Google Ads: How to attract customers starting tomorrow (updated)

If you want to attract customers starting tomorrow, Google Ads helps you quickly reach those who search for your product or service on Google.

And when I say fast, I mean it takes half an hour to create a basic campaign.

You don’t need technical knowledge, graphic design or other complex skills.

All you need at the beginning is to know a few basic things about the platform.

And in this step-by-step guide, we’ll take you through what those elements are and how you can create your own Google Ads campaign that can attract customers the very next day.

Note: If your article doesn’t display correctly or you seem to be missing images, make sure you have Adblocker turned off.

Specifically, by the end of the guide you’ll know:

How Google Ads works
You’ll understand what Google Ads is, how you can use it to promote your business online and whether it’s right for your business.

How you can use Google Ads to attract only visitors ready to buy
In this section you’ll learn how you can save money by filtering out those people who will never buy from you.

How to create a Google Ads campaign from scratch (even if you’ve never created ads in your life)
This section is full of step-by-step printscreens showing you how to create Google Ads.

All you need to do is have two tabs open in your browser: one with this mini-guide, and the other with your Google Ads account (which you’ll learn how to create in this tutorial) and in less than 20 minutes you’ll have your first ads.

How to create compelling ads (with examples included that you can copy and adapt to your business immediately)
Not all people are very good at putting their thoughts on paper. Sorry, on the keyboard.

That’s why this section is full of examples and templates you can copy and adapt to your business. Whenever you need ideas or inspiration, you can come back to this section.

What Google Ads is and how it works

Let’s say you own a restaurant that also offers delivery services.

With the help of Google Ads, within hours your phone may already be ringing for orders.

How?

The mechanism is very simple.

You can create ads that are displayed ONLY when someone searches for a keyword you preset.

If someone clicks on your ad, you pay a certain amount to Google (from a few dollars to a few lei/ten lei) for that click.

If no one clicks on your ad, you pay nothing.

In short, you attract ONLY visitors who are interested in your service/product.

Want more detailed instructions? We’ve got them in the new Marketing Hackers PRO. See details.

Is Google Ads right for me?

You’ve probably figured it out by now, Google Ads is only suitable if people are searching for your product or service.

If you have a new product or service that people haven’t heard of yet (and aren’t Googling for it), neither Google Ads nor SEO will help you much.

At unosoft for example, we’ve faced this situation. As the first Growth Hacking agency in Romania, nobody had heard of this new service, Growth Hacking.

We didn’t need to create ads for this service, if nobody was looking for it on Google.

That’s why we used other methods like content marketing to get the concept out there.

Also read: How we increased organic website traffic by 197.40% in just 4 months

Before you get started, you need to know these Google Ads terms

Every Google Ads account is structured like this (we’ll see how you create it in a moment):

Campaign
Campaign is the biggest “piece”. Here you choose the campaign objective (traffic to the website, calls, brand awareness, etc.) and the campaign settings (location, budget, target language, etc.).

In an Ads account there can be multiple campaigns, each with its own settings and objective.

Ad groups and ads
Ad groups help you to better organise your campaign according to different categories/criteria that you set.

Each ad group can have several ads.

Let’s say you have an online sporting goods store and you want to create ads to sell sneakers to two target audiences: men and women.

In addition, for each target audience, you want to test multiple messages.

In Google Ads this would all look something like this:

Campaign name: Sneakers

Ad Group #1: Women

• Ad for women #1:
• Women’s ad #2:
• Women’s ad #3

Ad Group #2: Men

• Men’s commercial #1:
• Men’s ad #2:
• Men’s ad #3

Keywords
A group of advertisements has one or more keywords. Your ads will only be displayed when someone searches for your chosen keyword(s).

Let’s replay the above example to make it clearer.

Campaign name: Sneakers

Ad Group #1: Women

• Keywords: women’s sneakers, women’s sports sneakers, etc.
• Advertisement for women #1:
• Women’s ad #2:
• Women’s ad #3

Ad Group #2: Men

• Keywords: men’s sneakers, men’s sport sneakers, etc.
• Advertisement for men #1:
• Men’s ad #2:
• Men’s ad #3

When someone searches for men’s sneakers or men’s sports sneakers they will be shown one of 3 ads targeted to men.

When someone searches for women’s trainers, women’s sports trainers, they will be shown one of the 3 ads aimed at women.

Over time, Google measures which ads are the most effective (in this case the ones that get the most clicks) and will show more of those.

Cost per click (CPC)
This metric helps you see how much you pay on average per click. It is calculated by dividing the total budget spent by the number of clicks.

For example, if you spent 100 lei and got 10 clicks, you have an average cost per click of 10 lei.

Click-through-rate (CTR)
This metric helps you see how engaging your ads are and is calculated by dividing the total number of impressions by the number of clicks.

If your ad was shown 100 times and you got 10 clicks, you have a click through rate of 10%.

Types of Google Ads campaigns

Under the Google Ads umbrella fall several ways you can reach potential customers.

1) Text ads displayed in the Google Search Network
This mode is the most popular and is the one explained above. Your ad appears in the Google search engine when someone uses a keyword entered by you.

2) Graph ads displayed in the Google Display Network
These ads can be either text ads or, more popularly, banner ads (images + text) and are displayed on more than two million sites and in over 650,000 apps (including Gmail) based on various criteria you select:

• Sites containing certain keywords
• Sites dealing with a certain subject
• A list of sites that you select yourself, manually
• And many other options.

3. Shopping ads

These are ads that also contain images and are usually displayed above the results in Google or on the right-hand side:

If you have an online store, this is probably the most effective type of advertising to use.

