A Beginner-Friendly Guide to Google Ads

In the dynamic world of digital marketing, Google Ads stands out as a stalwart tool for businesses aiming to gain visibility and drive conversions. If you’re a beginner feeling overwhelmed by the myriad of settings and terminologies, fear not. A beginner-friendly guide to Google Ads is tailored just for you.

Understanding the Basics of Google Ads

At its core, Google Ads is a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising platform. This means you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. These ads can appear on Google’s search results, partner websites, YouTube, and other Google properties. The beauty of Google Ads lies in its vast reach and the ability to target specific audiences based on keywords, demographics, interests, and more.

Setting Up Your Google Ads Account

  • Sign Up: Start by visiting the Google Ads homepage and signing up with your Google account.
  • Set Your Budget: Decide on a daily budget you’re comfortable with. Remember, this can be adjusted anytime.
  • Choose Your Target Audience: Define who you want to reach. Consider factors like location, age, interests, and more.

Crafting Your First Campaign

  • Keyword Research: This is the backbone of your campaign. Use tools like Google’s Keyword Planner to find terms your potential customers are searching for. Choose keywords that are relevant to your business and have a good balance of search volume and competition.
  • Compelling Ad Copy: Your ad copy should be concise, relevant, and include a clear call-to-action (CTA). Highlight what makes your offering unique.
  • Landing Page Relevance: Ensure the page you’re directing your clicks to is relevant to your ad. A mismatch can lead to higher bounce rates and wasted ad spend.

Bidding and Ad Rank

Google Ads operates on an auction system. When someone searches for a keyword you’ve bid on, Google looks at all the ads targeting that keyword and, based on various factors (like bid amount, ad relevance, and landing page experience), decides which ads to display and in what order.

Your Ad Rank determines your ad’s position. It’s calculated using your bid amount, ad quality, and the expected impact of extensions and other ad formats.

Monitoring and Optimization

Once your campaign is live, it’s crucial to monitor its performance. Google Ads provides a plethora of data, from click-through rates (CTR) to conversion metrics. Analyze this data to:

  • Adjust bids for high-performing keywords.
  • Pause or modify underperforming ads.
  • Refine your targeting based on who’s converting.
  • Test different ad copies to see what resonates best with your audience.

Embracing New Features in 2024

Google Ads isn’t static. As user behavior changes and technology advances, new features and targeting options emerge. Stay updated with Google’s official updates and consider experimenting with new ad formats or strategies.

The platform offers unparalleled reach and targeting, ensuring your business message gets in front of the right eyes. Start with a beginner-friendly guide to Google Ads and watch your online presence soar.

Let our team at 98 Buck Social take your Google Ads to the next level!

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By default, we can use the photos you have on your website as well as utilizing the plethora of photos available to us within our royalty free library.

If you have photos or videos for us to use, depending on your subscription, we welcome you to upload them into a Google Drive folder and share that link with us!

Looking for custom videos?  Some of our plans include videos or you can add them to any plan starting at $98/mo!

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As mentioned above, depending on your plan, we can use whatever you’d like to provide us! If not, we’ll resort to using your website or our royalty free library.

That being said, we can come up with custom graphics that suit your branding style as an add-on to your posting subscription.

$98/month for 3 custom graphics each week
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Note: The cost of custom graphics is on top of your monthly subscription cost

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Content review and approval is where your social media content creator sends you a weeks worth of posts, prior to their designated publication time the following week.

This way, you will have the chance to give us feedback on each post in case you’d like us to make a minor edit.

Note: One round of editing per post permitted, depending on your plan.

What are the results I can expect from your posting services?

The idea behind consistent posting onto your social media pages is to keep them active with content that promotes your business solutions, educates your audience to showcase your expertise and to also keep things lighthearted, it’s social media after all!

There’s nothing worse for a business than to earn someone looking into what you do, only for them to see a barren social media page. To them, it may appear that you are out of business or potentially a scam.

We are often asked about growing followers and generating sales or leads. These are great goals to have but please understand that those goals are better obtained through paid advertising campaigns.

For more information on paid advertising, please visit our paid advertising services.

Do you use a posting scheduler and how do you get access to my business pages?

We are fortunate to be partnered with CloudCampaign.com to utilize their excellent scheduling platform.

By signing up for our content services, we will set you up with your own Cloud Campaign workspace depending on your plan.

During onboarding we request admin access to your social accounts using a secure platform. This allows us to manage the occasional disconnect when the platforms push out updates.

Furthermore, with your own workspace you are welcome to view and edit content at your leisure!

Why do my posts say “Posted by Cloud Campaign”

We use Cloud Campaign, which is a 3rd party app, to scale social media management and posting. When a post says “Posted by Cloud Campaign”, it is only the admins of your company page that can see this and not your followers.