The Ultimate Guide to AdWords Marketing in 2024

Words Marketing has undoubtedly changed the way of advertising by providing better ROI (Return on Investment). With small investments and a better AdWords campaign, even the small and medium businesses are giving competition to the large companies on the google search engine page. According to a survey conducted by Market Analysts, there has been a significant increase in online transactions compared to in-store purchases through advertising and marketing. Before we dive into AdWords Marketing, let us know what AdWords is.

What is AdWords?

Google’s AdWords is a tool for creating ads for SEM. One of the most critical aspects of digital marketing is search engine marketing (SEM). It is the technology that benefits Google and other companies to earn billions a year.

With Google AdWords now Google Ads, you can check how effective your ad is, unlike other forms of advertising. AdWords is all about tracking return of Investment (ROI). For instance, if you spent 5$ on an ad and made 10 $, that is good. Thus, it helps you to track the ad results. Based on the return of Investment, you can decide whether to focus on the product or not. In general, AdWords is all about tracking ROI, Return of Investment.

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Origin of AdWords

AdWords was launched in October 2000 and renamed Google Ads in 2018 after some rebranding. Google Ads is a platform or a medium used by the user to place ads on Google properties and Google partner platforms.

Facts Related to AdWords or Google Ads:

• Google Ads generates 97% of Google’s total revenue.
• According to the Google Economic Impact Report, for every $1 spent on Google Ads, businesses earn an average of $2 in revenue.
• Google’s search and advertising technologies generated $80 billion in economic activity in the United States in 2011.
• In 2011, Amazon reportedly spent $55.2 million on Google Ads advertising.
• An ad in the first position has a click-through rate of 7.94 percent on average.

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How does Google AdWords Charge?

Google AdWords is a PPC (pay-per-click) online advertising model that advertisers pay when a user clicks on one of their ads. Businesses that run ads in pay-per-click advertising pay only when a user clicks on their ad and visits their website. PPC ads drive heavy traffic at a very reasonable rate when compared to other forms of advertising.

How does AdWords work?

AdWords Marketing involves marketers targeting a specific keyword and making bids on it to rank one on the google page.

Google Auction revolves around the following metrics

1. Ad Ranking
2. Bidding
3. Quality Score

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Bidding is the maximum amount the user intends to spend on the google ad. The higher the bidding amount, the better the ranking, but more Bidding isn’t enough.

There are three options for Bidding.

• CPC, cost-per-click, is the amount paid on each click of your ad.
• CPM, cost-per-mile, is the price you pay for a thousand impressions of your ad, which means thousand people see your ad.
• CPE, cost-per-engagement, is the amount you pay when someone clicks on your ad and takes a specific action.

Quality Score:

The ad’s relevance, the transparency of the landing page, the Ease of Navigation, and the amount of time spent on the site all contribute to the Quality Score. On a scale of one to ten, the quality score indicates how well each ad or keyword is doing (ten being the best). It’s an overall score that will help you determine how well you’re doing.

Google will assign an ad ranking based on Bidding and Quality Score, determining where the ad will appear on the Google search engine.

Ad Ranking = Quality Score * Max Cost-per-click (CPC) /Bidding                 

For a clearer understanding of why a quality score is so crucial, consider the scenario above. Quality Score also determines the amount of money you spend on the Bidding. By working on the quality score, you can decrease the CPC you pay on Bidding. In other words, the greater your quality score, the less money you’ll spend on clicks and final acquisition costs.

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How to create an AdWords Marketing Campaign

Before we go ahead and create an AdWords Marketing Campaign, we need to understand the structure of google ads.

The Basic Structure of Google Ads is:

1. Campaign Level
2. Ad Group level
3.   Ads Level

Within an AdWords account, an AdWords campaign is a set of ads. As shown in the image above, an AdWords account can have multiple drives, and we can also create multiple ad groups in a campaign.

Now coming back to the structure of the google ads

The Campaign level allows us to select network, audience, budget, ad extensions

Ad Group levels majorly involve keywords. In an ad group, we require keywords that have a common topic. For example, suppose my keyword is luggage bags. In that case, I’ll need to group keywords similar to luggage bags into a single Ad Group so that whenever a user searches for that keyword, an ad related to that phrase is displayed.

Ad Level usually involves creating an ad that could be a search ad or any ad type discussed earlier.

When deciding on the size of your ad group, it’s best to follow the rules below to avoid any confusion.

• Max of 7-10 ad groups per campaign
• Max of ~20 keywords per ad group
• 2-3 ads per ad group

Apart from understanding the structure of Google Ads, we need to be familiar with a few concepts that would ease creating an AdWords Marketing Campaign.

