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When we are onto making our online websites grow exponentially, you need to allocate the real money to invest for the sake of it.
Whether you are a beginner, professional, own a business, or even providing services in the digital marketing industry, it is your first time reverting to Google Ads to try your luck to market and eventually lock on the leads.
BTW, I am a Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and Bing Ads certified advertising professional, SEO expert, and honor to own a Google Partner company, thus I brought this amazing topic to put on the table where many feel stranded.
So, how to run Google Ads campaign for website traffic; you are going to avail the chance of my years-long research and expertise in this particular domain. And I bet this piece of information will be exclusively for the first-timers to retain the best results while my step-by-step tutorial will be quite easy and quick to follow along.
How To Run Google Ads Campaign for Website Traffic
Let’s get started with this question of how to run Google Ads campaigns for your website.
Are you ready? Well, I am ready to explode with the hoard of information to present in front of you because I have been fiddling with Google Ads from 2012 and SEO from 2006, and thus having years of experience in this industry.
Just head to your browser and type “Google Ads” in the search box.
There, you will probably see an ad on the top of the result page under “Sponsored”, and that is the live example of the Google Ad, and if you slide downward, the first result will also be having the same link as the “Sponsored” one and the both results will take you to the same page.
So, click on either of them and do not feel confused. 🙂
And once you are there, you will experience or witness there is this box (as circled in the screenshot below) starting you will get the free ad credit worth of over US$ 400.00 when you spend US$ 400.00 (so, the first spend of US$ 400.00 will translate into US$ 800.00 meaning you can enjoy running your ads with free money initially!)
Now, head to “Start”.
Setting Up Google Ads Account
On the next page, if you have not logged-in any GMail account, it will ask for you to either sign-in into a working GMail account, or create a new account.
But if you already have a GMail account signed-in and it really is your first time to create a Google Ads account, then click on “New Google Ads Account” to sign-up for a new dedicated Google Ads account for yourself.
Once you do click on “New Google Ads Account”, on the next page you would have to enter critical information in order to complete with the sign-up process covering the “Add business information” first in order to enable setting up your first campaign, and the first set of ads for your website.
Assume that you have successfully signed-up with a Google Ads account, you will get to experience a page like this (reference: screenshot) with the glimpse of a default dashboard of your Google Ads campaign.
There you see different stuff down here from your own account whether it is an older or newer one. So, I always recommend never using Google Ads express option instead use a regular account like this enabling you to consume all of the available features of what Google Ads offers.
Select New Campaign
At the page’s view, Select “New campaign” (screenshot added) to finally commence with the process.
Types of Google Ads Goals
Upon clicking on it, you will land on the dashboard presented with up to eight different goals offered by Google to craft your campaign with.
And they are as following;
- Sales;
- Leads;
- Website traffic;
- Product and brand consideration;
- Brand awareness and reach;
- App promotion;
- Local store visits and promotions;
- Create a campaign without a goal’s guidance.
In our case, you are meant to run a campaign for your website meaning that the app promotion will not apply in our stance so, we are left with only seven goals.
And out of these seven goals, we have to pick one goal type for our website which suits us better in our scenario.
Type #1: Local Store Visits and Promotions
For example, you own a local store, meaning owning an offline shop in your city like a pizza store and such, then you will pick “local store visits and promotions” as campaigns to target the local searchers to get your business found by them.
Also, if you are a doctor in town offering specific services, you will need to opt for that as well.
Type #2: Website Traffic
But when you own a website where your primary goal is to retrieve as much traffic as possible, you are good to select “Website traffic” to make sure you have the right type of goal selected for the purpose.
Type #3: Leads
However, you operate a website primarily looking to get leads from the people/searchers, let’s say you are running a website backed by an insurance company, you will need more leads as inquiries because you need the people to offer your packages and not sell one directly, so “Leads” will be your goal.
And you know that the sales funnel procedure requires multiple calls and multiple visits before locking on your offering, so you will have to stick with “Leads”.
Another aspect of selecting “Leads” as your campaign’s goal type is when people have to make first-time booking to inquire about your service/offerings.
Type #4: Sales
Alternatively, when you happen to sell something directly from your website, pick “Sales” to convert searchers into customers.
