As the world’s leading search engine, Google processes billions of searches every day, creating powerful opportunities for businesses to connect with potential customers. When a user enters search terms or browses on Google, relevant advertisements appear at the most effective time and place. Yet, with increasing levels of online competition, how can you ensure your ad stands out and delivers?
Learning the platforms
To build and launch an ad, you can set up an account in Google Ads Manager, or rely on a professional advertiser who manages multiple accounts.
You can also set up website tracking through Google Tag Manager to see what happens when users click your ad. This sends information to Google Analytics and Google Ads, which you can use to review and analyse key data.
Google Ads Manager
To build a campaign, advertisers must have a Google Ads account. This allows you to create campaigns with specific objectives like sales or leads, and to format ads with assets such as images, videos, text, site links, headlines and more.
The platform also provides an overview of key performance indicators (KPIs) once your ad is live, including clicks, conversions and impressions, which highlight the visibility and engagement levels of your ad.
Alongside this, Google Ads Manager displays an optimisation score for each campaign, which estimates how well the ad will perform as a percentage. Google’s AI suggests recommendations to boost your optimisation score, ranging from your bidding strategy to key search terms you may have missed.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics integrates with Google Ads by giving advertisers a deeper understanding of what happens when a user sees an ad. Although Google Ads Manager provides some metrics, Google Analytics conducts detailed on-site tracking – ranging from how long users stay on pages to whether they complete key actions like purchases or form submissions.
This data helps advertisers to understand how ads deliver value, rather than simply the number of times they are shown or the amount of conversions they result in. By using both platforms, you can measure conversions more accurately and refine campaigns over time.
Launching a Google Ads campaign
There are a number of different campaign types on Google Ads, but the most relevant for beginners are search and display campaigns. Search campaigns show ads when users actively look for something and are specifically driven by intent. Display campaigns present banner ads across websites, making them suitable for boosting brand awareness and visibility.
Google search
A search campaign focuses on using the right terms to share your products or services with the most appropriate searches and users. Google’s AI aims to provide helpful suggestions, but you know your business best, so make sure to assess the recommendations carefully.
You can launch a search campaign by first selecting your main objective. These typically fall under sales, leads or website traffic and align with broader business aims like conversions or engagement. Choosing an objective guides Google’s AI to make decisions that will help the ad to deliver the right results.
Next, you should establish your bidding strategy. When a user searches on Google, different ads compete in an auction to determine which will appear first. While higher bids are often more effective, your bidding strategy determines how your budget is spent. Examples include ‘maximise clicks’ for more website traffic and ‘maximise conversions’ for more sales – your budding strategy depends on your campaign objective.
You can add targeting preferences such as locations and language, as well as any audience sectors – this includes adding exclusions that are not necessary for your campaign. Strong targeting options deliver more strategic and cost-effective results.
The most important step for a search campaign is selecting keywords. Google has an in-built tool for researching and planning keywords to help you find the most cost-effective and suitable ones for your campaign. You can also conduct research on competitors or similar products and services to understand more about effective keyword strategies.
Lastly, you can build a creative with different assets that encourage people to interact with your ad, such as contact numbers and lead forms. Any text or visuals should be compelling and engaging in order to drive meaningful results. The Google Ads Platform has a handy ‘Ad Strength’ score to help you make sure your ad is as optimised as possible.
Google display
Display ads are shown to users based on browsing behaviour, making them appropriate for visually promoting your brand or reaching new audiences.
Like search ads, you start by choosing a campaign objective, budget and bidding strategy to match your business goal.
Assets are a major factor for display campaigns. You can upload images, videos and logos as well as selective texts or headlines to make your ad stand out. Strong visuals and clear communication are essential to capture attention and stop the scroll.
Leveraging your ad quality
To ensure your ad shows up in the right place, relevance and rank are key factors. Utilising effective keywords and bidding improves ad relevance, while rank is influenced by the competitiveness of an auction and the impact of your assets. In other words, how popular is the thing you are trying to sell, and how good is your advertisement at selling it?
The Google Ads Keyword Quality score provides another insight into how your advertisement compares with your competitors. This is measured on a scale of 1-10, with higher figures representing better quality ads. Google has three main ways of calculating quality:
Expected click-through rate (CTR)
CTR refers to the number of times an ad is clicked out of the total number of times it is shown. A higher expected CTR indicates that your ad is likely appealing to users, which can boost your quality score and ad position without increasing your bid.
Ad relevance
Google measures how closely your ad matches with a user’s search intent or a specific keyword. Well-aligned keywords, ad copy and messaging signal strong relevance, helping to ensure your ad appears in suitable auctions.
Landing page experience
This evaluates how useful, relevant and accessible your landing page is after someone clicks your ad from a specific keyword. A strong landing page increases user satisfaction, which can lead to better rankings and lower cost-per-click. You can improve landing pages with SEO practices like mobile-friendly features, simpler URLs and custom-built ad landing pages.
By making both your ad and landing page as strong as possible, you can boost your quality score and overall ad performance.
Levelling up your results
Since there are billions of new searches on Google every day, advertisers need to be prepared to adapt messaging to the latest patterns in search intent. Regularly reviewing your keywords and metrics can help to reveal performance trends and possibilities over time.
Optimisation
Ongoing optimisation ensures that campaigns remain competitive as searches and browsing evolve. Google Ads Manager provides automated recommendations such as adjusting bids or adding new keywords, which often highlight the relative increase to your quality score.
Manual optimisation like testing ad copy variations, adjusting targeting and refining search terms can also maximise performance. Combining both approaches allows you to utilise insights while maintaining control over a campaign to increase return on investment (ROI).
Performance planning
Google Ads Manager has an in-built tool called the Performance Planner, which is designed to forecast how changes to budget, bids or targeting could impact your results. This tool also analyses market trends and data to set realistic targets for clicks, conversions and spend.
Using a performance planner and data-driven insights can allow advertisers to make more informed decisions, meaning they can allocate budgets properly and scale campaigns more confidently.
At Carrington, we deliver paid advertising campaigns across a range of platforms including Google Ads to meet your business goals. To find out more about how to make Google Ads work for your business, get in touch with our team.
