Google Ads is an online advertising service that helps you reach potential customers interested in a product or service you offer. The service allows businesses to serve ads and track their performance, as well as to measure, manage, and optimize their ad campaigns.
Google Ads can be used as part of your business marketing strategy to drive traffic to your eCommerce store. The service offers a wide range of features that one can use to create effective ad campaigns, including keyword targeting, bid optimization, and ad placement.
This article will discuss how you can use a Google Ads account to make money and drive traffic to your eCommerce store, along with the benefits of using the service. We will also provide tips for creating effective ad campaigns that offer you the latest information to help make the most of your Google Ads budget. Let's get started.Google Ads And Their Benefits
When used correctly, Google Ads can be an extremely effective way to drive traffic to your eCommerce store.
Google Ads offers several benefits, including:
Must-Know Terms When Running Google Ads For eCommerce
Let's now speak about the essential Google Ads concepts for eCommerce:
Campaign
A campaign is a collection of ad groups, sets of ads that share a common theme. For example, you might create a campaign for your "Summer Sale" that contains several ad groups, each with a different set of ads.
Ad Group
An ad group is simply a collection of one or more ads that share a common theme and target the same audience.
Ad
An ad is an individual advertisement that you create to promote your business. Ads can be text-based, video-based, or image-based and can be targeted to specific audiences.
Keyword
A keyword is a word or phrase that you use to target your ads. When someone searches on Google using one of your keywords, your ad may be displayed in the search results.
Not having more than 20 keywords in a campaign is recommended, as having too many keywords will dilute your campaign effectiveness.
Negative Keyword
A negative keyword is a word or phrase that you add to your campaign to prevent your ads from being displayed when someone searches on Google using that keyword. For example, if you sell women's clothing, you might add the keyword "men's" as a negative keyword so that your ads will not be displayed when someone uses this search term.
Landing Page
A landing page is the web page where someone arrives after clicking on your ad. It is essential to have a well-designed and user-friendly landing page to ensure that potential customers do not leave your site without taking any action.
Ad Extensions
Further information can be displayed with your ads, such as your business address, phone number, or website URL. Ad extensions can help improve the visibility and click-through rate of your ads.
There are a variety of ad extensions that you can use in your Google Ads campaigns, including:
The last three items (marked *) are all extensions recommended by Google to be used by every business - especially beginners looking to start an eCommerce business and becoming known in their industry.
Campaign Type
There are five types of Google Ads campaigns that you can create, each with its own set of goals and targets. The available campaign types are:
App Campaigns
This type of campaign is designed for businesses that want to promote their mobile apps. App campaigns allow you to target potential users based on their interests and browsing history and can be used to drive traffic to your app's listing in the Google Play Store or Apple App Store.
Search Network Campaigns
This type of campaign is designed for businesses that want to drive traffic to their website or landing page. When someone searches on Google using one of your keywords, your ad may be displayed in the search results.
The search network is an excellent option for businesses that want to generate leads or sales. It is also the most cost-effective way to advertise, as you only pay when someone clicks on your ad.
Display Network Campaigns
This type of campaign is designed for businesses that want to promote their products or services on websites other than Google. The display network includes millions of websites and apps to place your ads.
The display network can be an excellent option for businesses that want to reach a large audience with their ads. However, it is essential to target your ads carefully, as not all websites and apps are relevant to your business.
Google Shopping Campaigns
This type of campaign is designed for businesses that want to sell their products or services online. Google Shopping allows you to create a custom shopping feed of your products, which one will use to create a search engine results page (SERP) listing when someone searches for one of your keywords.
The Google Shopping campaign type is an excellent option for businesses to increase traffic and conversions from online shoppers.
Video Campaigns
This type of campaign is designed for businesses that want to promote their videos online. Video campaigns allow you to target potential viewers based on their interests and browsing history and can be used to drive traffic to your video content.
Daily Budget
When creating a Google Ads campaign, you must set a daily budget. This is the maximum amount you want to spend on your campaign each day.
Your budget will be spread out evenly over the day, so you will never exceed your daily budget limit. However, it is essential to note that your budget will only be used when your ads are eligible to show. This means that if there are no available slots for your ad at any given time, you will not spend your budget.
Bidding Strategies
There are various options available to you when it comes to bidding, all depending on the campaign type that you choose.
Let's have a look at these options:
Let’s look in more detail at each of these bidding strategies.
CPC (Cost Per Click)
CPC bidding is the most common bidding strategy, and it is used when you want to pay for each click on your ad. This type of bidding is best for businesses to generate leads or sales.
vCPM (Cost Per Thousand Viewable Impressions)
With vCPM bidding, you will pay for every 1,000 impressions of your ad. This type of bidding is best for businesses looking to increase brand awareness.
CPV (Cost Per View)
CPV bidding is a unique option that allows you to pay for video views. This type of bidding is best for businesses that want to drive traffic to their video content.
ECPC (Enhanced Cost Per Click)
ECPC bidding is a unique option that allows Google to update your manual bid based on results to increase your chances of getting the most traffic possible.