Type #5: Brand Awareness and Reach
What about if you plan to make people aware of your business/brand? For that, select “Brand awareness and reach” to target the searchers look to read more about the businesses rather than availing your services and inquiries *hint: indirect marketing of your brand*
Type #6: Product and Brand Consideration
On the other hand, when you aim for the people to encourage specific product options and variations, please select “Product and brand consideration” .
Type #7: App Promotion
When you own an app, you need the like-minded eyes to promote it, no? Of course, yes! And, you will then have to pick “App promotion” as your campaign type to set up your ad to target the people consuming the popular Google properties like the famous Google Play, and more.
Type #8: Create a Campaign without a Goal’s Guidance
Finally, you are unsure of what you plan to do (but we must recommend to utilize the campaign part to get the best out of it), go with “Create a campaign without a goal’s guidance” to work your way out randomly.
So, pick your goal type as per your preference and you can switch to either one of them on later stages by conducting a bit of changes in your campaign.
Setting Up Campaign Intending for “Sales”
Again speaking per preferences, we will go with “Sales” in our tutorial as we plan to obtain more sales. For that, our website would need to have a conversion tracker installed first to track sales.
When I click on “Sales”, Google will take me to the campaign type under the primary campaign goal type of “Sales”.
And there, you will be able to see up to six types of campaigns to select from.
What are those six+one campaign types? Let’s keep scrolling!
- Search: This will take your ad to show on Google Search result pages (SERPs)
- Performance Max: That goes to be a mixture of all type of Google platforms to run my ads on including GMail, Google, and Google Display Network
- Display: It enables your ad to only show on Google Display Network
- Shopping: This allows you to populate your product on different Google properties, and for that, you should make your Google Merchant Center account connected with Google Shopping to enjoy reaching the shoppers without any hassle!
- Video: You wish to outgrow your YouTube videos in order to get subscribers and fetch the views primarily from YouTube, then target this dedicated campaign goal type
- Discovery: If you want to specifically target YouTube along with GMail Discover and many more, opt for “Discovery”
- Demand Gen: Pick it when you want to enjoy the advanced formula of “Performance Max” where Google A.I. will extensively transform your ad tailored with the best optimized version of it to target up to 3 billion active monthly users
So, here I present you with six+one campaign goal type under the primary campaign type of “Sales”.
Now, we will further proceed with the most-popular “Search” campaign goal type for better revelation of the facts and figures.
With this, your primary dream is to run this campaign for your website to obtain traffic that is searching for the keywords you meant to target with your ad.
Starting with Sales Goal
Afterward, the first question will be asked is “Select the ways you’d like to reach your goal”, and there you can pick one or multiples from;
- Website visits
- Phone calls
- Store visits
- App downloads
Entering Website URL
Because it is going to be a campaign for a website, thus I will only select “Website visits”, and the soonest I click on that, it will ask to enter my blog URL.
Over there, you will see a well-known blog under the field of Digital Marketing namely https://aliraza.co (owned and operated by me!)
After that, I will give this campaign a name from the field as shown in the screenshot.
Turning on Enhanced Conversions
Then I will also select “Turn on enhanced conversions” to improve, enhance, and optimize my campaign to auto-suggest to keep a tab of which keywords, area, and people that could be converting well for me (my campaign.)
But for that to work on, I must need to put a code on a thank you page whenever there is a successful sale where the shopper redirects to that page where the cookie is placed knowingly the sale was successfully completed through your account and that is possibly a viable method to track the people who are actually converting.
Then, click on the “Agree and continue” button to further proceed with the process by jumping towards the Bidding procedure.
Adjusting the Bidding
Now comes the turn of playing with bidding.
Selecting Optimization Options
There you will be presented with ample options starting with the question of “What do you want to focus on?” and the drop-down field says the following;
- Recommended
- Conversions
- Conversion value
- Clicks
- Impressions share
By the way, “Conversion” and “Conversion value” are not possible to implement without proper setup of the conversion tracker first as we have not installed it yet. I believe that only the old campaigns should be running with conversion trackers on already.
So as the matter of fact, we are only left with two options including “Clicks”, and “Impression share”.
Since I target for my ad to be shown on the top of the page or the bottom and even on the specific ad position, I will select “Impressions share” from the drop-down list.
