SEM

What is Google Ads and how does Google Ads work? This is a common question asked, which is why this blog will focus on all the points as to why Google Ads is important and how it works.

What is SEM and How does this Help Your Business to Grow?

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a digital marketing strategy that helps to increase the visibility of our website in the search engine result pages (SERPs). SEM is the most effective way to grow your business and it helps to aware the customers about your brand. 

Search engine marketing can increase website visibility in two ways: Organic and Paid. 

Search engine optimization (SEO):  It is a process which can help to generate traffic on your website to get higher rankings in the SERPs, this is an organic way in which the advertiser is not required to spend any money. It consists of two activities which are On-Page & Off-Page activities. 

Another one is Paid marketing (PPC – Pay Per Click) which is explained below in detail, where the advertiser has to spend some money to get traffic to their website. 

So, SEM consists of these two marketing tactics to improve your website visibility in search engines.

What is PPC & How Paid Search Marketing Works?

PPC stands for Pay-Per-Click. PPC is nothing but the amount which the advertiser has to pay per click or per impression on an ad. It is the most common paid campaign type. PPC marketing is considered as one of the fastest digital marketing strategies to drive traffic to your website and for conversion growth.

Search engine advertising is the most common form of PPC. The advertisers have to bid for ad placement in a search engine’s sponsored ad links when someone searches for a particular keyword which is related to their business offering.

For example – If we bid on the keyword “Advertising Agency in Bangalore” our ad must show on the top on the Google result page. The higher we bid as compared with our competitors the highest rank we’ll get on the Google search result pages. 

To get an overview of campaign types offered by Google ads, check out this video.

You can grow your business in an increasingly competitive marketplace with Search engine marketing (SEM), it is the most effective way to grow any business.

PPC is helping businesses in the following ways – 

• PPC advertises directly to the audience searching for a business like you. It allows us to put your ad in front of the audience who are most likely to be interested in the products which you offer.
• By PPC advertising you can get measurable ROI, by which you can get to see what exactly you are getting out of the ads.
• In PPC money will only get deducted when someone will click on your add, so you can reach a large no. of people with the campaigns but you only have to pay money when someone clicks on your ad
• You can advertise your products and services across the globe, locally and globally as per your requirements.

What is Google Ads? All You Need To Know About Google Ads

These days Google ads are becoming progressively popular among all businesses across all industries. 

Whenever you search for any keyword in a search engine you can see ‘Ad’ flashing in front of some of the search results, this is nothing but the Ad shown by Brands to extend their revenue to a level that would never be possible through offline marketing.

Refer to the below infographic for the Google Ads stats according to a survey-

Still, what is Google Ads, and why Google Ads is important? It is a paid service by Google by which one can run their advertisement to get featured on the top results of the search engine. Google Ads is important as it helps to get the result faster and helps to maximize the ROI. 

Your paid campaigns should be stronger and more focused if you want to get more clicks resulting in a greater probability of obtaining new customers to your website. 

Advertising with Google Ads begins with creating a campaign. The type of campaign you decide to create should be based on your advertising goals. 

For example: if you’d like to show your ads on Google SERP to get more visitors to your site, you should choose a Search Network campaign.

When you get started with your campaign setup, you’ll be asked to select campaign goals and select a campaign type.

Google offers 6 types of campaigns by which you can improve your website visibility in SERPs. 

Types of Google Ads Campaigns:

1. Google Search Ads Campaign: Search Campaigns advertisements promote your products and services straightforwardly Search Engine Result Page of any particular query that your search on Google. 

You can directly target the audience to whom you want to show your ads and even narrow your targeting to users in a certain geographical region.

 2. Google Smart Campaign: When you sign up in smart campaigns you just have to write an ad that describes your business along with the description of your products and you have to set the budget.

Google will show your ad automatically to potential customers across Google Search, Google Maps, Google search partners, and the Google Display Network.

 3. Google Video Ads Campaign: Video ad campaigns are an exciting method to reach and engage your audience on YouTube and over the web. You can create and manage your campaigns in Google Ads by using the “Video” Ad campaign type.

