Google Ads: How to create the best campaign step by step

Google Ads It is, without a doubt, the star tool in SEM. It can help us get highly qualified traffic, increase the visibility of a brand around the world and, of course, achieve conversions, all at a very reasonable cost.

But although the Google Ads campaigns They have a very intuitive interface, it is true that there are many parameters to control and that it is difficult to optimize them well from the beginning. So to make things clear, we are going to see some basic concepts to master this tool and a step-by-step guide to create the best campaigns.

Video explaining what Google Ads is and the most important concepts

Important concepts about Google Ads

Keywords

A key word or keyword is the cset of terms that a user enters in a search engine such as Google. This can be a single word, multiple words, or even an entire phrase, for example “Buy cheap trips to New York.”

Keywords are like the “bricks” of a Google Ads campaign. Thanks to them, Google can know which topics interest a specific user at a given time, and show them ads according to them. Thanks to a good selection of keywords, we will ensure that we are creating truly relevant advertising.

Match Types

The match types They determine to what extent the term entered by the user in the search engine must match our keyword. We can choose between:

• Broad match: is the one assigned by default. Includes synonyms, misspellings, related searches, and other variations. For example, if the keyword is “women’s hats” the ad may appear when searching for “buy women’s hats.”
• Broad match modifier– Includes slight variations, but not synonyms, and search terms can appear in any order. For example, “buy a women’s hat.”
• Phrase agreement: It is based on the exact match of a part of the text that the user searches for with the keyword in question. For example, for “women’s hats”, the ad would show with “buy women’s hats”, but not with “cheap women’s hats”, since inserting a word in the middle breaks the match.
• Exact match: As the name suggests, in this case the ad would only be shown if the user enters exactly the keyword.
• Negative match– This option is a little different, since here we enter the keywords for which we do not want the ad to appear. A very useful term is “free”, since we want to filter out users who are not interested in purchasing.

Advertisements

The search engine advertising always consists of text ads. These ads should correspond as closely as possible to the terms that the user has entered into the search engine. For example, if you searched for “Buy cheap trips to New York,” you might find an ad titled “Find cheap trips to New York.” On the other hand, if you find something like “Cheap flights to Singapore”, chances are you won’t be interested.

Within a Google Ads text ad, we can distinguish several elements:

• Qualification– Google Ads campaigns currently support up to three different titles with a maximum of 30 characters each. Depending on the device the user is using, titles will be displayed in different ways. If there are several titles on the same line, they will be separated by a vertical bar.
• display URL: that is, the address of the advertiser’s website. Google Ads allows you to customize this parameter, so that the real domain of the website is displayed and then the words that the user chooses. For example, www.viajesbaratos.com/Nueva-York. Customizable text is limited to 15 characters.
• Description: here you can include up to two descriptions of 90 characters each. The usual thing is to use them to expand the information of the titles and it is recommended to always introduce a call to action.
• Extensions– Extensions allow you to expand your ad text information with a ton of options, such as business locations, phone numbers, additional links, or product prices.

Pay per click

The million-dollar question comes: how much does a Google Ads campaign cost?

The advertising in Google search engine It follows a pay-per-click or PPC model, that is, we will pay for each time a user clicks on the ads.

This advertising uses a format of auction, that is, all advertisers bid for that space and keyword and decide the maximum price they are willing to pay. From there, Google uses a series of parameters to determine which ads will be shown and in what order.

The next million-dollar question is, logically, what these parameters are. The crux of the matter is the Quality Score or quality level.

The Quality Score is a score from 1 to 10 that Google assigns to each keyword in the account. The higher it is, the less we will pay for the ads and the better they will be located in the search engine. This score is determined based on:

• He CTR or “click through rate”, that is, the percentage of users who click on the ad compared to the total number of users who see it. The higher the relationship between ad and keyword and the attractiveness of the ad, the higher the CTR achieved.
• The ad relevancethat is, to what extent it corresponds to the keyword searched by the user.
• The landing page which the user arrives at after clicking. Once again, what we are looking for is a good relationship between the keyword and the contents of the page, as well as a good user experience.

How to create a great Google Ads campaign step by step

Video on how to run an advertising campaign on Google step by step

1) Set goals

You already know that setting realistic and coherent objectives for your business should be the first step of any marketing campaign.

The Google Ads campaigns They are very versatile, since we can use them to address the user in different phases of the conversion funnel.

The most traditional strategy is based on acting on the last phase of the conversion funnel, when the user is ready to buy. This allows you to achieve high conversion rates and quick results, but it has the drawback that the competition can be very high. Since advertising is paid for on an auction basis, this usually means a high cost per click.

On the other hand, we can use Google Ads to reinforce our inbound strategy, introducing keywords that are not related to the moment of purchase but rather to the appearance of the need. The advantage in this case is that the competition and costs per click are much lower.

2) Research your keywords

A good one keyword selection can make the difference between success or failure in Google Ads.

In general, it is advisable to start with “brainstorming” techniques and then analyze each potential keyword to stay with the ones that interest us the most. For the first step, we can use the related searches from Google’s own search engine. To go deeper, the star tool is Google Ads’ own keyword planner (Keyword Planner), although there are also other options such as SEMRush.

To decide if a keyword interests us or not, we must take these key aspects into account:

• The search volume. Does it attract enough attention to generate a relevant volume of conversions?
• Competition and price per click. If we have an estimate of the click-to-conversion rate and ROI for each new customer, we can easily see what our limit price is.
• The intentionality. Here we have to put ourselves in the shoes of the user who searches for this keyword, to see if they are looking for general information, if they have a specific need related to our products or if they are ready to buy.

3) Decide your account structure

In order to start working with Google Ads, you must be clear about the different levels of structure within an account.

First of all, we find the bells. In general, we must keep in mind that each objective will have a separate campaign. Within the campaign, we can configure these options:

• The type of campaign. In this guide we are focusing on search, but there are also other options such as display network campaigns.
• The ubication. Very important to eliminate unwanted clicks.
• Language.
• The bidding strategy (automatic or manual)
• The daily budget.
• The device.

Next, we have the ad groups. At this level we configure the internal structure of the campaigns according to themes and control the relationship between keywords and ads. My advice here is that you try to create clearly differentiated themes, for example, the different product lines of your ecommerce.

And finally, within each ad group we will include a list of keywords and advertisements.

4) Set up your campaign

Let’s do it! Let’s see how create and configure a campaign in Google Ads Step by Step.

1. Sign up at https://ads.google.com or sign in if you already have an account.
2. Decide the daily budget of your campaign. To help you make the best decision, Google estimates the coverage you can achieve with the budget entered.
3. Define the location of your target audience. As we have seen, this is essential to rule out users who are outside the scope of coverage of your products.
4. Choose the network. If you want your ad to only show on Google search, you will have to uncheck the “Display Network” option.
5. Write your keywords. Don’t forget the concordances!
6. Set the maximum bid you are willing to pay for each click.
7. Create the text of your first ad.
8. Enter your payment information.

And ready! With this you already have everything you need for your advertising to start showing in Google Ads, but depending on the account structure you have defined, you will have to spend some time creating and organizing your ad groups.

5) Do A/B tests

A/B tests or “split tests” are one of the most effective ways to optimize your Google Ads campaigns.

The premise is very simple: it is about making experiments with some key elements of your ads, such as calls to action, title, visible URL, landing page or copy. In each A/B test, you will test two ads…