Google is the best known and most frequently used search engine in the world. It is also the most popular search engine in Belgium: 94% of Belgians use it for their online searches. Today we will be looking at the Google tool for search advertising: Google AdWords.
The name in itself is rather self-explanatory: Ad + Words. You will be making ads based on certain specific keywords. These will then be shown to a very specific audience of your choosing, your ideal target audience. That seems simple and in and of itself managing such a campaign isn’t very difficult, but it requires plenty of preliminary research and you need to setup the campaigns correctly. Indeed, it’s all about keywords in AdWords. Defining the right keywords is essential. Keywords that your potential customers use to find you. This information can come from Google Analytics, but also from specific keyword research.
Using Google AdWords correctly
As soon as you have defined your keywords, it’s best to start with a small number of ads. Focus on your best products and offers and really go for the keywords that are most relevant for your company. The more specific you can be with your keywords or keyword groups, the better. If you are too vague in setting up your ad, your advertising budget will be spent very quickly, without good or relevant results. Also remember that you can exclude: enter keywords that you want to exclude to keep out the wrong audience. This is something that you will have to update constantly. Google will keep track of all the keywords that show your ad, so you can improve and optimise your ad by adding new keywords and excluding the wrong keywords.
Dutch, French and English are spoken in Belgium, so take that into account when you are designing your ads. Furthermore, you can also configure the location where your ads will be shown. It’s best to start with a smaller area, so focus on your top locations first. And later on, you can start advertising by province or region.
Pro tip: use AdWords along with your SEO strategy to end up higher in the Google search results.
AdWords vocabulary
Online advertising has its own extensive vocabulary. Below, we will list the most important words for Google AdWords.
- Ad Groups: a number of ads with the same keywords and targeting methods grouped under one budget.
- Ad Extensions: additional information (text) that will be shown under the main ad.
- Ad Rank: value is used by Google to determine where your ad will be shown on the page (based on your Quality Score and Bid Amount).
- Bid Amount: your AdWords budgets can be defined and limited in several ways. With the Bid Amount you can set the maximum that you wish to pay per click.
- Click Through Rate or CTR: the amount of people that click on your ad compared to the number of people who have seen your ad (clicks/views).
- Call To Action or CTA: the action you wish your visitor to undertake, often in a button. Choose short and direct words: Buy now, More information, Register, …
- Cost Per Click or CPC: how much you pay every time someone clicks on your ad.
- Campaign: this is your campaign in Google AdWords, which exists of a number of Ad Groups with the same budget and the same settings.
- Campaign Type: the way your ads will be seen. There are three possibilities with Google AdWords:
- Search Network: your ads only appear in the Google search results
- Display Network (or AdSense): a network of Google partners where your ad will be shown (websites, videos, YouTube, Blogspot, …)
- Combination of Search Network and Display Network
- Daily Budget: you can manage your budget even better by defining a maximum daily budget. This will be calculated based on a monthly average, so it can vary from day to day.
- Impression: how many times your ad was shown
- Keywords: the words and phrases you wish to advert for. These days, Google recommends to not only advertise for specific words, but also certain word groups. For example, consider the difference between the keyword “drivers license” and the word group “requesting a driver’s license”, “written exam driver's license” and “how much does a driver’s license cost”.
- Landing page: the page that an internet user will see when he clicks on your ad. Tip: adapt the content of this page to your ad.
- Mobile Ad: naturally you can make a difference between desktop and mobile ads. You can configure ads specifically for mobile through AdWords.
- Quality Score: this score out of 10 is determined by the quality of your ad (title, description, keyword, landing page, images, …). The higher the score, the better your ad will be shown and the less you’ll pay for it. This means that Google rewards good ads that answer the questions of visitors.