Understand the marketing strategy model - Google Ads

Some years earlier, technology has changed the way of conducting businesses at a rapid pace; the companies switched from the traditional media advertising such as radio, newspaper, TV to digital media advertising namely social media, website, and Google Ads is one of the most driving business transformation and it is a very effective method to use of paid online advertising. 

Hence, Google tries harder to make everyone runs their ads to succeed, in 2017 it has generated $109,650,000,000 in revenue from ads and it represents 71% of its revenue. It’s amazing!! 

Google has 75% of the market share on ads, this emphasizes it is a world-leading search engine. Almost the world population, when it comes to searching online information about products, services, and other concerns people turn to Google. It, therefore, allows businesses to reach a huge volume of prospective customers who use Google to search for information about the products or services or solutions to their problems. It also has the capacity to target people following the search keywords they use and the ads display accordingly. 

Using Google Ads might be the best decision you make for your businesses. As statistic shows about 3.5 billion people every single day use Google for different purposes. This presents a large opportunity for your businesses to be viewed by more users. So, if you are a business owner, you do not know about Google Ads and how it works, this article is made for you and I believe you can have an insight into what would be the next step of your business.

What is Google Ads?

Google Ads is previously known as Google Adwords, is a Google advertising system. The advertisers bid on certain keywords to be able for the ads clickable and appeared on the search results.

It is a digital marketing tool that any business can use to promote the products or services and it provides a lot of features to help for instance to sell the products, to create more traffic, and create awareness, and so on. 

Google Ads is managed online, the advertisers have control over the campaigns and the ads, they can add and edit the campaign at any time, including text (written that appears on the search result), ads descriptions, settings, budget, images, and amongst the others.

The advertisers have to structure a budget to run the ads and to be able to display them to the customers who search for information about the products or services that they intend to offer. It is important to think about how much you are willing to pay to Google each day per click on the ad.  Hence, you have to set up the amount whether you customize the amount you are willing to pay or you use the recommended options by Google and thus to choose your based currency. 

The advertisers can schedule the ads to display by telling Google whether or not to be shown weekly, monthly, only during the business opening hours. They also have the opportunity to choose the target audience location such as global, national, in particular cities, countries, or in one area in which they think to meet your objectives and goals.

How it works?

Google Ads operates under the PPC or pay-per-click which means the advertisers have to bid on keywords and each time people click on the ads, they have to pay Google. Remember, every time you bid on a keyword, you are essentially entering an auction and competing against other advertisers. Mindful, it is important to know very well what the prospective customers' needs, wants, demands, and what they mostly search online by using Google. 

Furthermore, you have to customize the amount you are willing to pay monthly, weekly, per day, or per ad. Thus, you have to set up the maximum bids (the amount you want to spend), and Google will determine the cost per click to get the placement. If your maximum bid is $5 and Google will say for your ad placement is $3, then you get the placement, if it's more than that, you do not get the ad placement. 

Otherwise, you can set up the maximum daily budget for your ads, how much you intend to spend daily to run the ads. You will not exceed the specified amount you structure per day. 

On the other hands, the advertisers have three distinctive options for bids strategy as follow:

• CPC or Cost Per Click - How much pay when the users or prospective customers click on your ads

• CPM or Cost Per Mille - How much you pay per 1000 ad impressions

• CPE or Cost Per Engagement - How much you pay when the users or prospective customers do valuable actions, for instance, to purchase, sign-up, watch the video, and so on. 

The different types of Google Ads

There are 5 distinctive types of Google Ads campaign which are:

• Search campaign - Google Ads appear on the Google search result following the use of keywords. See the image 

• Display campaign - Google ads that appear as images on any website.

Google also allows the advertisers to advertise on its email platform such as Gmail:

• Shopping campaign - It allows promoting the products or services in a much visual way. The ads can appear as images on the search results.

• Video campaign - It mostly appears on YouTube videos in form of pre-rolls.

• App campaign - With an App campaign, the marketers or advertisers can promote their apps across the Google properties including search, Google Play, YouTube, and on the display network.

