A Guide To Advertising On Google

Discover everything you need to know when it comes to advertising on Google, to ensure that your Google Ads account is optimised for your business and that you are getting your desired return on investment.

Contents

1. What is Google Ads?
2. What Are The Different Types of Google Ads?
3. How Do You Get Started With Google Ads?
4. Do Google Ads Work?
5. Google Ads For Ecommerce Websites
6. SilverDisc’s PPC ROI Calculator
7. How Is Google Ads Success Measured?
8. How To Analyse Google Ads
9. Providing Tangible Results From Google Ads
10. How To Start Your PPC Campaigns

What Is Google Ads?

On Google search engine results pages (SERPs), there are two types of website listings - paid and organic. When a user searches on Google, they will see organic search results that match their query, as well as paid ads that - while also being very relevant to the query - companies have paid for so that their websites appear more prominently.

Businesses use a platform called Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords) to advertise on Google. Google Ads is the world's largest Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising platform, where advertisers bid to display their short and snappy ads, service offerings, product listings, or videos to web users.

There are two sections of the SERPs where paid Google Ads can appear - one is above the organic links and the other is at the bottom of the results page. You will notice that the ads are denoted with an “Ad” label and that there are normally about three ads per section.

Google also offers Display Ads, which appear on the Google Display Network. The Display Network is made up of third-party websites that have partnered with Google and agreed to serve Google Ads in text, image, or video format.

Find out how SilverDisc can help you achieve your business goals through Google advertising.

What Are The Different Types of Google Ads?

There are five different types of Google Ads:

1. Search Ads

Search ads are the most common PPC ads you will see at the top and bottom of the search results on Google. You will know if you are looking at a PPC ad as it says “ad” to the left of the site URL in the search results. Users end up in the Google search results through traditional search-bar queries as well as through mediums such as voice search.

2. Display Ads

Display ads are another PPC ad type. They appear on Google’s partner websites and instead of being all-text ads like a search ad, these ads usually include an image and text.

3. Video Ads

Video ads are displayed before, during or after YouTube videos and across video partner sites and are usually 6-15 seconds in duration. From skippable in-stream ads to bumper ads, there are many types of video ad format at your disposal, depending on how you want to engage your customers. 

Read more about the benefits of video ads and the different video ad formats available.

4. Shopping Campaigns

Instead of marketing your brand as a whole, Shopping Ads allow you to promote specific products and product lines. 

When you search for a product in Google, you will notice that Google shopping ads appear in a carousel format above the main Google search results. This creates the effect of “window shopping” so that searchers can browse the same type of product from different companies, and compare prices before they even click through to their chosen website.

Comparison Shopping Services (CSS) can also show shopping ads in Google search results, the same way Google Shopping does. Find out why you should consider using a CSS partner.

5. App Ads

You can promote your mobile app by running ads that encourage your audience to install it or take an action within your app. You can run these ads on the Google search and display networks, YouTube, Google Play and more.

You just need to provide Google with your app's information and audience and place a bid to get started.

How Do You Get Started With Google Ads?

You can find an overview of the Google Ads experience by utilising the Google Ads help pages and handy YouTube tutorials.

It is also highly important that you consistently think about your audience when creating ads. This mini-series of articles focuses on how you can tailor your targeting settings to improve performance for your lead generation or eCommerce PPC accounts:

• How To Improve Your PPC Campaign Targeting Part 1 - Lead-Generation
• How To Improve Your PPC Campaign Targeting Part 2 - Ecommerce

Do Google Ads Work?

When you set up, optimise and efficiently run your Google Ads campaigns, you can achieve great results such as increased brand awareness, more conversions, and a high return on investment (ROI). Whatever your business goals, with planning and consideration you can create Google Ads that benefit your business. The success that Google advertising provides will be unique to your business, but here are some interesting facts to consider:

• 63% of people have clicked on a Google ad.
• 95% of ad clicks on mobile devices go to Google Ads campaigns.
• Ads that appear in search results earn more than 45% of page clicks.

You can also utilise Google Ads to discover your online competitors. It is often the case that some of your competitors are very active on Google Ads and could be scooping up your potential customers, but you will not be fully aware of this unless you promote your business through paid search, too. PPC ads provide a seamless way to showcase your products and/or services to potential consumers online. Our guide to building your paid marketing skillset may provide you with some support with creating effective PPC ads with a customer-centric mindset.

You can also take a look at some of our case studies and testimonials for a more in-depth insight into Google Ads success. You’ll see how we have worked with clients, listened to their goals, and succeeded in achieving them.

Google Ads For Ecommerce Websites

When it comes to eCommerce, PPC marketing is an ideal way to get your products in front of the right customer base and therefore, grow online sales.

There are several paid search tools available that can aid ecommerce. These include:

• Reaching new customers with Google Shopping campaigns
• Retargeting users to encourage them to complete a sale or repeat purchase with Dynamic remarketing campaigns
• Maximising the returns of PPC campaigns with ROI-led bidding strategies in Google Ads
• Promotion extensions - with key retail dates such as Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas, ensuring the best deals are seen by potential customers through promotion extensions is key to the success of many ecommerce websites.

