How to Advertise on Google?

Spreading your message to the ideal customers is a challenging prospect, but a detailed Google Ads campaign ensures you can reach and convert the perfect target market.

With numerous ways to advertise across Google’s vast network of services, targeting your audience with a compelling offer becomes so much easier. 

However, with countless other companies also trying to capture their customers’ attention, you must apply several best practices to get the most from your strategy.

Here, we explore how Google Ads works and what it takes for your business to develop a winning campaign that achieves your goals.

What is Google Ads?

Google Ads is a pay-per-click (PPC) service that allows businesses operating at every level to reach their ideal audience with targeted online advertisements.

But considering that virtually everyone uses Google and YouTube, how do you ensure your message reaches people who care about what you have to say? 

Google Ads allows you to target your campaign based on keywords and demographic information, ensuring you have the power to reach an engaged audience.

With Google claiming that its advertising service reaches 90% of internet users around the globe, a successful strategy can deliver incredible results for your business.

How Do Google Ads Work?

For those who have never used PPC advertising before, there’s a slight learning curve to overcome. However, Google Ads makes getting started relatively straightforward.

By researching which keywords your audience is most likely to use when searching for a product or service like yours, you can target these phrases with a PPC campaign. 

Then, you must choose a maximum bid for these keywords depending on how much you’re willing to spend. You can set a daily maximum budget to avoid your costs getting out of control.

Combined with Google’s Quality Score, this determines where your ad is positioned on the search engine results page. Then, once someone clicks, you pay a small fee.

Google Advertising Cost

There’s no one-size-fits-all formula when working out your Google advertising costs. Rather than simply spending big on the most popular keywords, you need a more strategic approach. 

When conducting your keyword research, the idea is to uncover commercial intent keywords that land in the sweet spot between high traffic and low competition.

For example, a store that targets the keyword “men’s shoes” could pay more than $3 per click to display its ads in the most prominent position.

Focus on short- and long-tail keywords that are less competitive but still highly relevant to your goals. This will help you develop a cost-effective strategy that delivers exceptional traffic.

Types of Google Ads

Your business can leverage Google Ads in numerous ways. Here, we summarize each type to ensure you understand how these help your company grow and convert its target audience.

Search

Google is the most-visited website on the internet, with an astounding 5.6 billion daily searches conducted. With text-based ads positioned at the top of relevant search results, you can convince your ideal audience to visit your website and check out your products.

Display

Google Display Ads makes it easy for brands to launch attention-grabbing campaigns. With these ads displayed on over two million websites, including news organizations, blogs, and mobile apps, you can reach your customers with targeted banners, videos, images, and more.

Video

Launching a video advertising campaign can generate immense results for your business. These ads are hosted on YouTube, playing before, during, and after content that resonates with your target audience. However, these video ads can also be displayed on other websites that have signed up as Google video partners. 

App

If your business has an app that it wants to promote, Google offers an advertising solution that will help accomplish your objectives. Running these campaigns is even easier than usual as Google takes your app store listing’s text, images, and videos to automatically design ads for numerous formats and networks.

Shopping

Google Shopping has proven to be a massive success, but there are some obvious differences from platforms like Amazon and eBay. Instead of launching an e-commerce store, Google Shopping simply helps customers find and compare products across existing online retailers. By running Google Shopping ads, you ensure your product listings stand out from the rest.

Tips for Running Google Ads

Google Ads can be incredibly powerful, but you must launch a data-driven campaign to achieve the best results. Consider these tips for running Google Ads to ensure your next Google Ads strategy outperforms your expectations.

Optimize for Intent

Always consider intent when researching the perfect keywords for your campaign. If you’re looking to reach and convert customers who are looking to purchase immediately, you need to target transactional keywords that capture this desire. 

If you’re a men’s fashion store looking to promote an end-of-year sale, consider targeting long-tail keywords that include terms like buy, purchase, discount, sale, and deal. This way, you’ll reach an engaged customer base ready to browse and check out.

Enhance Your Landing Pages

People who are inexperienced with Google Ads sometimes overlook the importance of their landing pages. Alignment between your ads and your landing pages is critical to achieving a great Quality Score – a rating that may affect how you reach your target audience.

For example, any claims you make in your ad copy about a specific discount should be reflected on your landing page. Meanwhile, you should also feature the same call-to-action to avoid confusing potential customers with mixed messages.

Analyze Your Campaign

Even the most thoughtfully conceived Google Ads campaign can return some unexpected results. That’s why delving into your campaign’s analytics is essential, as you’ll quickly learn what works and what needs a rethink.

For example, you must generate enough ad impressions to get people to visit your website, while a low number of clicks means your ad is poorly targeted or simply isn’t appealing enough. Track Google Ads with Google Analytics to uncover insightful adjustments.

Achieve Your Goals with Google Ads

Take action on your business objectives with a precise Google Ads campaign. By working with a highly experienced team like First Page, we offer our clients a wealth of expertise from leading lucrative campaigns day after day.

Whether you’re looking to skyrocket your leads, increase brand awareness or promote your latest product, we can design and implement a tailored campaign that achieves your goals. Get in touch with our friendly team to discover how we’ll deliver unmatched results.