid amount on the keywords that could be associated with your ads.
Your bid automatically puts your ad on Google’s online auction, which happens when an ad space becomes available.
Your success in securing the ad slot is dependent on the relevance of your ad to the keywords on search queries and the amount of your bid.
Factors That Affect Google PPC Ads
The success of your Google PPC ad campaigns depends on several factors. You need to consider these factors if you want to create killer campaigns that will achieve your goals.
- Keywords
Keywords are words or phrases that match or align with the customer’s search queries. The keywords you choose to bid on determine the appearance of your ads on search results. Your ads will only appear when the keywords you bid on match or associate with the search query.
KEYWORD MATCH TYPES:
- Exact Match
It refers to a word or phrase exactly similar to the search queries, including the order of words.
- Phrase Match
It matches with search queries that include the exact order of your keyword phrase, and any additional words are either before or after it.
- Broad Match
Broad match matches search queries with any word on your keyword phrase in any order.
- Modified Broad Match
It locks in certain words within your keyword phrase. The locked-in words are denoted by a plus (+) sign. It will include the locked-in words in the search query matches.
- Ad Extensions
Ad extensions are features on your ad that show additional business information. They provide more compelling reasons for customers to click your ad and choose your business.
These extensions may be in the form of:
- Sitelink extensions
- Local extensions
- App extensions
- Call extensions
- Offer extensions
- Location
When you register your business on Adwords and create your first campaign, you have the option to set your target location on local or global.
Setting your geographical location is important for a targeted reach. When you’re a local business, only customers within your geographical area will see the ad, and you won’t waste money on unnecessary clicks.
- Bid Amount
The bid you set for your campaign refers to the maximum amount you’re willing to pay for every click in your ad.
The highest bid, along with the most relevant ad to the search queries, wins the ad space on Google. So, the higher your bid is, the greater your chance becomes in getting the ad space.
- Quality Score and Ad Rank
Google algorithms check your ad and rate it based on the search engine’s standards or criteria. It evaluates the authority of your links and the relevance of your content to the search query.
It also checks whether or not your ad content contains the answer to the search query. Once done with the checking and evaluation, Google then gives you your campaign’s Quality Score.
Ad rank, on the other hand, is the position that Google gives to your ad, depending on your bid amount and quality score.
Your ad position determines where you will place on the search results. For instance, if you win the bid and have the most relevant content to the query, you’ll get the first ad space.
The ad space can be on top or at the bottom of organic results.
- Display Network
Google Display Network (GDN) is a series or system of websites that allow Google Display Ads to appear on its web pages.
It includes other Google-owned services like YouTube, a content streaming platform, and Gmail, its email service provider.
Display ads can be text-based or in the form of images, shown with content that answer specific search queries.
Shopping campaigns and App campaigns are ad types with display ad options.
What are the Different Types of Google Ad Campaign
- Search campaigns
Otherwise known as search ads or paid search, search campaigns are text-based ads seen on Google’s search results page. When customers type queries on Google’s search bar, the loaded page will show paid searches on top or below the organic search results, marked by an “Ad” word before them.
- Display Campaigns
Display ads can be any of these four: text-based banner ads, image ads, custom ads, or interactive ads. They appear on Google Display Network. GDN includes Google sites like YouTube and Gmail, mobile apps, and a series of web pages. According to Google, GDN reaches 90% of global internet users. With a broad reach, you can easily use these ads to boost your business visibility and engage your audience.
- Shopping Campaigns
Shopping ads appear on Google search results (SERPs) and contain your business’ product information and product images. Instead of focusing on your brand, it attracts customers to your products and product lines.
To create a shopping campaign ad, you need to create an account on Google Merchant Center. Google pulls your store and product information shown on ads from there.
- App Campaigns
If you want to promote your mobile apps, you can use the Google app campaign to connect you to the right platforms to run your ads. Whether it’s an iOS or Android app, your app ads will appear on Google Search, Google Play, YouTube, Google Display Network, and many others.
You don’t need to create an actual campaign to create an app ad. You only need to provide Google with your app information and target audience and set your bid.
Frequently Asked Questions
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How can Google PPC help with your business?
Google PPC can help you achieve several marketing goals depending on what ad campaign you choose to create. It helps you boost brand awareness on its large user base. It increases your web traffic, thus increasing your chances for more conversions. It also helps generate new leads. It provides good ROI. It also provides reports and performance analyses of your campaigns.
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Can I advertise on Google without using Google Ads?
Unfortunately, you need Google Ads to launch advertising campaigns on Google. You have to use the platform to participate in keyword bidding. The platform’s algorithms also conduct the automatic evaluation and ranking of the ads. There are other alternative marketing channels that you can use, however. Instead of advertising with Google, you may consider running ad campaigns on social media, LinkedIn, and many other channels.
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Can I advertise on Google without an e-commerce website?
Yes. Before, you had to use Google’s Ad Express service to create ad campaigns without a website. Now, it was the same service renamed Smart Campaigns under the Google Ads suite. Even without a website, you can be able to run an ad through Google Ads.
Conclusion
Whether you’re a startup or not, you need to develop strategies to market your brands and products. That is the way to scale and grow your business to its next stage.
Google PPC is not the only marketing strategy and platform that you can use to reach your audience, generate new leads, and increase your store conversions. There are other effective digital alternatives.
However, suppose you want to reach your audience fast, get fast ROI, and acquire helpful resources like reports and analyses of your campaigns.
In that case, you might as well consider advertising with a platform that has more than half the global population as its customer base.
To know more about Google PPC, read more at Sellers Planet.