4. Google Shopping Ads Campaign: In Google shopping ads there is no need for much setup and there aren’t many features to select, if you want to show the products which your eCommerce store offers in Google Shopping, then you’ll need to set up the Google Merchant Center and the process isn’t difficult. 

Here are the steps for creating a Google shopping ads campaign:

1. Sign in to your Google Ads account
2. In the menu at the left corner, click campaigns
3. Click on the plus button (+), then click new campaign
4. For “Campaign type,” select shopping and click on the next option

Major Steps to Set up your Shopping Ads Campaign

• Merchant: You have to select the merchant center account that contains all the products which you want to advertise. If in case you will not find any account, you will need to link your merchant center account with Google ads account. You can’t change the merchant after you have created the campaign.
• Country of Sale: Then you need to select the countries where you want to sell your products, your ads will be shown only in the countries which you have selected. And you can’t change the country once you have created the campaign
• Inventory Filter: You only need to change this setting if you need to limit the quantity of items utilized in your campaign. To do this, pick the criteria an item should meet so as to be promoted. The items that match all the requirements you select will be added to your campaign. You can change this setting after the campaign has been made.
• Bidding: In this step you have to select the type of bidding which you want to use in your campaign, you can change this setting even after the campaign has been made.
• Daily Budget: The budget which you are willing to spend each day on the campaign
• Campaign Priority: You only need to change this setting if you are promoting the same products in multiple campaigns for the same country of sale. The campaign priority will decide which campaign should be used when products overlap in the country.
• Local Inventory Ads: You only need to change this setting if you want your Shopping campaign to include products that can be sold in local stores. To promote local products, you’ll need to submit local product data into the Merchant Center. Then, check the box to enable ads for products sold in the local stores.

V. Click on Save and then Continue button

VI. Next you have to choose what kind of ad group you want to create

• Product Shopping (if you’re new to Shopping, It is recommended) These are individual product ads. These ads are automatically created using the information from your Merchant Center account.
• Showcase Shopping These are the ads related to several products that group together in a single ad. Some additional steps are required to create this ad.  

VII. Click Save.

5. Google Universal App Ads Campaign: The universal app campaigns allow you to advertise your app across Display, Video Networks, and Search ads. You just have to add your app and modify some objectives.

6. Google Display Ads Campaign: Display ad campaigns give you the option to reach people outside of Google’s search engine results, through content, pictures, and video banner displays that appear when users browse the web, use applications, or watch videos.

You can choose a goal for your campaign based on the actions which you want your customers to take.

Goals Include: 

• Sales
• Leads
• Website traffic
• App promotion
• Brand Awareness & reach
• Product & brand consideration

How the Google Ads auction works?

The Google Ads auction depends upon three factors:

1. Your bid
2. Your landing page Quality Score
3. Your promotion augmentations

1. Your bid: Google Ads isn’t a compensation to-win stage. However, your bid influences your performance in the Google ads auction. Your company could win or lose depending on your bid. Place realistic and reasonable bids, versus over the top ones for the best execution and rate of profitability (ROI). Google Ads bidding strategies allows you to do things manually or automated.

Types of bidding strategies in Google Ads:

• Manual Cost Per Click (CPC) – Manual cost per click allows you to set the bids at either the keyword level or the ad group. This is considered as the best bidding strategy for new advertisers.
• Automatic Cost Per Click (CPC) – Automatic cost per click gives all the control to Google to adjust your bids up or down. This will help you by giving the most clicks within your daily budget for that specific campaign.
• Enhanced Cost Per Click (ECPC) – This strategy gives Google the right to increase or decrease your bids by 30%. Google will increase your CPC by 30% if the conversion is likely to happen and vice versa
• CPA Bidding (Conversion Optimizer) – Allows Google to adjust bids to the average of certain cost per conversion goal that you have set. It has been found that CPA bidding is more effective on display ads
• CPM Bidding (Cost Per Thousand Impressions) – This strategy is only available for display network campaigns, this allows you to set the target bids that assemble after 1,000 impressions. CPM doesn’t charge you for clicks
• Flexible Bids – The last one is flexible bids. It is located within your Google ads shared libraries, here you can find 6 different flexible bidding strategies.

