If you’ve not used Google Ads before, you might sit with a confused look on your face while staring at the computer screen. Fortunately, you’ll find everything you need to get started in this guide!
How Do Google Ads Work?
Using a pay-per-click (PPC) model, the idea with Google Ads is to use keywords to appear in front of your target market. If you sell shoes, you want to reach out to people searching for ‘shoes’ on the internet. Of course, this is a basic example, and you’ll want to refine your keywords to balance competition, traffic, and price.
Either way, the PPC model means that you won’t pay for your ad to appear on a Google results page. Instead, you only pay if the prospective lead clicks on your ad (hence the name!). In short, your ad will go up against all the ads of other advertisers that want to place for the same keyword. If your ad wins the bid, it will appear in the search results. Otherwise, the ads of your competitors will show for the prospective lead. Here is a guide to help you more about PPC.
When bidding, you have three main options:
- CPM (cost per mille) – The amount you pay per 1,000 impressions
- CPC (cost per click) – The amount you pay for users to click on ads
- CPE (cost per engagement) – The amount you pay for users to perform the desired action
Often, people think that their bidding amount is the most important factor. So long as you outbid everyone, you will win every time, right? Well, wrong. Google also considers Quality Score – a metric that assesses the quality of your ad, your ad history, prior engagement, and various other factors. The higher your Quality Score, the better you will fare when competing against other advertisers.
Once your Quality Score is combined with the bid amount, this will generate an overall Ad Rank. If either one of these two factors is off, you’ll struggle to win bids and all your hard work creating great ads will go to waste.
Types of Google Ads
You’ve had an insight into how the bidding process works on Google, but what types of ads are available to you?
Shopping – If you think that images sell your products, you’ll want a shopping campaign. When a user clicks on the Shopping tab, your product will appear as a sponsored product.
Search – These are the standard text ads that you see at the top of search results. If you can’t get to the top page organically, you may enjoy some success with search ads – be aware that your link will have the word ‘Ad’ next to it (but this isn’t a huge problem!).
Video – If you like to get creative, you have lots of opportunities since YouTube is owned by Google. You can advertise before videos, to the side of videos, as a pop-up during the video, and even at the top of search results.
Display – This time, the aim is to appear on websites all over the internet – you’ll access the many website partners of Google. Your ad can appear on YouTube, on third-party websites, Gmail, or even one of its apps. Speaking of apps, you might decide to launch a separate app campaign.
Summary
If this all looks too stressful for you, feel free to contact Australian Google Ads specialists for help. With extensive experience, they will ensure that you choose the right placements, optimize your Quality Score, and make the most of your advertising budget!