Besides these, there are many PPC marketing tools available to retailers for growing sales and maximising returns. With Google Ads providing the capability to target users who are ready to buy, PPC is a great choice for online retailers to drive sales and revenue. Find out more in our articles, “How To Make PPC Marketing Work For Ecommerce” and “How To Remain Competitive In Crowded Ecommerce Markets”.

SilverDisc’s PPC ROI Calculator

Interested In how Google PPC Ads could benefit your business? ROI-based marketing targeting and bidding options are consistently evolving and provide a measurable way to understand the effectiveness of your targeted ad campaigns, and there are now several smart bidding strategies designed to focus on ROI. These bidding strategies provide a more goal-orientated form of paid digital advertising. This allows marketers to have a clearer view of overall performance from an ROI perspective, at every step of the way.

For further insight into how you can measure your return on investment through metrics such as Target ROAS, Target CPA and Target COA, take a look at our article on forecasting paid search.

The most important thing is that you choose a bidding strategy and reporting method most appropriate to your business and what it sells, and ensure it’s aligned with your business goals. Find out more about smart bidding and try using the SilverDisc PPC ROI calculator: our interactive tool will help you to forecast the spend levels required to achieve your digital marketing goals, alongside the return on investment of your PPC advertising.

How Is Google Ads Success Measured?

Measuring success is so important -  if you don’t know whether your goals are being met, how can you continue to move forward? When it comes to Google Ads, daily, weekly, monthly and annual reports can be downloaded and edited to display the data you want to see, whether that’s your cost per click, goal conversions or conversion rate.

As Google has evolved, it has introduced automated bidding strategies, which use machine learning to improve campaign performance by saving time and take out the guesswork, enabling you to meet your business goals.

Consistently monitoring your campaigns to ensure that they are fully optimised can seem daunting, but is essential to delivering the results you want. To provide a little help with this, here are five key metrics that will help you to better understand, run and monitor your Google ad campaigns to make sure that they are performing, whether you are using manual or automated bidding strategies:

1. Click-through rate (CTR) - The number of clicks you get on your ad as a proportion of the number of views your ad gets. A higher CTR indicates that the quality of your ad matches search intent and therefore targets relevant keywords.
2. Quality score (QS) - The quality of your ad is determined by your CTR, your keyword relevance, the quality of your landing page, and your past performance on the SERPs. Importantly, QS is also a determining factor in your AdRank (the position of your PPC ad on a SERP) - and the higher your ad ranks, the more visibility it will get.
3. Clicks - When someone clicks on your ad, Google Ads counts that as a click. Clicks help you to understand how well your ad is appealing to consumers. If your ad is relevant and highly targeted, you are more likely to have a higher number of clicks.
4. Conversion rate (CVR) - CVR is a measure of form submissions as a proportion of total visits to your landing page. A high CVR means that your landing page matches the promise of the ad. Take a look at where to focus your conversion rate optimisation in this article.
5. Cost per conversion (Cost/conv.) -  This is the cost divided by the conversions, which shows the average cost of a conversion. If you track multiple conversion actions, such as a brochure download, a contact form submission and a click to call, your overall cost per conversion may be lower than the cost for each conversion action. 

At SilverDisc, we keep a close eye on how we are progressing towards your goals, reporting back to you and collaborating with you to ensure that as we meet your goals or your business changes, we continue to strategise, engineer, market and measure.

As our digital marketing system shows, everything we do for you is informed by your goals, and we’re with you at the centre of it all, managing your digital marketing every step of the way.

How To Analyse Google Ads

One of the crucial parts of managing a successful Google Ads campaign is consistently monitoring and analysing the performance of your ads. This will help you to optimise your account and reach your ideal audience. Google suggests these five steps to help you monitor the performance of your ads campaigns:

1. Set up and monitoring conversion tracking
2. Measure your Return on Investment
3. Find the most effective keywords
4. Check the quality score
5. Use reports

You can find out more about each of these basics of successful Google Ads analysis through the Google Ads resources pages. This article also highlights how Google Analytics can provide a holistic view of your online performance.

Providing Tangible Results From Google Ads

At SilverDisc, we use the latest technology offered by our partners such as Google, Microsoft and Facebook - including Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, automation and personalisation - to create highly targeted ads that deliver results.

Think with Google provides you with a “Digital Marketing Toolbox”, packed full of Google insight tools, that are predominantly free of charge. The toolbox contains tools which, as Google explains, are “designed to help improve your brand’s marketing, web performance, analysis, digital experience and more.” Here we have highlighted three particularly handy tools to help you track and improve your businesses digital marketing presence: Inform Your Digital Marketing Strategy With Tools From Think With Google.

We have a track record of delivering repeatable and measurable ROI in excess of 150% per annum, and we can do the same for your business. In addition to using tools provided by our partners and third parties, our own custom automation tools give you that cutting edge, helping to streamline your PPC processes and show the most relevant ads to each user.

How To Start Your PPC Campaigns

No matter the size of your business, or the industry you work in, advertising on Google can be a successful part of your marketing strategy - so why not give it a go?
Take greater strides towards meeting your business goals by working with a team of strategists, engineers and marketers dedicated to your success.

We’ve helped dozens of businesses navigate the world of digital marketing and we’re waiting to help you, too.