Getting Started with Google AdWords: Step by Step Guide

For businesses of all sizes, Google AdWords is one of the best ways to get more leads and build more sales. You can control how much you want to spend. You can control how many leads you want and from where you want it and the best part- you can control how you should get.

Little wonder that in Google’s share of the global digital advertising market was a whopping 31.1% giving Google global net revenue of $51.81 Billion! Millions of businesses around the world advertise on Google and so can you.

But using Google AdWords can be intimidating for the first timer. Heck. It can be frightening even for the experienced! That’s primarily because Google AdWords system gives complete power to the user to setup, create, run and even optimize their AdWords campaign on the fly.

I should know. I learnt it the hard way when I created my first campaign on Google AdWords. It was only after losing a lot of money trying to understand how Google AdWords operated, was I able to make my campaign successful.

In this article, I will take you through a step by step guide on How to get started with Google AdWords so that you don’t make the same mistakes I did!

What is Google AdWords?

In a nutshell, Google AdWords allows you to show your advertisement to people when they are searching for information related to your business domain. We all use Google for information and using this information from millions of users around the world, Google has managed to create a AdWords platform that allows you to show your advertisement to highly relevant people exactly when they are searching for you

When we search for anything on Google, we will see advertising like the ones marked in Red on the top and bottom of the Google Search page. These are paid advertisements.

In the example alonside, when I typed “ marketing management course’’ assuming I was someone looking to join a marketing management course, I got to see 4 advertisements from different educational institutes that provided this course.

If mine was a business providing marketing management courses, showing my advt to people when they type the word marketing management course becomes highly relevant because I know that someone who types this word is my relevant target customer

Google AdWords therefore help you show your advt to people who matter. Conceptually, it’s as simple as this. The challenge comes when one begins to implement it!

Common Questions: Google AdWords

I often face very similar questions from most business owners and first time users of Google AdWords so I think it’s important to address some of the key common questions that everyone asks

1. What is the budget I have to spend?

There is no specified budget mandated by Google. You can spend as low as $5 per day or $50,000 per day and Google will happily take your money. Your daily budget or your total budget must be determined by what you want to achieve and what your pocket can give

1. How do I decide how much to spend every day?

This is a tough question if you’re starting off on a new campaign. My advice always has been to start small with perhaps $5 budget daily and observe how your campaign is performing for the first 10 days, optimize the campaign and then scale up. Remember, it’s very easy to lose a lot of money on Search Engine Advertising if you’re not careful.

1. How does Google Charge?

AdWords works on a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) model, which means that you only pay for the number of clicks your advertisement got. You will need to enter your card details and Google will keep debiting your card based on your daily spend limit.

Google AdWords: Terminologies to know

One of the biggest disconcerting factors for most first time beginners to digital marketing is the frequent use of various terminologies that are thrown about and which can be very confusing. So before I go any further, let me share some of the key terminologies that you should know if you want to run Google AdWords for your business

Keyword: A keyword is a word that you select on the Google AdWords platform against which you want your advertisement to be shown if anyone types that word. In the example above- “marketing management course’ is the keyword that triggered off the advertisements from the 4 companies shown.

Tip : A keyword could be a single word or 2 words or even a phrase like the one above.

Bidding: A bid is the price that you say you are willing to pay to Google to trigger off your advertisement when anyone types in the keyword you have selected. Google Adwords works on the principle of allowing people to place bids on the keywords. Hence as an advertiser you will be competing with other advertisers for the same keyword.

 As a thumb rule, the higher the bid price, the more likely you’re advertising will be shown at a higher position and vice-versa.

CPC: Cost-Per Click: The CPC is the bid price you are essentially paying for each click on your advertisement by the person who is searching. What this means is that you only pay when someone clicks on your advert and not if the person does not.

Tip: CPC is the best model to opt for when you set up your campaign for the first time.

Impressions: This tells you how many times your advertisement was shown on Google AdWords network to various users. For example 10,000 impressions means that your advt was shown 10,000 times.

Clicks: The number of times, you advt was clicked by users. For example, 300 clicks means that your advertisement was clicked 300 times

CTR%: This is the percentage of clicks over impression. For example if you had 10,000 impressions for a particular keyword and you got 300 clicks, your CTR% would be 300/10000 = 3%

Tip: CTR% is an important data point to monitor when you run your campaign

Conversion & Conversion %: Conversion is the number of users who completed a specific action on your website. This could be in terms of filling up a lead form (the most common) or downloading an app or even buying something. The conversion action is something that you specify to Google and then Google will track the user from the time he has clicked on your advt on Google search right up to the time he completes the action.

Conversion % is the number of conversions over clicks as a percentage. For example if out of 300 clicks, say 50 filled up a lead enquiry form , then your conversion is 50 and your conversion % is 50/300 = 16.66%.

Tip- Focus on your cost per conversion and not your Cost per Click to make your campaign more ROI driven.

Creating your Google AdWords Account

To create your Google AdWords Account go to www.google.com/adwords.  You need to have a Gmail account to open an AdWords account. Once you have created an account, you will return to the screen shown.

Remember to skip the portion marked in Red. If you don’t do that, you will be taken to Google’s Express Advert Account which is a basis DIY account with very little functionality and control. I know of several customers of mine who did not do this and ended up wasting their money on Google before I showed them what they had done wrong.

Once you have skipped, you will be asked to give details of your country, time zone and currency. Please fill this up carefully. You don’t want to be billed in a currency other than your own!

Once you’re done, you are all ready to start creating your first campaign!

Google AdWords Campaign Setup

There are essentially 5 steps to planning and launching your first campaign with Google AdWords.

1. Setting your AdWords Objective – Goal Determination
2. Keyword Planning & Selection
3. Creating your Ads and setting up your bid price
4. Adding Payment
5. Launching & starting your campaign

Setting your AdWords Objective

There are 6 different types of campaign that you can run on Google AdWords, shown in the visual alongside. In this article we will focus only on the campaign- Search Network Only, as this particularly focuses on the most commonly used form of Google AdWords- i.e showing your ads on the Google Search pages.

To read the rest of this original article, please visit How To Do Digital Marketing- Google AdWords Guide. This in-depth article was written exclusively for www.how2dodigitalmarketing.com by Rajesh Menon. You may re-print the same by giving credit to the original publisher.