Setting up a Google Ads account

More details on each point:

1. Defining the goals of the advertising campaign.

The first thing you need to do before launching advertising campaigns in Google Ads is to clearly define their goals. In other words, clearly answer the question: “Why is an advertising campaign being created? What results should it achieve?” The goals of advertising in Google Ads can be:

• Increasing brand awareness
• Increase sales and customer acquisition

Read more about this in the section "Advertising campaign objectives in Google Ads (AdWords)"

2. Keyword selection.

Keywords are one of the most important settings in Google Ads, they are the words and phrases that will show your ads in response to users' search queries. To expand it, you need to use the Keyword Planner, which is located in the Google Ads account tools. It is important to know:

• Keywords should not be repeated across different ad groups or campaigns;
• It is recommended to add no more than 10-20 keywords in one ad group;
• In keywords, it is better to use phrases consisting mainly of 2-3 words;
• It is important to also create a list of negative keywords during the keyword selection stage.

3. Creating a Google Ads (Google AdWords) account and setting up campaigns.

Before you can create your first advertising campaign, you need to create a Google Ads account. When you create an account, you specify the country, time zone, and currency in which your account will be funded. Creating a campaign involves:

• Choosing a campaign type.  You can choose from the following options: Search and Display Network, Search Network only, Display Network only, and Google Shopping (this campaign creates Shopping ads from Google Merchant Center).
• Networks.  There are two networks: 1)  Search Network , which includes Google search itself, its partners, and some Google services (Images, Maps, Shopping, etc.). 2)  Contextual media network , which covers millions of Google partner sites, as well as some of Google's own projects (such as Gmail, YouTube, Blogger, etc.). The choice of network when setting up a campaign depends on the goals of the advertising campaign.
• Devices.  By default, Google Ads (Adwords) ads will appear on all devices (Desktops, Tablets, and Mobile devices with full browsers). However, you can set bids for different device types.
• Arrangement.  This setting specifies the geotargeting of the advertising campaign.
• Languages.  This setting sets the language of the sites on which ads will be displayed.
• Rates and budget.  Depending on whether you want to bid manually or automate the process, pay per click or per thousand impressions, you need to choose the appropriate bidding type here. The budget depends entirely on how much you are willing to spend on your advertising campaign, you can change the campaign budget at any time.

In each specific case, the correct choice of these settings is also  depends on goals and objectives that are placed before an advertising campaign.

4. Organizing an effective Google Ads account structure.

To maximize the advertising potential of Google Ads, you need to have a well-organized account structure. Account structure  — is the distribution of keywords and ads by ad groups depending on:

• Product topics
• Types of advertised goods

For example, all keywords related to shirts should be placed in one ad group, and all keywords related to shoes should be placed in another ad group. A Google Ads account consists of four main levels:

• Companies
• Ad groups
• Announcement
• Keywords

Keywords and ads are included in  ad groups , and ad groups are included in  campaigns .All keywords in an ad group must relate to the same product or be related to the same topic. Ad texts within an ad group must be relevant to any keyword in that ad group. Companies can be organized based on:

• Advertising campaign goals
• Types of advertised goods and services
• The region in which the goods and services are advertised

For example, an account might have the following campaigns: “Shoes_Kyiv” and “Shoes_Kharkiv”. Each of these campaigns might have ad groups: “Boots”, “Shoes”, “Boots”, “Sandals”, etc. In this example, the campaign is organized by two criteria: product type and region.

In most cases, the goal of an ad is to get the user to click on your site. This is possible if yours stands out and is more compelling than your competitors’ ads. To get potential customers to click on your ad, you need to:

• Use keywords in your ad text This increases the relevance of the ad, which has a positive effect on the quality score, which, in turn,  improves ad positions  and  reduces the cost per click Also, when a client enters a query that matches a keyword, the word itself is highlighted in bold.
• Indicate your benefits in your ads.  This is the so-called "lure", which can be free or fast delivery, seasonal discounts, low cost, etc.
• Use a call to action  Ad text. Tell the customer what to do. For example: "Order now", "Buy", "Buy from us", "Register", "Learn more", etc.
• Write several ad texts. Add not one, but several different ad texts to an ad group to later determine which texts work best.

6. Creating Google Ads (AdWords) ad extensions

Ad extensions allow you to include even more information about your products and services in your ad. They have a positive impact on the quality of your ad, and properly prepared extensions can positively affect the quality score and, as a result, reduce the cost per click. Ad extensions also help increase CTR, as well as increase the total ad space and make it more noticeable against the background of competitors.

• Arrangement
• Additional links
• Call
• Dynamic Search Ads
• Mobile applications
• Reviews

7. Linking Google Ads and Google Analytics accounts

It is very important to track the quality of traffic from contextual advertising, so you must link your Google Ads account to your Google Analytics account. To do this, go to the “Administrator” section in Google Analytics, then in the “Account” column, go to “Link to AdWords” and finally – “+ Add account”. In order for Google Analytics to be able to distinguish traffic from contextual advertising from search traffic from organic search results, you need to mark all links from contextual advertising with special parameters. This can be done using UTM tags or using “Automatic tagging”. To do this, in your AdWords account, in the upper right corner, you need to go to additional settings (gear icon) and in “Account settings” in the “Tracking. Automatic tagging” item, instead of “no, thanks”, set “yes”.