Types of Google Campaigns

Search Campaigns   

These ads appear as a text advertisement on google search engine and other Google properties like Google Maps and Google shopping and partner websites on Google that show text ads.

These are the regular ads you encounter when you try to find something on google. You can identify them on the search result page by a black “Ad” symbol next to the URL.

Display Campaigns

Display campaigns allow you to target consumers who browse millions of websites and applications with visually appealing adverts. Display advertising is an excellent method to broaden the reach of your Search campaigns throughout the internet.

Google’s services, such as YouTube, Gmail, and thousands of partner sites, display advertising. Advertisers can utilize the display network to target specific audiences or keywords, and their ads will appear on websites where potential customers are browsing.

Shopping Campaigns

Shopping Campaigns give you the ability to sell your products in a much more visual manner. By presenting your product directly to clients, shopping advertising can generate qualified leads.

 Re-Marketing

Re-marketing or retargeting is the act of sending a new marketing message to the customers who previously interacted with your ads but didn’t convert.

Video Campaigns

Video campaigns allow you to place advertisements in YouTube videos and websites and apps that use Google video partners. Available video ad formats include Skippable in-stream ads, non-skippable in-stream discovery ads, Outstream ads, and bumper ads.

Keyword Match Types

You must select a keyword match type when bidding on a keyword in your AdWords Marketing campaigns or PPC Campaigns, which tells Google how forcefully you want your ads to match keyword queries.

You can choose from four distinct keyword match types when advertising with Google AdWords.

1.Broad Match 

If no keyword is specified, this is the default keyword. As the name implies, Broad Match matches all of the terms that are relevant to your keyword.

For example, if your broad match keyword is weight loss, it would trigger all the similar keywords like weight loss recipes, weight loss diet, weight loss books, losing weight, etc.,

2.Broad Match Modifier

In this keyword type, you use a plus sign to choose particular keywords essential for your ad to appear.

For example, weight loss + recipes trigger ads like books for weight loss recipes, weight loss recipes, weight loss dishes, etc.,

3.Phrase Match

It includes using quotation marks around the keyword we’re bidding on. Phrase match indicates that the keywords that contain the precise phrase or its meaning are triggered. Weight loss for adults, best weight loss recipes, and weight loss are associated with the term “weight loss.”

4.Exact Match

Ads may appear on searches that are the same meaning or same intent as the keyword. For example, [luggage bags] triggers luggage bags, baggage bags, bags for luggage, etc.,

5.Negative Match

With a negative match keyword, you may choose whether or not your ads appear for specific search terms. Put a negative sign (-) before the words you don’t want to appear in your ad.

For example, by defining your ad as -weight loss exercises, all the ads similar to the keyword appear except weight loss exercises.

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Campaign Goals in Google AdWords Marketing Campaign

1. Sales– Drive sales directly to your website or app.
2. Leads – used to generate leads for your business, products, or services.
3. Website Traffic– It is the widely used goal.
4. Product and Brand Consideration – This allows the user to explore your brand’s product and services. In this case, Only Display and Video Campaigns are available
5. Brand Awareness and Reach – allows promoting your business or brand.
6. App Promotion – Gives more installs and interactions for your app
7. Create a campaign without a defined goal in mind.

Setting up AdWords Marketing Campaign

Once you are knowledgeable about all the terms mentioned, setting a Google ads marketing campaign is just three steps away.

Step 1: Setting Campaign Level

1.Log into your google ads account.

2. Next, select your campaign goal at the first stage. This goal will assist you in determining the most effective marketing type for reaching your target audience.

3. After a goal is selected, you’ll need to choose a campaign type and provide the URL of your website.

4. The following window contains a general setting, which comprises

• Campaign name – your campaign’s name based on your keyword.
•  Networks (Search and Display Network)- the Networks setting indicates where you want your ad to appear based on your chosen campaign type.
• Start and End Date – to specify the start and end date of your ad.
• Target and audience – Select the Locations and Languages for targeting the correct audience.
• Ad Extensions– Set Ad Extensions, which is extending your ad. It includes additional information about your business to the main body of your text ad. 
• Budget and Bidding – The final step is to define your AdWords budget, which includes choosing a daily budget for your campaign based on your advertising goals and the average amount you’re willing to spend on your ad each day.

Step 2: Setting ad group level

• As discussed, earlier Ad Group is all about keywords. In this section, you will create ad groups with relevant keywords.
• Add an Ad group name and include the selected keywords.
• As discussed in the ad structure, you can have multiple ad groups, and you need to use similar keywords in a single ad group for the ad’s relevancy.
•   Influential ad groups will result in more AdWords positions and client clicks.

