A detailed guide to setting up Google Ads

Step by Step Guide to Google AdWords Contextual advertising

Google AdWords is a powerful weapon in the fight for a client. This tool is specially developed by the largest search engine for detailed customization and management of contextual advertising. AdWords provides advertisers with a multifunctional platform that allows them to carefully customize all the nuances of an advertising campaign: display methods, budget, geography, targeting, etc.

The Google search engine is the most popular among Ukrainian users – it accounts for more than 90% of all search queries, so placing ads on its pages covers almost the entire audience of potential buyers.

Contextual advertising is a great tool that allows you to get interested target visitors to an online store in a short time, talk about a promotion, a specific product or content.

It can be difficult for business owners who do not have experience in setting up and running contextual advertising to figure out the service on their own. For debutants, here is our step-by-step guide for setting up Google AdWords.

Why can AdWords advertising be so effective?

Google advertising, in comparison with other available options for quickly attracting customers, has a number of advantages:

  • Intuitive company management, simple and friendly interface. Even a beginner without special knowledge can set up and manage an advertising company;
  • Quick launch: a small contextual campaign can be set up in 1-2 hours and immediately start getting targeted visitors to the promoted resource;
  • Flexible budget management and the ability to adjust it in real time to increase the return on advertising;
  • Setting up pay per click and per conversion;
  • Displaying ads not only in Google search itself, but also on the sites of its partner network (video hosting YouTube, Gmail, etc.);
  • The ability to select thematic sites for displaying your advertising on them;
  • Ability to set the display time interval by day of the week or even hours.

All these tools allow you to achieve maximum return with minimal financial investment.

The first thing to do is create an account:

Creating a Google Ads Account

  1. You can create a new mailbox or log in with Gmail if you already have an account;
  2. Come up with a name for the advertising campaign, decide on the time zone, set up access and click “Create an account”;

After that, you can create the first ad and, after going through all the points, fine-tune it. To do this, simply follow all the steps described in our detailed guide to Google AdWords.

Composing an ad

After creating an account, the system will display AdWords Express. Fill in all the proposed fields:

  • Heading 1 and 2;
  • Your resource address and description.

Click the “Continue” button at the bottom of the page.

Budgeting

The following page will help you set up your budget. In order to make it easier to determine the daily costs, the system will show the range of the daily budget of your competitors in gray.

After putting down your daily budget, on the right side you will see the approximate number of impressions and clicks that you can get with these costs. Set the ratio of budget-impressions-clicks that is acceptable for you, click “Continue”.

Check settings

Targeting and Audiences

Before launching a campaign, you need to check the settings. Geotargeting Google will determine automatically by your location. You can change it manually in the menu “Addresses” – “Change”. Then just enter the region or the desired locality. Save your settings.

Confirm payment details

The last stage is the clarification of payment data. You must specify:

  • Country;
  • Time zone;
  • Account type (legal entity or individual);
  • Address and full name (individual) or details (legal entity);
  • Promo code (you can search for bonuses on special sites);
  • Payment amount;
  • Payment method.

To continue, you must agree to the Google AdWords terms of service and click Continue.

The first advertising campaign has been created, ads will start showing immediately after payment is received.

For more fine-tuning, you need to understand the advanced features of the service.

There are 3 levels that you need to consistently set up in your Google Ads ads:

  1. Campaign. General display settings: region, suitable sites, budget;
  2. Ad group. Here you need to set up targeting that manages the target audience, and put down the prices that you are willing to pay for a potential client who has switched to your resource.
  3. Announcement: advertising text, clarifications and picture. You can set custom bids for this ad.

Collecting semantics with Keyword Planner

It is impossible to start setting up advertising without ready-made semantics – you first need to scrupulously select key phrases that best match the queries that potential customers will enter in the search bar. The total budget will be calculated based on the frequency and competition of the selected keywords.

For the convenience of selection, Google Ads has a special tool: Keyword Planner. This service will help you select and group keywords suitable for your company, predict the necessary budget and possible traffic.

Go to keyword planner

There is a key icon at the top right of the screen. Click it, in the window that appears, enter the keyword of interest (you can specify the subject of the content or the name of the product). For example, we are creating an ad for a website selling shoes and we need to sell sandals. We write: “sandals” and click “Start”.

Set the display region and language (targeting is important, because keywords and their frequency may differ depending on the city or region) and the planner will select a large list with keywords for you. We choose Kyiv and Kiev region.

Keyword Search

The collected keywords can be filtered by, for example, impressions, competition, CPC, etc. You can also enter negative keywords.

For fine-tuning, you can fill in the “Keyword options” fields (beginners should leave it unchanged) and “Keywords in question” (here you can set the words and phrases that the search query must contain without fail).

Next, you need to group the keywords according to the criteria that are important for your campaign. For example, we will have 2 groups: heeled sandals and wedge sandals. You can divide them by color or size if there are individual offers or discounts for these groups.

Ad groups

Manually select the keys for the “heeled sandals” group and create a separate group for them (the button on the blue plate). Similarly for the second group of “wedge sandals”. We look at the remaining keys and decide if we need another group. Ungrouped keys are transferred to the general one.

This grouping is an important step in getting a successful advertising campaign. The work is routine, but you should not neglect it.

The keys are sorted. You can do the “Plan Review” (the link is in the left menu).

Plan Overview

At this stage, it becomes clear what kind of traffic you can count on with the selected keywords and the size of the required budget. If you start from a fixed amount, you can estimate how many visitors will come to the site for this money.

