In this video, I'm going to show you exactly how to create and set up a campaign in Google Ads.
This is my quick-start Google Ads tutorial. So let's head to Google Ads to get started...
I've already signed up for a new Google Ads account at 'google', 'dot', 'com', 'forward
slash', 'ads'. And the first thing I recommend is clicking 'Switch to Expert Mode'.
Now we're asked to select a goal for our new campaign. This is designed to help guide you
through the different settings as you create your campaign. But since you're here learning exactly
how to set up your campaign, I want you to go ahead and select the option to create the campaign
without guidance. This will mean you're in control of the settings you choose. And you
can always change these after you've created the campaign. Next, we need to select the type
of campaign we want to create. We can see there is a range of options. We can choose from search,
display, shopping, video, app, smart, local, or discovery campaigns.
I recommend starting with a search campaign because you're already familiar with how Google
search works. People head to Google when they're looking for something. They enter a search term
and then they get the search results page. This means you can show your ad as people
are searching. So by starting with a search campaign you're already familiar with the
experience. You probably already have some ideas for the types of search terms people are using
to look for your products, your services, or your offering. Let's select 'Search'...
We're again asked to select the objectives for our new campaign, but I want you to leave these
deselected and click 'Continue'... Now you will need to name your campaign. I'm going to name
the campaign 'Draft Search', but you can name your campaign anything you like, and you can
even change the name after it's created. We can now control where our ads will be seen.
I want you to go ahead and deselect both of these options. So deselect 'Include Google search
partners' and also deselect 'Include Google Display Network'. This means that your ads will
only run on Google. The benefit of this is that you know exactly where your ads will be shown,
and it will also help focus your budget in the right place. Now you need to choose the location
targeting for your campaign. This is about where you want people to be located to see your ads,
and it's also about if they're interested in the location you've selected. Basically, if you
select, say, 'Australia' as the location for the campaign it will mean people located in Australia
will see your ads, plus anybody searching for keywords that relate to the location. For example,
if you start targeting the keyword of 'hotel' and you have the location target of Australia, then
people in Australia searching for 'hotel' will see your ads. And people in other countries searching
for 'hotel in australia' can see your ads too. I recommend aiming for a balance when you select
your location targeting. Try to choose a location that isn't too wide or too narrow. For example,
I would probably recommend starting with a city-level target, since a country-level target
can mean your budget might be spent very quickly. I also recommend choosing location targeting that
alights with your existing customers. If you're already generating leads or sales
in a particular geographic area, then use that to help inform your targeting in Google Ads.
So for my campaign, I'm going to select 'Sydney, Australia' as the location...
Next, we have the language targeting. I'm going to leave this as 'English',
but you can change this. For example, if you want to target ads to Italian speakers in Australia,
you could change the language. Then we need to choose a daily budget for our campaign.
This is the average amount you want to spend each day. I'm going to enter ten dollars. I
need to mention that the amount you spend each day can be higher or lower than this amount.
But this is the amount you will pay on average. Now it's time to choose our bidding strategy.
Google loves machine learning, which basically means automating things. However, if you're
getting started, then I recommend being in control and skipping the automation. So I want you to
click 'select a bid strategy directly'... Then click the drop-down and choose 'Manual CPC'...
This means you will be setting the maximum you want to spend for a click-through to your website
(instead of letting Google Ads automate the bidding). And we can see that 'Enhanced CPC' is
disabled because I haven't set up any conversions in this new account yet. However, if you see this
option selected, please disable it too. Then I want you to click 'Show More Settings'...
And then 'Ad Rotation'... And choose 'Do Not Optimize'... This will mean that you're in
control of testing ads in your campaign. You will then see more options... There are options to
create different extensions, including sitelinks, call-outs, and other extensions. Just leave these,
since we can set them up once we've created the campaign. Now let's click 'Save and Continue'...
It's time to create our first ad group in the campaign. Ad groups are like
sub-folders in Google Ads. They will store our keywords and ads for our search campaign.
The idea is to include five to ten keywords in each ad group and write a really compelling,
highly relevant ad that will be shown to people who search for any of those keywords. Five to
ten keywords is a general guide. Ad groups can have more (or less) keywords in them,
but five to ten usually indicates that the keywords are closely related to one another.
I recommend researching your keywords using the Keyword Planner, so for now, let's give the ad
group a name. Let's name it 'General'... Now we need to set the maximum we want to spend for each
click through to our website. Since we haven't researched our keywords yet, let's enter one
dollar as the maximum bid. And let's skip to the bottom... And let's click 'Save and Continue'...
Now Google Ads wants us to write some ads, but I recommend writing your ads
after you've researched your keywords, so let's skip straight to the bottom and click
'Save and Continue'... You will need to enter your billing details. Mine are pre-filled because I
already have another Google Ads account. Once you've entered your credit card information,
click 'Submit'... Then we need to click 'Explore your campaign'... Our new account loads... We
can now see our new search campaign in the navigation on the left, along with our ad group...
