Get your search campaign on Google AdWords in less than 10 steps

The first thing anyone does today before buying a product or service is research online - most likely via Google. Whether you’re looking to sell or simply create brand awareness, wouldn’t it be great if you could reach your target audience when they searched online for products/services like you?

Well, that’s exactly what the Google AdWords program helps you do. It offers businesses a very precise method to display ads on Google and its network, in order to reach precise target audiences. It’s is a measurable and flexible way to engage your audiences and deliver leads, while controlling your advertising costs.

Let’s take a look at what an AdWords campaign is and how you can set one up.

Let’s start with the basics:

An AdWords Campaign is an ad campaign within an AdWords account. An AdWords campaign is usually composed of several ad groups. Each ad group serves different ad texts based on the type of keyword a user may type into Google's search engine. 

• Your AdWords account can have one or many ad campaigns running.
• Each campaign consists of one or more ad groups.
• Settings that you can set at the campaign level include budget, language, location, distribution for the Google Network and more.
• You can create separate ad campaigns to run ads in different locations or using different budgets.

What you should know before you set up your AdWords campaign:

Campaign Name
This is where you enter a name for your campaign. You should choose a name that clearly describes the theme of the campaign so that you can easily find it in your account. Your campaign name isn't visible to your customers.

Campaign Types
The campaigns are of 2 types, mainly search and display. 
Search Campaign gives ads which are matched to search results, based on terms or phrases a user searches.
Display Campaign ads will be shown on specific placements viz TOI, ET, Hindustan Times, etc.

The features that are available are :

• Basic location targeting
• Basic bidding and budget settings
• Common ad extensions to include a phone number, URL, location, or social link.
• Language targeting

Simple Steps to get your Search Campaign on Google Adwords:

Step 1: Keyword Research

Keyword research is the first step in the process of a search campaign on Google AdWords. Once you have all these keywords, you need to organize them in a way that enables you to actually do something useful with them. For developing an effective keyword campaign, one must identify the right target audience and then using an effective tool for having filters associated in order to have it organized.

Step 2: Check keywords suggested bid, search volume, etc.

The bid simulators collect and analyze data from ad auctions on the Search Network and the Display Network while considering information such as quality score, keyword traffic, and competition in the ad auction. The tools use this information to estimate how your ads might have performed in terms of key metrics like cost, impressions, clicks and conversion volume.

Step 3: Find negative keywords and apply them in the parameters after campaign setup to avoid unwanted traffic.

Negative keywords can help you reach the most interested customers, reduce your costs, and increase your return on investment (ROI). When you add terms as negative keywords (available for "Search Network only" and "Search Network with Display Select") or as keyword exclusions (for "Display Network only" campaigns), your ad won't be shown to people searching for those terms or visiting sites that contain those terms.

Step 4: Grouping the keywords according to theme

Many advertisers find it helpful to base their ad groups on the sections or categories that appear on their website.

Step 5: Create a search campaign & apply budget, geo, device-wise bid adjustment, etc.

Bid adjustments are a percentage change to a bid and allow for an increase or decrease for better control of where ads are shown. For example, a location that produces more valuable leads can be targeted more aggressively with an increase in adjustment to bid.

Step 6: Put all keywords in your campaign’s adgroup according to ad group theme

An ad group contains one or more ads that target a shared set of keywords. Having the category for the various keywords will help in identifying the ad groups.

Step 7: Set a default ad group bid.

Set a bid amount that applies to all of the keywords and placements in your ad group that don't have individual bids. This bid sets the maximum amount that you're willing to pay for each click on your ad for any keyword and placement without its own bid.

Here’s how to set a bid when creating an Ad group:

• Sign in to your AdWords account

• Click the Campaigns tab.

• Click the Ad groups tab under All campaigns.

• Click the + Ad group button.

Step 8: Upload text ads in all ad groups

Using bulk uploads is an efficient way to make changes to the keywords, ads, ad groups, campaigns and product groups (for shopping campaigns) in your AdWords account. This feature saves you time by allowing you to download spreadsheets, make changes offline, and then upload the updated spreadsheet back into your account where your new changes will be applied. This way, you can take immediate and bulk action on issues and opportunities you observe in your data. ​

Step 9: Keyword diagnosis

Just like all good managers evaluate their employees' performance on a regular basis, you will probably want to review your keywords' performance to see which ones are helping you meet your advertising goals for your Google Search campaigns.This step involves reviewing the entire procedure, starting from step 1 i.e. keyword research to the uploading of text ads in all the ad groups. 

Now that you know how to set up a campaign on Google AdWords, getting quality leads isn’t too far behind! One of the most important steps to getting results, however, is to continuously track and monitor your campaigns - in our next blog post, we tell you all about using Google Analytics to track your campaign.
Stay tuned!
In the meanwhile, for detailed campaign guidance or any other digital marketing-related requirements, leave us your contact details and we’ll be in touch.
Happy marketing!