Digital Marketing Tips – The Basics of Google Ads

Over the next few articles, StandOut Advertising is going to feature the basics of Google Ads through a special Search Engine Marketing (SEM) blog series.  Google Ads has quickly grown in popularity among the best digital marketing strategies for small businesses to grow using a Pay Per Click (PPC) conversion program.  However, Google Ads has left many business entrepreneurs feeling overwhelmed about the complexity of the abilities the PPC marketing tool offers.  Many businesses want to grow with the PPC marketing efforts that the SEM service offers but are not sure where to begin.  In the first part of our SEM blog series, we will begin with the basics of two key components of a Google Ads advertising account, which include keywords and ad groups.

Google Ads Platform – a Must for Any Small Business

It is difficult to overlook that Google has become one of the most popular platforms for PPC marketing.  Google currently owns 65.4% of the search engine market share with Bing coming in second at a mere portion of the market share at just 19.7%.  Google is easily the most widely used search engine with over half of all searches performed by using the search engine platform.  With this widely known statistic, businesses are flocking to its popularity.  Generally, businesses can safely assume that they can reach majority of their target market by advertising through Google’s Ads campaign manager.  Google offers a user-friendly PPC advertising program, that allows companies to truly understand their marketing efforts and provides easy-to-learn analytics.  The SEM service also offers Google technical support that is well versed and knowledgeable about running successful marketing campaigns.  Google’s Ad account structure is organized through campaigns, ad groups, and keywords. 

Google Ads Account Structure – Campaigns, Ad Groups, and Keywords

Campaigns are easily the “home” of Google’s Ad marketing service.  Campaigns include all your keywords, ads, and ad groups.  Google’s campaign manager also includes the tools necessary to reach your target market and is where you will control your daily ad-spend or your Google Ads marketing budget.  Next, is Google Ads’ ad groups.  Ad groups are the “walls” that hold the “home” of Google’s Ad marketing service together, as well as your ad campaigns.  Ad groups consist of both ads and keywords.  Ad groups must contain a highly effective list of closely-knit keywords.  Having this list of closely-knit keywords allows the user of Google’s Ad marketing service to place these similar keywords together in an ad group, ensuring that the ads in your campaign are the most relevant for what people are searching relative to your business.  Lastly, are keywords.  Keywords are the “foundation” of your Google Ads account.  They are responsible in determining how your ads will be featured and to what target demographic.  Having a robust keyword list is vital in ensuring your business is getting unique visitors that are both relevant and unique to your business.  These keywords are essential in driving traffic to your website to ensure conversions are being made to buy your products or services. 

Google Ads’ Keywords – The “Key” to Success with Your Google Marketing Campaign

Understanding how to develop a strong keyword list and how to properly execute the ads to ensure the best return on investment is essential in the success of any PPC marketing program.  This means understanding that every keyword you choose to bid on will drive traffic to your website that is worth paying for.  When choosing keywords for a PPC marketing program be sure to focus on paying for terms that you think your potential customer will search verses keywords that your current customers are already searching in terms of finding relevant information about the business they already do with you.  For example, someone searching for “digital marketing in Buffalo, New York” is probably looking for a digital marketing company to help their business grow their digital presence, while someone searching for “StandOut Advertising’s digital marketing clients,” is likely a current customer who is looking for information relevant to the company’s advertising partners.  Regarding Search Engine Optimization (SEO), thinking of all possible keywords that can optimize your site with relevancy to your content, as well as terms with a robust search volume and low competition is important to help your organic ranking.  However, with PPC marketing services, this is not always the case as you want to ensure you’re minimizing the number of visits or clicks from keyword terms that may not be relevant to a new customer.  You do not want your business paying for clicks from very single search term that is relevant to your content, only the keywords relevant to acquiring a new potential customer. 

Google Ads Match Types – Triggering Your Ads

Keyword match types help control which searches will trigger your ad and are assigned to every keyword.  Use match types to determine how broad or specific you want queries to trigger your ads for.  Google technical support encourages broad match is a great option for long tail keywords or terms that have low search volumes.  However, broad match can be a poor choice of match types for highly competitive terms and can cause businesses to “burn” through their ad spend or marketing budget quickly.  Using the exact match option will ensure that your ads only appear when a specific term is searched.  This is a great option for highly competitive terms, but sometimes terms set to this match type have a more difficult time spending an allotted budget.  To have a strong performing campaign, businesses should have a good mixture of broad, phrase, and exact match terms. 

Google Ads – Don’t Forget Negative Keywords

Businesses are often successful in setting up a keyword list and setting keyword match types, but often leave out the important function of negative keywords.  Negative keywords ensure that your business will not receive clicks from irrelevant searches.  Negative keywords are a function of telling Google which specific terms you never want your ads to be triggered by.  Using this vital function of Google Ads helps ensure your ads are being shown to the most relevant searches, and ultimately, reduce wasted costs through irrelevant clicks. 

Google Ads – Organizing Keywords into Ad Groups

After you have your keyword list finalized, you will need to break the terms into ad groups.  Ad groups are where your keywords and ads are housed.  The key to creating strong ad groups is to ensure they contain very closely related terms.  The more similar your terms are, the easier it becomes to write ad text featuring those terms.  By featuring keywords within your ads, the better your ads will speak to searchers, and the higher performance you will typically see.  According to Google’s technical support, the best practice for organizing your ad groups is to ensure that they contain between three to ten terms.  Having more than ten terms, often means there is a good chance that your terms may not be closely-knitted and can be broken into more specific ad groups. 

Let Us Help You StandOut from The Competition

Overwhelmed with Google Ads and all that a PPC marketing service can do for you?   Contact our staff at StandOut Advertising to help you start, develop, and implement, your own PPC campaign to promote your business.  StandOut Advertising is a full-service, digital marketing and consulting agency designed to bring your company’s brand, story, and vision to life.  It is our mission to help your business StandOut from the rest of the competition. For more information on digital marketing, expertise in PPC (Google Ads) marketing, or increasing your digital media presence, please visit our SEM services page or contact us at here.  Let us help you StandOut today!