Since we have some more work to do before we want our ads to start showing to people,
let's click the green 'Enabled' label at the top... And let's change this to 'Paused'...
This means we can work on our new campaign, and then when we're ready,
we can change this back to 'Enabled'. The next step is to research the keywords you
want people to search for in order to see your ads. We're going to use the Keyword Planner,
so let's 'Tools and Settings'... And then 'Keyword Planner'... Now let's select
'Discover New Keywords'... And we need to enter some initial keywords to start our research.
You probably have some initial ideas of what people are searching for to find your business
or organization, so you can start by entering them here. For my campaign, I'm going to enter
'Google Analytics Course' because I want to promote one of my courses, but you should
enter a keyword (or keywords) that relate to your offering. Now let's click 'Get Results'...
We can now see a whole range of keyword ideas. If you haven't spent any budget in your Google Ads
account yet, then the insights will be limited, but there is enough detail to get started.
You should spend time reviewing the suggestions and making a note of keywords that you feel are
aligned with your offering. There are different ways to use the Keyword Planner, so you can check
out the extra resources in the description below this video for more in-depth resources.
Look for keywords that are closely related. These can be included in the same ad group.
Looking at these keywords, we might decide to have an ad group for course-related keywords,
another for certificate-related keywords, and another for training-related keywords. Take
time to review the keywords and start thinking about how they can be structured into ad groups.
Now let's close the Keyword Planner... And we need to select the ad group in the navigation...
Now let's select 'Keywords'... We can now add the keywords we researched to our ad group.
Let's click the plus sign... And I'm going to add the keywords that I found... The keywords you add
to each of your ad groups are not necessarily the keywords people search for on Google to
see your ads. This is because there are different keyword match types. Since we're getting started
and we don't want to spend our budget too quickly, I recommend you add the keywords as exact match.
This means that people need to be searching for the exact keyword you're bidding on (or a close
variation of the keyword). To do this, I want you to add a square bracket before and after each
keyword... You can also use phrase match and broad match for your keywords. Broad match is where you
enter the keywords without anything before or after them, so if we remove the square brackets,
these keywords would now be broad match. This means that Google Ads will automatically show
our ads when people search for our keywords and any search terms that relate to our keywords.
And phrase match is where you put your keywords in quotes. This means that people searching for our
keyowrds, along with variations that include additional words before or after our keyword
will also be matched. Since this is a quick-start tutorial, you can learn more by watching my
keyword match types tutorial. I've included a link in the description below this video.
For now, I recommend starting with exact match keywords. So if you haven't already, go ahead
and add a square bracket before and after each of your keywords. When you're happy, click 'Save'...
Now it's time to write our ads, so let's select 'Ads and Extensions'... Let's click
the plus sign and select 'Responsive Search Ad' to create our first ad... We start by
entering the URL we want to send people to on our website. This is the 'Final URL'...
It's important to spend time thinking about which page you are going to send people to. This page
needs to closely relate to the keywords you are targeting and the ad you are about to create.
So for my example, I'm going to enter the URL of my Google Analytics course... You can show a
slightly different URL to people in your ads using the 'Display Path', but let's skip this. Since
we're creating a responsive search ad, we can write up to 15 headlines and four descriptions.
Google Ads will then automatically choose which combination of headlines and descriptions to show
to people as they're searching. So spend time coming up with different messages,
calls to action and details about your offering. You're aiming to grab attention, be relevant,
and get people to click through to your website. I'm going to quickly enter some
headlines and descriptions for this ad, but take time when writing your real ads...
You will see previews of how your ad might appear on the right... And you will also
see some automated suggestions about your ad above the preview... Now let's save our ad...
We can see we've created our first ad. Now let's click the plus sign again... And select
'Responsive Search Ad'... This time I want you to click 'Switch Back to Text Ads' at the top...
This lets you write a standard text ad. This means that your ad will appear exactly as you've
written it. (Unlike the responsive ad that will automatically combine headlines and descriptions).
I recommend creating a standard text ad, so I'm going to go ahead and write my ad...
And I'm going to save my ad... Now we have two ads in our ad group. And I recommend you take the time
to write one more standard text ad. This means you would have three ads in your ad group and you can
use metrics like click-through rate, conversions and conversion rate to understand which ad
performs the best. This is the start of ad testing and optimizing your campaign. When you're ready
you can enable your campaign and your ads will begin to show as people are searching on Google.
There are more things you can set up and configure in Google Ads including ad extensions,
bid adjustments, and targeting. However, you've now learnt enough to get your ads up
and running while also being in control of your advertising costs. Great work!