How to advertise on Google?

To create a Google Ads account, you only need a Gmail account and you write on Google search tool Google Ads

Moreover, what you have to do is to define your advertising goals. Why do you want to use Google Ads? Determine your purposes; is it for an increase in sales, to generate more traffic on your website, to create awareness…and so forth. 

Google as well proposes some advertising goals and you can choose among the recommended options:

• Get more calls
• Get more website sales or sign-ups
• Get more visitors to your physical location

Or you can customize your advertising goals to expert mode. See the image

• Hence, if you want to generate sales – click on the sales 
• Website traffic – it helps to target the right people to the website and the same process for the others. 

Over and above, you have to determine the target audience location that you want to deliver the products or services such as global, national, or some particular areas. 

Lastly, you have to structure your budget, it is important to consider how much are you willing to spend each day. 

Note: Clicks is an option recommended by Google. To have control over billing strategy, you have to make sure to select the Manual CPC (cost per click)

How much Google charges the ads?

The cost of specific Google Ads varies under some factors namely the quality of your website and how much you are bidding to set up your ads. 

However, the advertisers have control over the cost. That's why it important to set up manual CPC so that you can manage the cost efficiently.

Where the ads appear?

The ads can appear in two places:

• Search network  – the ads which appear on the Google search results, maps, as well as other Google search partners namely YouTube and Google shopping, and thus other websites, where the users can use the same keywords, the campaign or ads may appear.

• Display network – the ads which appear as images. Through the display network, you can visualize the ads and it can appear on any website.

Bidding on the keywords

The keyword is simply the word or phrase that you actually bid on in a Google Ads auction.  To be successful to run ads, it is important to know exactly the potential customers’ needs, wants, and demand, and what they search a lot on Google so that your products or services can appear.

Each keyword has its own intent behind it and it represents the users' purposes of research. If you want to advertise on promoting your Hotel. You have to bid on certain keywords that have a meaningful purpose for the users, for example,  "Very cheap Hotel in Mauritius", shows as follows when the users use the keywords on Google search.

The benefits of using Google Ads 

Using Google Ads presents large advantages for the digital marketing advertising strategy, in particular, let's see some, it helps the businesses to: 

• Get more leads and customers - If the Google Ads campaign has been set up properly, it has extreme potential to target leads to your website. Many people use the internet for different purposes, among them are those who are searching for solutions to their matters, for instance, a user is searching for a mechanic car repair in the surrounding area, and you provide that service. Google will show your ad on the search tool, and it allows the prospective customers at first to identify your store and it leads to conversion. 

• Control the cost - Google Ads provides control over the cost, you can structure how much you are willing to spend monthly, weekly, per day, and per ad; and there is no minimum amount to respect. You can customize the amount you want and you only pay when someone clicks on the ad.

• The businesses can track and analyze their progress - With Google Ads if someone clicks on your ads, you will definitely know it as it shows the statistic of the visit. What if the customers purchase your products or inquire about your services, you can track them as well. Moreover, if you have more ads to manage, you can identify as well which ads are more performant and have a lot of clicks and generate more revenue; and it shows where to invest more in your campaign. You can get also valuable data including how much it costs for you, you also have access to another tool such as an analytic tool to understand your customers buying habits and so on.

• Manage the campaign - the advantage of using Google Ads as an advertising tool, you can manage and monitor your campaign any time and anywhere. Google makes life easier for the advertisers to manage the Google Ads account offline with Google Ads editor, it's free and available on a desktop version.  This app allows the advertisers to edit the campaign offline and upload the changes to Google Ads.

Summary

Google Ads is a performant tool that allows the advertisers to create an online advertising campaign with different ads to reach the target audiences to which the products or services are dedicated. 

Google Ads platform runs the PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising, which means the advertisers will only pay Google each time the visitors or prospective customers click on the ads. 

However, it allows the advertisers to set up the amount of money that they will spend on running the ads, it won't exceed it.

Now you know how it works along with its benefits, are you still confused or there is something that you missed out on. 

If you have any comments or suggestions, leave them below.