If your task is to get a specific number of orders per day, knowing the conversion of the site, it is realistic to calculate how many interested visitors you need to attract and what budget will be required for this. Based on this data, you can adjust the settings.

Hint! How to calculate the budget. Let’s say the conversion of your site is 3%. You want to receive 30 orders per day through this advertising channel. We make a calculation: to receive 1 order with a conversion of 3%, we need 30 transitions to the page. 30 orders can give us 900 clicks. In the Scheduler, turn on the “clicks” mode and use the slider to select the number of transitions we need. Google Ads will immediately show you the budget you need for your goal.

We have collected keywords and decided on the budget. At the top right, click Save. You can create an advertising campaign itself.

A detailed guide to setting up an advertising campaign in Google AdWords

Compared to the previous interface, in the updated cabinet, all management tools have become intuitive. If you wish, you can return to the familiar view by clicking on the wrench icon and selecting the appropriate item from the menu.

Our detailed instructions describe how to work in the new interface: it has become more convenient and user-friendly.

Open the “Campaigns” tab and click the large “+” button. In the drop-down menu, select “Create new”.

Google Ads Campaign Types

Determine the type of campaign:

  • Context Display Network – display on the sites of the Google partner network (analogous to YAN in Yandex, abbreviated as CMS);
  • Video – Impressions on YouTube;
  • Search network – display ads on Google search and its partner sites;
  • Universal – mobile app ads;
  • Special shopping ads (handy form for online stores).

The most popular option is Search Network advertising.

Next, you need to decide on the goals.

Campaign Goals

The following options are available:

  • Visit a web resource;
  • Showing interest, targeted actions on the site;
  • Call manager;
  • Make a purchase on the site.

Let our goal be to visit. Select it and specify the URL that visitors will go to.

Visit site

Set up the places where you will look for clients:

  • You can set the radius in kilometers, for example, from the location of the office or store;
  • You can select a city, region, or region.

Based on your choice, the system will automatically calculate the size of the potential audience.

The next step is to enter a campaign name. The name should be short and clear, so that in the future it would be easier to navigate the structure of the account.

To display ads on the Display Network, it is better to create a separate campaign, and disable display ads in the search engine altogether.

Creating ad groups

Setting up ad groups

Dividing a Google advertising campaign into groups is necessary for its convenient thematic structuring, this is especially important for a large project. For example, an online store can have independent campaigns for women’s and men’s shoes, groups can be broken down by brand or product category: ankle boots, sandals, boots, etc.

You must provide a group name and a target address. Google keywords can be selected automatically based on the analysis of the landing page, or they can be selected manually.

You can specify keywords more precisely using special characters:

  • “key phrase” – quotation marks indicate that the key is allowed to be declined and used in phrases;
  • [passphrase] – square brackets require an exact match.

Important! Without special characters, a “broad match” is established, which allows the system to display impressions not only for the key phrase, but also, in other words, close in meaning. Let’s explain: the key with +windows +custom modifiers includes requests for the type of windows to order in Kyiv, windows to order from the manufacturer, etc.

A group can contain from one to several dozen ads.

Ad creation guide

Let’s move on to the last step of the Google Ads walkthrough – creating your first ad:

Creating an AdWords ad

  1. Create headings 1 and 2 (max 30 characters). The second heading may contain information about the benefits of the product, profitable promotions, discounts, etc. In the first one, it is better to indicate the words of the query, by typing in which the user will see your advertisement;
  2. Create ad text (max 90 characters);
  3. Fill in the address of the landing page (it will be shown to the user who goes to the site);
  4. For mobile devices, you can specify a separate site address (if any);

On the right, Google Ads will show a preview of what your ad will look like on desktop, display, or mobile.

If you are satisfied with the visual design, click on the “Finish” button.

Each ad can have a personal maximum budget: daily or monthly, by the number of views or clicks. You can change these preferences at any time, just like other Google Ads campaign settings.

At first, it is recommended to add at least 3 ads per group, in the process of displaying ads you will see which one turned out to be more effective and adjust its settings to increase traffic, if necessary.

Try to fill in all the fields as detailed as possible – this will increase clickability.

Tips for effective contextual advertising

How to effectively set up contextual advertising: 4 tips

  1. Use a call to action. Ideally, if it is precise, unambiguous and concise.
  2. Identify the customer’s benefit. Insert the phrases “promotion”, “discount”, “gift”, etc. into the text
  3. Personalize ads. Create ads that take into account the portrait of the target audience as much as possible. Take into account the place of residence, search queries, interests. You will not argue with the fact that advertising a children’s scooter to someone who is looking for a motocross bike is inappropriate? You should not do this even if both of these products are present on the website of your online store.
  4. Group your ads, and for each group choose one base keyword. Separate ads for different regions without fail.
  5. Create at least three ads per group. This will allow the system each time to select the option that best meets a specific user request.
  6. Fill in at least four extensions to increase ad visibility. Enter the phone number, address, cost, information about sales and promotions so that the user sees it before clicking on the link.
  7. Regularly analyze statistical information and optimize campaigns. Improve ads, select the most effective headlines, direct your budget to the points with the highest efficiency, change your bids.
  8. Integrate automation services to effectively set up ads in Google Ads. They make bid management easier. This way, for example, you can save the given positions for the most converting search queries.
  9. Analyze the performance of Display Network ad spaces and disable those that have low conversion rates or cost too much in terms of cost per click.
  10. Control and redistribute the budget. Constantly analyze the return on the invested dollar and increase rates for those keywords and ads where the best result is recorded.
Сергей Шевченко
Сергей Шевченко
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