17. 1. 2022
Online marketing

How Google advertising works

Promote your products and services where people ask for them the most. And that's on Google. Here is a detailed article on how you can use Google advertising foryour business and how much it will cost you.

Webglobe

When people are looking for a product or service, they usually go to the Internet first. The number of search queries on Google worldwide is a whopping 40,000 per second. Learn how Google advertising works, who it is good for and how much it costs you in practice.

What is Google advertising and how much it will cost you

Google search advertising works on the system Google Ads (formerly Google Adwords), which is used to advertise products and services. This is a type of PPC advertising. Advertisers pay for each click on their page, the abbreviation PPC comes from the English pay per click.

You can register for free and create ads for your products. You design how much you want to pay for people to click through to your website. The advantage of Google Ads is that you can precisely target a specific group of customers and the ad is more effective than a banner or billboard that targets everyone and no one. You can also easily measure the results of your advertising.


Four basic types of Google Ads

1. Advertising in the Search Network allows you to become visible in traditional search. It will appear if the user is searching for the keywords you are targeting. Text ads are used here. That's why it's important to create text that engages users enough to click on the ad and ideally make a purchase.

2. Display Network, which consists of sites or applications that allow ads to be published. This includes mainly graphic ads in the form of banners, but can in some cases also include text ads. Here too, you target keywords or interests that match the content of the landing page you want to bring visitors to.

3. Another option is video campaigns. These are short spots of 6–15 seconds that are shown before a video plays on YouTube.

4. The fourth advertising option is Shopping Ads, which you can use if you own an e‑shop. These are displayed in search in the form of an image, price and a link to your page. Users can then proceed directly to purchase the product. You can use these ads if you create an account in the Google Merchant Centre, where you add the specific products you want to advertise.

How remarketing works

If users have visited your site but there was no conversion (that is, they have not purchased or taken another action), you can reconnect with them and motivate visitors to return. This is what remarketing is used for in Google Ads. This allows you to target people who have already interacted with your site but have not completed a purchase.

There are several formats for remarketing. One of them is dynamic remarketing, a tool that is used for a strategy to re-reach people on your behalf. Just upload the basic elements of the ad you want to show and Google Ads will take care of the rest.

However, you can still control what types of websites you want your remarketing to appear on or not, or what audience you want to target.

Basic elements of advertising

There are three main elements to a Google Ads ad: the keywords you are targeting, engaging text, and the landing page you are directing users to. We will go through them one by one and explain how you can use them.

Keywords

You target your ad to certain keywords that you list in Google Ads. It's all about choosing words or phrases that people will use to search for your goods or services.


Example: When selling sports equipment, choose not just "shoes" but more importantly "running shoes" and "shoes for running". You can find out how many different phrases are searched for in Google Trends. And don't forget to choose the right territory for which you are interested in search phrases.

When you advertise for a keyword, you enter into an auction to determine the ranking of ads for that keyword. It is recommended to narrow the selection to 5–20 keywords or phrases, depending on the type of product.

If you choose the right text content for your search and content network ads, you're halfway there. The text should be truthful and motivate the user to click on the ad.

When writing text, focus on the purpose for which people are looking for your goods or services in the first place. For example, they want to start running and are looking for suitable equipment. Or looking for a restaurant when visiting your city.

Recommended reading: Read our tips on how to write engaging copy that sells your services and goods.

Write concisely and clearly, remembering that less is more. Use call to action (CAT) to directly encourage people to take action. Think about grammatical correctness and watch out for typos.

Because the ad leads visitors to a specific landing page, you need to make sure that the content matches what you promise in the ad. This means that when you advertise a 30% discount on a t-shirt, people should click through to the specific discounted product. If you are inviting people to book a table in a restaurant, the user should find a booking form on the page.


How Google advertising works

Advertising in search and in the content network is, of course, limited in space. The order of ads and their display is based on the results of auctions for specific keywords or phrases.

The auction includes two parts, or variables: the maximum price you are willing to pay per click and a quality score. With this move, Google has made it clear that it is not only the money that matters, but also the form and quality of the content of the advertising. So even at a lower price, it's possible for your ad to appear first if it has a high quality score. The price is calculated by adding 0.01 to the ratio of the advertiser's position in front of you and your ad quality score.

The quality score depends on several factors. Every advertisement is checked before it is published. If it does not match qualitatively, it will score low or not even appear. The evaluation takes into account the click-through rate, consistency and clarity of the text, the use of non-traditional symbols, the number of keywords and the structure and content of the landing page and its relevance to the search query.

When your ad ranks highly, you can offer a lower price for appearing at the top of search or in attractive places on the content network.

Don't rush the results

Creating an ad in Google Ads is easy. But not all advertising will prove to be effective. This is a dynamic marketing channel and just because an advert has been published doesn't mean you don't have to worry about it anymore. You need to monitor and continuously improve the performance of your advertising.

But wait 2–3 months before you start evaluating to collect enough data. Only then can you reliably assess whether your ad needs optimization or not. The most reliable indication of the effectiveness of your advertising is the return on investment, in other words, whether the money invested in advertising is returned in the form of revenue.

If your ad is mainly clicked on by people in countries other than where you distribute your goods, make sure you are targeting your ad correctly. If your ad is showing but people aren't clicking on it, try changing the text to make it more engaging. Only make one change at a time (targeting, text, etc.) and let the modified ad run for a while so you can evaluate how the change has worked. Definitely don't just let ineffective advertising run, because you're losing money for nothing.

How to advertise effectively

1) Create product-focused campaigns

Target each campaign to a specific product and use automation. For example, the BlueWinston application allows you to automate the entire process and create ads for hundreds or thousands of products in a short amount of time. Search and group ads allow you to cover the entire search demand for the products you sell.

2) Advertise products that pay off

When creating product-targeted campaigns, focus on goods that have higher margins and are competitive enough. The right application will help you filter such products.

3) Use remarketing

In our experience, more than half of conversions (purchases) are due to remarketing. This is also because people who are interested in a product first look for what is available on the market and then choose. When you remind them of your e‑commerce store through remarketing, they are more likely to make a purchase from you.


Author: Štefan Chochláč – project manager and co-founder of the BlueWinston service.

Photo: Unsplash

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