It seems that nearly everyone on earth “Googles” for answers these days. And actually, they do. Stats show that nearly everyone on earth is using the search engine. As of January, 2022, Google has 91.9 percent of the market share and processes over 8.5 billion searches per day. So this seems like a smart place to put ads for your business—the reach is unparalleled. The good news is that getting started with Google Ads is fairly easy to do. And here’s how.

Once you’ve set up your Google Ads account, here are some basic steps to get you going. These tips and steps come directly from Google Ads Help to make this process as easy as possible.

*This blog post was updated in May of 2023 with the help of Mark Chapman of The I Do Society.

Creating your campaign

1. In your Google Ads account, click the Campaigns icon  
2. Click the Campaigns drop down in the section menu
3. Click Campaigns
4. Click the plus button, then select New  campaign
5. Choose your campaign objective, then follow the prompts in Google Ads
6. Click Continue

Selecting a search (text) campaign

Your campaign type determines where customers will find your ads. As a small business, you’ll most likely want to choose Search based text ads for your first ad campaigns.

1. Under campaign type select Search. If you selected a goal, you’ll be given  options for the best campaign types to achieve it.  
2. If your campaign type has subtypes, choose one
3. Click Continue
4. You’ll be taken to a new page to select your settings, set up ad groups, and create your ads. For campaign type, select: ‘Search: Text ads on search results’

Building your Google ad campaign

Building your text campaign is fairly straightforward. Google Ads now exclusively uses "Responsive Search Ads" that allow you to input up to 15 different headlines (30 character limit) and 4 descriptions (90 character limit). Different variations of headlines and descriptions allow Google Ads to find the right combination that will perform best. You can pin up to 3 headlines to ensure those are what people see when your ad is shown.

Headline

For the best results, pin at least one headline that includes the keyword you are bidding on. This will ensure a visual "message match" and help the person who searched your keyword find exactly what they are looking for. The remaining headlines should communicate what makes your product or service unique so they can quickly decide if it's right for them.

Display URL

The display URL, usually in green, shows your website address. This display URL is made up of the domain from your final URL and the text in the optional “path fields.” These fields are designed to help people who see your ad get a better sense of where they’ll be taken when they click it. Your path text doesn’t have to match the exact language of your display URL, but it should include your keywords. Showing your keywords in the display URL further reinforces the feeling that your ad matches exactly what they searched for and is the best choice to click on.

Description

Use this space to elaborate on what makes your product or services unique/better/interesting and tell them what will happen next when they click on your ad. For example "view our inventory of [your keyword]" or "find out how to get the best [your service] in [your area]."

Example Google ad

Here is an example of how your Google ad could look. This is an ad we created:

Setting up your assets

These are all the add-ons that can show up with your ad. Not every business needs to use every asset type, but the more assets you set up, the more robust your ad will be. And, a more robust ad takes up more real estate on the search results page and is always more enticing to click on! Here is a list of different assets you can set up to make your ad irresistible:

• Your business name
• Your business logo
• Images
• Sitelinks
• Callouts
• Structured Snippets
• Your Phone number
• Your Location
• Pricing
• Promotions
• Apps
• Lead Forms
• What's App Messages

Ad landing pages

It's important to note that regardless of how great your ad might be at getting people to click, having a great landing page on the other side that gets them to buy is key! Learn more about how to create a landing page and make sure your really setting your ad up to be a money-maker.

Google has very detailed instructions to get your ad campaign up and running quickly. Once you’ve set up a Google Ads account, it’s GO TIME! Don’t forget to see how your campaign is performing in the analytics tools that Google provides and add a few KPIs to your Enji account too.

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