But if I plan to target the case on any random ad positions, I suggest going with “Clicks”.
With our recommendation, we urge you to pick “Clicks” for a new campaign in variations for the first week and select “Impression share” for the second week to learn your way up and sniff how your ad is performing at whatever positions.
In our case, we select “Clicks” for the tutorial.
Time to Enter Maximum CPC bid limit
When selected, it will ask for “Maximum CPC bid limit” for the question of “Set a maximum cost per click bid limit” that you wish to pay for each click.
Remember that a good ad campaign requires quality score optimization which will eventually help in reducing your cost to multiple folds.
Let’s say, I am going to select US$ 5.44 as a random amount but you need to run through a rough calculation of how much clicks you plan to pay for by doing the simple math. And assume that you are selling an item and out of 100 people, only four people are converting for your product.
With each sale, it means you are earning US$ 20.00 and for four successful sales, it will go to US$ 80.00’s mark for 100 people to target. Thus, it results in a simple calculation like paying US$ 8.00 for a single click.
That US$ 8.00 is the maximum amount you can bid for now in order to target a new customer base.
What To Do with Customer Acquisition?
Next onto the “Customer acquisition”, the selectable option of “Bid for new customers only”, which I do not recommend to select because a customer needs to be targeted multiple times before deciding on purchasing your product. So, leave that option as it is and click on “Next”.
Pick Your Networks
On the next page, you will be able to reveal with ample of options there. So, beginning with that, “Search Network” and “Display Network” are auto-selected from the “Networks” section.
Go with the both networks checked to reach the broader audience hopefully searching for your product on all those networks.
Your Location: Critical Step!
Slide down to “Locations”
By default, “All countries and territories” are selected but you need to play a bit with this critical option.
Know that your website does not serve internationally, the first option will definitely not work.
Pick your own location to target the visitors from your own region, and that is what I recommend as well.
But if you try selecting “Enter another location”, this will limit your ad to the specific set of country, city, region, and postal code.
To further play with that location function, I will go with “Advanced search” to target the specific areas under the cities critical to the purpose of my website.
Why Skip Audience Segments?
As I further slide downward, you will see “Audience segments” which I do not recommend to alter any options there at the moment but you can do so later on.
Everything to Share on Keywords and Ads
Now, select “Next” and it will take you to the “Keywords and ads” view.
Based on your website suggestion, Google will populate/recommend you with some helpful keywords which you can safely use.
I recommend you to work on your keywords focusing on broad matches. Since you are starting out new and you require to obtain more data, you should be running your ad campaign at least for one day.
Then you should immediately shift to phrase match or exact match keywords that Google starts to suggest.
Exuberant Weekly Cost!!
See that Google is suggesting to me the weekly cost of up to US$ 63,000.00 from the set of keywords if I wish to run the ad with. Just imagine paying US$ 63,000.00 every week is never justifiable…
Picking Custom Budget
To best tailor your budget for the campaign, click on “Set custom budget” so that you do not need to rely on Google anymore since it has already showcased multiple of recommended budgets based on your keywords, and all.
Under “Set custom budget”, let’s say we are going to stick with the budget of $ 22.70, and see that the weekly cost shrinks to the acceptable level.
So, get to click on “Next” to have a final review of your ad campaign.
The Errors I Faced on Submitting Review
However, it reverted with one error of “All countries and territories: over there with the locations, I simply clicked on it and selected my region which immediately fixed the problem.
Once everything looks good, click on the “Review” option from the left panel, and Google Ads will scan for errors and publish it upon no findings.
Optimized Campaign Optimization Score
Check that Google is giving me the optimization score of 78.3% for a newly-published campaign which is already at a good mark but I can further fine-tune it using more ad extensions and the keyword structure to score a lot better.
It looks rather easy to publish an ad campaign without much effort but to run it and score well all the time, you will need to keep improving consistently as you cannot just leave it hanging for days.
Conclusion!
I hope that this exclusive tutorial would have served well where you can reference how to run Google Ads campaigns for website traffic, and If I can say it being a go-to guide for Google Ads for beginners in 2024!
Still if you believe your ad campaign needs professional touch-up, you can hire me as I possess a team that can literally help you to suggest the best, score outstanding to serve the best purpose of your ad!