The Beginner’s Guide to Google Adwords

Google AdWords is one of the most important tools that the digital marketing world could get. With its endless services, AdWords is nothing less than a boon if you are a digital marketer. With everything that it has to offer, let’s dive into the world of Google AdWords.

History and Development of Google AdWords

• Google launched AdWords in 2000 as a monthly paid service for advertisers
• Initially, all the ad accounts and ad campaigns were managed by Google
• In 2005, Google launched a campaign management service called Jumpstart, where advertisers could manage their accounts
• Also in 2005, Google started the Google Advertising Professional (GAP) program for anyone who completed and passed the Google AdWords training and test
• In 2013, Google added advanced campaigns to AdWords to help campaign management for users with multiple devices
• In 2016, Google added “Showcase Shopping”, which let advertisers use images that people could associate with search terms and keywords
• In October 2017, Google increased its previous daily budget of 120% to 200%

Why Should You Use Google AdWords?

You’ve seen the competition out there in the current market, haven’t you? To reach the top position and retain it for as long as possible is a tough journey. Let’s see how AdWords helps you attain that.

AdWords Beats SEO Tools

While Search Engine Optimization is also highly important for a website of a business or anything else, AdWords has been proven to work faster than SEO tools. It not just helps you with your keywords, it is one of the most efficient platforms where you can set up an elaborate ad campaign, and not just that, you can manage and improve your, which leads to better traffic and better lead generation. It lets you focus on multiple keywords at the same time and also gives you the flexibility to run or stop your campaign whenever you want.

Boosts Brand Consciousness

AdWords is one of the most advanced advertising campaign platforms. It shows you how well your search or display ads are doing and provides suggestions on how to improve your ads as well. It has different campaign management settings suitable for various devices. So, the better your ads are made and performed, the higher will be your brand’s recognition.

Gets You Customers Via Remarketing

Sometimes people click an ad, go through the details, but don’t buy what you are offering. This shows that though they didn’t purchase a product from you, they are still interested in your brand. AdWords helps you identify such probable customers and then strategically places your ad again while they are browsing the Internet. The more they come across your ad, eventually, they end up as converted customers.

Helps You Improve Your Work Constantly

As an advertising platform, Google AdWords does more than you could ask for. It not just helps you with setting up your ad and choosing relevant keywords to attract customers, it also tracks the performance of your ads. It tells you which ad or which feature of an ad is doing well and which isn’t, and based on your performance graph, you can work towards improving or making even better ads for your audience.

Helps You in Tracking Your Audience

Apart from tracking the performance of your ad campaigns, AdWords enables you to track the interests of the users who interact with your ads. It lets you know what area the customer shows more interest in, which part is less preferred, how long the customer interacted with your ad, the bounce rate of your page, so on and so forth. That way, you can customize your ads based on your customers’ relevance.

Are You Better than Your Competitors?

This is another reason why your business needs Google AdWords. You can compare how well you are performing with respect to your competitors. You can check what ad strategies your competitors are opting for, which of those are better than yours, and how you can strategize better and more engaging content than them.

Reach Everyone

Not only is Google one of the most used websites, but it is also the top utilized search engine. So if your ad is placed on the search engine results page while someone is browsing through Google, they can easily come across your brand. And with about 2+ trillion search results being handled by Google each year, it’s safe to say that your ad can be seen by a lot of people.

Target Audience Customization

One of the best things about AdWords is that it offers a very detailed customer targeting range. You can choose your target audience based on the tiniest of details, which are relevant to your business.

You Control Your Ad Campaigns

No external parties involved, it’s just you who controls your ads. That way, you can track everything and make changes as you wish.

Set Your Budget

Unlike traditional marketing methods, AdWords allows you to set your own budget. You can fix a budget for your ad campaign as high or as low as you want to based on your convenience.

See Your Results

Traditional marketing strategies are not just costly, they also present a bleak probability of viewers converting into actual customers. You can’t see the results yourself. But with AdWords letting you track everything, you can see the actual number of conversions from your ads.

So, I’m pretty sure by now that you must have made up your mind to advertise on Google AdWords because of all the cool benefits your brand will get. Now let’s talk about how you can optimize your AdWords campaigns to get the best possible results.

How to Optimize Your AdWords Ad Campaigns?

Finalize Your Target

Ensure which audience you want to target. Since AdWords already provides a very precise level of targeting options, it is very easy for you to choose the particular type of audience you want to target to promote your brand.

Auto-tagging is Important

Auto-tagging is a feature that allows you to import data from Google Analytics about the number of conversions you have received so far. It is a highly important feature, and it helps you in tracking your growth. Make sure you enable it.

Ad Rotation is Necessary

If you have multiple ads in your campaign, ensure that you use the “Rotate Indefinitely” option. Ad Rotation is the way in which your ads are delivered on the search and the display networks. Seeing the same ad can be monotonous for a viewer. The” Rotate Indefinitely” feature keeps rotating and showing a new ad every time the user changes a page. This ensures a better engagement and a better CTR.

Fridays are a Big No

If you are planning to start an ad campaign, never do it on a Friday. Most people get off of work on Fridays and relax for the weekend. So they spend very less time on the Internet. Posting an ad campaign on Friday gets fewer views than it should originally receive on a mid-weekday or a Monday.

Ad Approval is Necessary

It often happens that if one ad is disapproved, then the entire ad group gets disabled, thus leading to the cancellation of the ad campaign. Ensure that each bit of each ad is approved for a successful ad campaign.

Make Device-friendly Ads

People don’t stick to browsing the Internet just via their desktops or laptops. With changing times, technology is spreading fast, and today more people are browsing on their cell phones and tablets because of the portability. When they see your ads on their device, the ads should be able to load and function properly. Ensure that when you create ads, it should be device-friendly so that it can show up flawlessly, whatever the device may be. AdWords lets you choose which device you want to target, which model of a particular device you want to target, and even which browser and network you want to target. So use it in the best possible way.

Check the Search Lost IS

The Search Lost IS is a column that shows you the number of potential impressions you lost because you had insufficient budget in your AdWords account. This depends on your campaign budget. Higher the budget, the slower it will exhaust and the lesser impressions you’ll lose, and vice versa. It also shows you loss of rank and shares.

Schedule Your Ads

While people use the Internet all the time, there are particular parts of the day where the most number of users are active, which means there is a better chance of your ads being viewed by most people. Identify those hours and activate your ads for those hours.

A/B Testing is Necessary

A/B test is a method that lets you compare between two variations of the same thing and shows which of them works better. It is necessary that you have at least two variations of your ad. Proceed for the A/B test to know which of the two is better liked by the audience. That way, you can easily know what your audience prefers and work towards it.

Choose Relevant Keywords

Google AdWords comes with a Keyword Planner. You can use it to check relevant keywords for your business and also get suggestions for related keywords. Not just that, it also shows you the bidding budget for each keyword and the strength of each keyword and its maximum search volume. So use it to your benefit.

Negative Keywords are Necessary Too

You don’t want your brand or your ad to appear under categories they don’t belong to, do you? Since AdWords offers a Keyword Planner, you can use it to find and mark certain keywords as negative. This way, these keywords will be considered as negatives and won’t be featured in your ads.

With a tool as effective as Google AdWords, your business is bound to lead the race in today’s market. While there are thousands of ways in which you can optimize your ads, these small but important tricks can lead to better conversion rates than expected. This short video will walk you through how AdWords works.