2. Your Quality Score: Your Quality Score (which ranges from 1-10) outlines the worth, relevance, and past execution of your ads, keywords, and landing pages. A great Score can prompt lower promotion costs, as well as a better position across advertisement systems. 

The formula to calculate quality score is simply: ( 1 + Landing Page Experience weight + Ad      Relevance weight + CTR weight )

( 1 + Landing Page Experience weight + Ad Relevance weight + CTR weight )

3. Your promotion augmentations: By using Google Ads extensions, you can improve your ad’s performance and visibility, like offering clients a telephone number for reaching your group. Increasing the value of your promotion can improve your odds of winning the advertisement auction. You can include extensions while making your ads.

In order to increase the CTR (Click Through Rate) the best-recommended practice is to use Google Ads extensions in your ads, here are the extensions list which Google Ads offers –

• Sitelink Extensions
• Location Extensions
• Affiliate Location Extensions
• Structured Snippet Extensions
• Call Extensions
• Message Extensions
• App Extensions
• Callout Extensions
• Price Extensions
• Promotion Extensions

Note: Google has announced that Message Extension will get removed by this year. 

It is not necessary to use all the extensions in your ads, based on the services, products which you offer, and based on the business and industry you can add relevant extensions. 

At the point when Google launches its ad auction, it also calculates the cost-per-click (CPC) by using this formula:

Actual CPC = Competitor Ad Rank / Your Quality Score + 0.1 

The actual CPC is what your business pays for each click that your ads get. This equation is the reason most organizations pay not as much as what they offer for a keyword. It’s crucial to know, however, that your business will never pay more than what you offer or bid.

Google Ads falls as a paid advertisement platform under the marketing channel which is PPC (Pay-Per-Click).

Nowadays, more and more businesses are taking advantage of Google Ads and PPC campaigning to drive more traffic to their website and to generate more revenue. 

How Does Google Ads Work? 

Google Ads offers a demonstrated advertising technique for organizations across businesses and areas. 

Its variety of focusing on alternatives, adaptable expenses, and various ad promotion types permit any organization, from local to global, to contact its crowd and keep its advertising cost within the budget.

Google Ads permits organizations to make unique ads for all the reaching users. 

These promotions/advertisements can show on the Google Search Network, as in Google search result pages, and on the Google Display Network, as on third-party sites. Google Ads additionally offers access to bidding options, campaigns, and diverse targeting.

How to set up Google Ads Campaign –

Here is the step by step guide to create a Search Ad Campaign:

1. Sign in to your Google Ads Dashboard, Click on (+) sign to create a New Campaign

2. Select the goal according to your business whether you want to run your campaign for sales, brand awareness, leads, website traffic, or app promotion.

3. Then select the campaign type which you want to create like: Search Campaign, Display Campaign, Video Campaign or Shopping Campaign. Put your URL and press continue.

4. Then add your group name and add the keywords on which you want your ads to be shown, and click on save and continue,

5. In this step you have to create your ad by adding the URL, headings & descriptions. This information will be visible in the search engine when your ad will appear in SERPs.

6. Here you can select the targeting audience, location according to your marketing strategy

7. In this step you can set your daily budget the amount which you’re willing to spend on your ad on a daily basis. You can set your bid and can add the extensions as per your business requirements.

8. This is the last and final step for confirmation of your campaign. Click on save and continue and Hurray!!! Your campaign is ready to run.

When you complete the process of making and setting up your campaigns, Google does review and approve your advertisements. 

Following approval, Google can start demonstrating your promotions over the proper advertisement systems, similar to the Google Search Network or the Google Display Network. However, they must win the ad auction, to get featured in the Google search result pages.

Benefits of Running Google Ads:

• You can focus on multiple keywords simultaneously
• Google Ads will help to boost traffic on our website
• It will help to get more phone calls and more in-store visits
• It gives you all the flexibility to stop and pause your ads at any point of time 
• Ads which appears on the top of the page get immediate visibility as compared with other ads
• Google Ads are not restricted to the size of any business. you can create and run your ad as per your budget.

 So, now that you’ve learned about Google Ads, it’s time for your business to take up a notch. Good Luck!