Maximize Conversions
Maximize Conversions bidding is an option that allows you to automatically optimize your bids to help you get the most conversions possible.
Manual CPC
With Manual CPC bidding, you will set your maximum bid for each click on your ad. This type of bidding is best for businesses looking to bid as high as possible for high competition keywords that are important to their business.
Quality Score
Google Ads assigns a quality score to each of your ads, and this score is used to determine how often Google will show your ad. The higher your quality score, the more likely your ad will show.
The best way to improve your quality score is to make sure that your ad meets Google's guidelines and is relevant to the keywords that you are targeting. You can also improve your quality score by using high-quality images and videos in your ad and ensuring that your landing page is well-designed and user-friendly.
Display URL
The display URL is the address that will be displayed in your ad. You can use this to make your ad look more professional or direct people to a specific page on your website.
Make sure that you use the same domain name in both the display URL and the destination URL, and make sure that the destination URL is HTTPS. Also, ensure that your display URL is short and to the point. This will help people end up on the page they expect when they click on your ad.
Destination URL
The destination URL is the page's address you want people to visit when they click on your ad. This should be the final destination for your customers and not a page that contains further advertising or marketing.
In other words, the destination URL should be the landing page for your product or service.
Headline
The headline is the text that will be displayed at the top of your ad, and it should be eye-catching and relevant to your target audience. You should also make sure that it is brief and to the point.
Description
The description is the text displayed below the headline, and it should provide more information about your product or service. You should make sure that it is concise and easy to understand, and the text itself should be easy to read.
CTA (Call To Action)
You should also use a call-to-action in your ad, as this will encourage people to click on your ad and visit your website.
Some popular CTA phrases include:
CVR (Conversion Rate)
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the process of making changes to your website to increase the number of conversions that you get. This can include changing the design of your website, improving your copy, and adding videos or images.
You can use Google Ads to track your conversion rate for each campaign and then use this information to make changes to your website. You should also test different website versions to see which one performs better.
Finding your conversion rate is as easy as taking your total conversions and dividing them by the number of clicks that your ads got.
Optimization
This is the process of making changes to your bids, targeting, and budget to improve your campaign's performance. You should constantly optimize your campaigns to get the most out of your advertising budget.
There are several things that you can do to optimize your Google Ads campaign, including:
You can ensure that you're getting the most bang for your buck by optimizing your campaign.
Impressions
Impressions refer to the number of times that your ad was shown. This metric is important because it tells you how often people see your ad.
You can use impressions to measure the success of your campaign, and you should aim for a high number of impressions to increase your chances of getting clicks.
Steps For Creating Successful Google Ads Campaigns
Let's now look at some simple steps that you can follow to create successful Google Ads campaigns:
Define Your Goals
The first step in setting up a Google Ads campaign is to define your goals. What do you want to achieve with your campaign? Do you want to generate more leads, increase sales, or get more website traffic?
Once you know what you want to achieve, you can tailor your campaign to achieve those goals.
The various options are the following:
Choose Your Google Campaign Audiences
When choosing your targeting alternatives, you must first select your geographic regions and languages. To access your choices, click on 'Location options.'
This will allow you to target people in specific countries, regions within a country, or cities. You can also target by language.
You can then drill down based on demographics, intents, and interests to target people more likely to be interested in your product or service.
Choose Your Bidding And Ads Budget
Here, you will choose your budget for the day and how you want to bid for your ads.
You can choose to have a daily budget or a lifetime budget. With a lifetime budget, your ad will continue to run until you've spent your entire budget.
With a daily budget, your ad will stop running at the end of the day once your budget has been reached.
There are also the Standard and Accelerated options, which determine how quickly your ads are shown. Standard is the default option, while Accelerated will show your ads more rapidly but burn through your budget quickly.
Next up, you'll choose the bidding strategy you want to use. Based on what I discussed above, you can decide which one to use.
You'll also be able to set up the following item:
Include Your Ads Extensions
As we discussed initially, having ads extensions will enhance your ad and make it more noticeable.
There are a variety of extensions, but I'm going to focus on the most common ones that you'll want to use as an eCommerce business:
Setting Up Your Ad Groups
Now it's time to set up your ad groups.
There are standard and dynamic ad groups. With standard ad groups, you create the ads and choose the keywords that they will be associated with.
Dynamic ad groups are created automatically by Ads based on what potential customers type into Google before they see your ad.
Next up, you'll choose your keywords.
These are the words or phrases people will use to find your product or service.
You'll want to ensure that they're relevant to what you're selling and that you're not paying for clicks on irrelevant keywords.
Create Your Ads
Now it's time to create your ad.
This will be the first thing potential customers see, so you'll want to make sure that it's eye-catching and informative.
Here you will also choose the match type for your keywords. These are :
Add Your Negative Keywords
You'll now want to add your negative keywords in Google Ads.
These are words or phrases that you don't want your ad to be associated with.
Adding negative keywords will help improve the quality of your traffic and ensure that you're not paying for clicks on irrelevant terms.
