If you have a website and you decided to dedicate a budget for your online advertising, AdWords is one of the best channels to invest on. And if you have no clue of how to begin, go on reading this basic tutorial on how to set up a campaign on Google AdWords.
The goals may be different from person to person, but the basic procedure is still the same. Let’s see how it works.
What is Google AdWords
Let’s start from the beginning: you likely heard of Google AdWords already, but you never really understood how it works. Let’s try in a few words: AdWords is an advertising platform by Google that allows you to publish paid announcements in many different formats: text, images, and video, both in the SERP and on publishers’ websites.
Create your Google AdWords account
The first thing you have to do to set up a campaign on Google AdWords is creating an account: you can do it by going on adwords.com: simply input your Google account email address, a payment method, and the rest of personal data asked.
From now on, you can start setting your campaign, ads, budget, type of campaign, and landing pages.
Now, the juicy part: what kind of campaign should you choose? What kind of ad should you make? What budget should you invest? Let’s move on to find out!
Search or display?
The first question is: where should I display my ads?
As we said before, you can display your ads not only in the SERP, but also on publishers’ websites. Here are two examples:
- Search net: try to search for any keyword and you will find that the first results in the SERP are ads;
- Display net: do you recall seeing some banners on websites you usually visit with a small symbol in the corner? They are part of Google AdSense network.
What kind of ads should you make?
Once you have chosen the kind of campaign, it is time to choose the ads and if you want to display them to a generic target or a more specific one.
The best advice we can give is: concentrate on display ads, so you can use them to do remarketing, which basically means finding those users who showed some interest in your products but did not convert to a lead (or a sale).
What is remarketing
Remarketing allows you to get the attention of those users that already know you, but did not finalize the action required to go forward in the funnel.
For example, a user clicks on your ad and visits your landing page, but does not purchase your product. With remarketing, this same user will see ads showing the product they just saw, so they do not forget you.
Be careful: some users may find remarketing quite intrusive!
How to define a budget?
How much should you invest on your first AdWords campaign?
To be honest, there is actually no rule, but a lot depends on your business and your brand position. And, of course, the total budget you want to invest in marketing. Usually, for the first campaign, you can rely on AdWords, letting the platform manage your budget in order to maximize clicks. Just remember: the more competition there is in your business, the higher should be your bid to get more clicks.
Monitor and adjust
Even if the campaign goes well, always monitor stats like impressions, clicks, CTR, and conversions: there is always something to improve. For example stopping the bids on low CTR keywords, raising it on the best ones, or changing the copy of the ads and many other tweaks.