Step 3: The final step is creating your ad, which includes

• Setting the Final URL, which is the landing page
• Headlines and Descriptions; in this section, you’ll be able to create the ad’s headline as well as the description. You’ll be able to see the ad preview on mobile, desktop, and other devices in the ad preview box on the right side.
• Display path is naming your landing page.

Your ad is ready to show on Google platforms and partner platforms once you’ve completed all of the stages.

How AdWords Marketing helps in growing your business

1. AdWords Marketing Vs. Organic Marketing (SEO)

• SEO will assist you in optimizing your content for search engines and increasing organic traffic, but it is a lengthy process. At the same time, AdWords Marketing gives you immediate results. AdWords is ideal for small and medium companies that want to get targeted traffic quickly to grow their business.
• With AdWords, you can advertise on Google and its partner websites, whereas SEO is limited to only Google search result pages.
• It is easy to measure the ROI with AdWords, but it is more complex with SEO because there are many more aspects at play, not just ad spending and revenue.

2. Increases Brand Awareness            

Google Ads can help you get your brand in front of the correct audience. It increases traffic, clicks, and conversions while also improving user awareness of your company.

According to a Google and Ipsos MediaCT study, simply viewing advertisements for a business in search results can raise ‘top-of-mind’ brand recognition by 80 percent without even clicking through from the ad to the website.

3. Outrank your Competitor’s Ads

You’re constantly competing with your peers in Google AdWords to get your ad to the top of the search results. Many tools assist us in keeping track of our competition.

• Auction Insights vis Google Ads Campaign
• Similar web
• Ahrefs
• SEMrush and many more

4. AdWords is an excellent tool to identify your progress.

With Google Ads, you’ll know if someone clicked on your ad. Moreover, you can also track if they clicked your ad. Also, you can see if they did something useful for your business, such as buying your goods, downloading your app, or calling in an order.

By keeping track of which ads get clicked and which don’t, you can discover where you should put your money in your campaign right away for a higher return on Investment.

5. Re-marketing

Remarketing is a very effective technique to use ads to target people who have expressed an interest in your company. It enables you to strategically place your adverts in front of these audiences when they explore Google or its partner websites, thereby increasing brand awareness or reminding them to buy. Like cart abandonment emails, retargeted advertising has a very high ROI compared to other marketing channels.

  6. Budget Planning 

With Google Ads, you have a lot of flexibility in how you spend your money. The quantity of money you can spend is entirely unrestricted. You can also choose how much money you wish to spend on ads each month or per day, and charges are applicable only if someone clicks on your ad.

7. More leads

Google Ads can help you grow your website traffic and produce leads whether you’re a small or medium business. With new lead form extensions in Google Ads, you can now show a lead form directly in your ad, providing users with a convenient way to submit information while searching, discovering, and watching relevant content. This streamlined process might assist you in locating high-quality leads more quickly.

8. High ROI

According to Google Investor Relations, advertising accounts for 97 percent of Google’s overall revenue. The main advantage of ROI with Google Adwords is that you only pay for ads that users click, which is impossible with other marketing strategies.

You can figure out how much money you’ve made by using Google Ads by calculating your ROI. ROI can also be used to assist you in deciding how to spend your money. For example, suppose you discover that one campaign is providing a more significant ROI than others. In that scenario, you might allocate more of your budget to the successful campaign while allocating less to the underperforming campaigns. You can use the ROI data to improve the performance of the underperforming campaign.

9. AdWords is Measurable

AdWords marketing is more measurable when compared to traditional marketing channels like television and magazine advertising, and Google Adwords PPC is one of the most measurable online channels. It’s challenging to make precise SEO metrics because you can’t always tell what actions resulted in higher or lower rankings. In contrast, Google Ads offers various PPC statistics that allow you to understand what works and what doesn’t at a basic level. You can rapidly decide whether your campaigns are a waste of time or a good investment

  10. Targeting the right location and customers

Google Ads provides various targeting options, making it simple to find the ideal audience for your small business. If you have a local store and only want to target people in that area, these targeting options are highly successful.

11. Adwords Marketing is flexible

Google Ads is appropriate for any business, regardless of industry or size (small, medium, or large). It’s a versatile and dynamic marketing platform that lets you start, halt, or pause any of your ads or campaigns at any time.

You can determine the budget for your campaigns based on how much money you want to spend. You can also target folks in various places and demographics using other devices.

Final Thoughts:

AdWords marketing is a powerful marketing approach for growing website traffic and promoting your product or service awareness. However, for your ads to be profitable, you must follow a perfect marketing approach that focuses on keyword relevancy, understanding the searcher’s intent and quality landing pages.

Hopefully, this article covered all of the fundamentals of AdWords marketing for business growth. If you want to learn more about Google AdWords, you may sign up for a free course through Google Digital Garage or enroll in a Digital Marketing Course.