You can also use the Ads Keyword Tool to find related keywords that you may not have thought of.
Create The Actual Ad
Now it's time for the creative part.
You'll want to create an ad that is eye-catching and informative.
The process is straightforward. All you have to do is enter a headline and two description lines, as well as the display URL and destination URL.
From a copywriting point of view, ensure that your headline is engaging and that your descriptions give enough information for the person to want to click on your ad to know more.
You can do this by solving a problem that people are experiencing. For example, if the problem a person is going through is one of the following:
In this case, you could create an ad along the lines of:
You can also speak about the features that your product or service has.
As stated, always include a call to action in your ad.
Tracking Your Results
Once you've set up your campaign and your ads have gone live, it's essential to track the results so that you can make changes as needed.
You can use the Ads Conversion Tracking Tool to track how many people have visited your website after clicking on your ad.
This will help you determine whether or not your campaign is successful and whether or not you need to make changes.
You can also use Google Analytics to track additional information, such as how long people stay on your website and which pages they visit.
Both of these tools are essential for tracking the success of your ads campaign. They will help you determine whether or not your campaign is successful and inform you of any changes you need to make.
Keep An Eye Out For Your Budget To Ensure There Is No Weird Ad Spend
It's also essential to ensure you're not going over your budget. You can do this by checking the relevant column in your Ads account. This will tell you how much money you've spent on your campaign so far.
If you notice that you're going over budget, it may be time to adjust your settings - budgeting is an essential part of any Ads campaign, and it's something that you'll need to keep an eye on throughout the life of the campaign.
Various Types Of Ads To Run For eCommerce Businesses
With the above out of the way, it’s time to discuss the various ads that might be beneficial for eCommerce businesses.
Let's have a look at them.
Google Search Ads
These typically show up at the top of search results. Based on the user's search terms, the ad will include a short headline, a short description, and the URL of the website.
Google Search Campaign ads are a great way to reach potential customers who are already interested in what you have to offer.
They're also very effective, as they typically have a high click-through rate (CTR) if the chosen keywords are the correct ones.
Dynamic Search Ads (DSAs)
These ads are great for those with a large inventory who want to ensure that their ads are showing up for as many relevant searches as possible.
DSAs use Google's "Dynamic Ads" technology to create ads based on your website's content automatically.
This means that you don't have to create separate ads for each product - the ad will be generated dynamically based on what's available on your website.
This can be an excellent option for those with a large inventory who want to make sure they reach as many potential customers as possible.
The downside is that these might be considered as more of an advanced feature, so it may take some time to set them up correctly.
Google Remarketing Ads
If you have more than one thousand people that have clicked on your ads, you can run a Google remarketing ad.
Google Remarketing Ads are great for those who want to re-engage with past customers or reach potential customers who have already shown an interest in what they have to offer.
They're also very effective, as they have a higher click-through rate than other types of ads.
Google Shopping Ads
Using data from the Merchant Center (which can include images, pricing, SKUs, and more), Shopping Ads allow you to create a product listing ad that will show up on Google.com when someone is searching for a commerce-related term.
Shopping Ads are a great way to get your product before potential customers who are already interested in what you have to offer.
They're also very effective, as they can help solve an issue that potential customers are facing, which is finding the right eCommerce product to solve their problem.
Smart Google Shopping (Performance Max) Campaigns
This is a newer ad campaign designed to help you get the most out of your Shopping Ads.
Smart Shopping Campaigns automatically adjust your bids and budget based on what's performing well. This means that you don't have to worry about making manual adjustments - the campaign will do it all for you.
This can be an excellent option for those who want to ensure they're getting the most out of their Shopping Ads.
Google Display Network
If you want your ads to appear on third-party websites across the internet, you'll want to use The Google Display campaign network.
Google's Display Network is a great way to reach potential customers who might not be on Google searching for what you have to offer - but are instead browsing the internet and come across your Google ad.
The downside is that it can be more challenging to target potential customers accurately, so it may take some experimentation to find suitable targeting options.
YouTube Ads
While not strictly on Google, YouTube is part of the Google advertising family.
YouTube Ads are a great way to reach potential customers who are already interested in what you have to offer. They can also be used by those looking to start YouTube affiliate marketing and become successful at it.
They're very effective, and people that watch YouTube Ads are more likely to take action, primarily if you target the right buying keywords.
There are various types of ads that you can run on YouTube:
Creating and converting YouTube Ads can be a little more complex than some of the other types of ads, but it can be well worth the effort.
Ensure that you grab the viewer's attention quickly and keep the message clear and concise - you only have a few seconds to make an impression.
You can also use subtitles and sound effects to grab attention and ensure that your ad stands out from the rest.
Conclusion
There are various types of Google ads that you can use to reach potential customers interested in what you have to offer.
Each type of ad has its strengths and weaknesses, so it's important to experiment until you find the ones that work best for you and your business.
Remember to keep your message clear and concise and make sure that your ads stand out from the rest.
This will help ensure that you are able to build a business that does not burn you out, get the most out of your advertising efforts, and allow you to reach your advertising goals both short and long-term.