As well as displaying the price of the product and increasing your chances of attracting only clicks from the right customers, the Smart version also has a remarketing component that shows dynamic ads to people based on the products you’ve used on the site.

4) Video ads

Video ads appear on Youtube before or next to similar videos or in search results.

And here you have more options for targeting your audience from age, gender to location or interest categories.

I’m not putting printscreens here. We all know them, we’re all waiting for the 4 seconds to pass so we can give skip. ?

5) Application ads
These help you get more installs for your app.

Google will display ads in Google Search, Google Play, YouTube, Gmail, and many other places.

6) Smart

These smart ads are a little nebula where you pass control to Google and they will set and optimize much of the campaign for you (important, don’t confuse them with Smart Shopping campaigns).

These are designed especially for small, local businesses that don’t have the time to carefully manage campaigns or the budget to work with an agency.

7) Local

As the name implies, this type of ad can help you appear first when someone is looking for a business in their area, such as a tailor, hairdresser, service, restaurant, etc.

8) Discovery

This is a newer type of ad, quite clever, often shown on YouTube or Discover (a feature on Android phones).

How to create a step-by-step Google Ads campaign from scratch

Step 1 – Create a free Google Ads account

It’s very simple. Click on this link (https://ads.google.com/intl/en_RO/home/) and once again click on “Get started”.

Enter your email address (doesn’t have to be a Gmail address) and the homepage of your website to create your Google Ads account.

Step 2: Choose your Google Ads campaign target

Depending on the objective, Google will do further optimization.

If you’re doing your first campaigns now, the traffic goal is good if you have a website.

Step 3 – Choose campaign type

As soon as you’ve created your account, Google wants you to create your first campaign.

Don’t worry, if you don’t want to create it now, you can create a test campaign (choose any goal) that you can stop immediately after creating your account. That way you won’t spend any money and your account creation will be completed.

But whether you want to start the ads now or do it later, you’ll still get to this step.

Here, you’ll have to choose one of the options we discussed above.

If you’ve never created Google Ads campaigns before, you probably want to show an ad to people searching for your product or service. So choose the Search Network option.

Step 4 – Choose campaign settings

Once you have chosen your campaign objective, you will now choose your campaign settings.

Location
You can choose to show an ad only to people searching for your product in a specific city.

Or just from a specific country.

Or you can select your geographic area.

Language
Here I think it’s pretty clear. Google will only show ads to people who speak a certain language.

Budget
The budget can only be chosen per day.

Therefore, you will have to calculate how much you want to spend in a month or over a certain period.

For example, if your total budget is 300 lei, divide by the number of days in a month and that’s the figure you’ll put in your budget settings.

Bidding
Here you choose how you want Google to optimize your campaign.

You can choose to optimize for clicks or conversions.

Be careful though, if you don’t have conversion measurement set, it’s safest to choose “Optimize for clicks” otherwise you risk your campaign not starting.

If you choose conversion optimization, but you don’t have conversion measurement set, Google will try to show ads to people who are most likely to buy.

But this optimization assumes that you already have some (measured) conversions on your site. And if you don’t… let’s say Google is confused. Which is why it won’t start the campaign.

Campaign start and end dates
Here it goes without saying.

Link extensions
Sitelinks are like mini-advertisements, attached to the main advertisement, that lead to specific pages on your site where they can find out more information.

It’s good to create them, because that way your ad will take up more space in the search results and there’s a much better chance you’ll get people’s attention and get them to click on your ad and not your competitor’s.

Callout extensions
These extensions are yet another way to attract the attention of potential customers to click on your ad.

These extensions are designed to provide more details about your product/service.

But because you only have 25 characters, you have to:

• You should not enter too many words because you don’t have space and you should be brief
• Be specific

Step 5 – Create an ad group

Each ad group contains one or more keywords. When people search Google for those keywords, the ad for that keyword will be displayed.

What’s important here is to choose only those keywords that are relevant to your service/product and that show the highest intent to buy.

For example, if you’re a dentist and you want to advertise your teeth whitening service, try not to choose a broad or general keyword like “teeth whitening”.

Instead, you can try keywords like “teeth whitening in X city” or “teeth whitening price”.

Keyword types

Each match type can cause the search ad to be displayed to a customer in different ways. Next, you’ll learn some details about each type.

Broad match
Broad match is the default match type assigned to all keywords. Ads may be displayed for searches that include misspellings, synonyms, similar searches, and other relevant variants.

For example, if you choose the keyword “pancakes with Nutella, the ad might display for someone searching for “how to make pancakes with basil jam”.

Example keyword: nutella pancakes
Sample search for which the ad will be displayed: how to make pancakes

Broad match modifier
If you add the “+” sign in front of a keyword, it means that keyword must be contained in the search people make (in any order) for your ad to be displayed.

Symbol: +word +key
Example keyword: +key +gem
Example of search for which the ad will appear: pancakes with jam, pancakes with strawberry jam
Sample search for which the advert not will be displayed: pancakes, pancakes with nutella

Phrase match
Ads can be displayed for searches that match a phrase or are close variants of a phrase, with additional terms before or after. Notices will not display if a term is added in the middle of the phrase or if the terms appear in a different order.

Symbol: “nutella pancakes”
Example of search for which the ad will be displayed: order pancakes with nutella
Example of a search for which the ad will not be displayed: nutella pancakes, order pancakes with jam or nutella.

Exact match
Ads may appear for searches that match the exact term or represent close variants of it. This may include reordering of terms, provided the meaning does not change, and addition or deletion of functional words (prepositions, conjunctions, articles and other terms that do not affect the purpose of the search).

Symbol: [cuvânt cheie]
Example keyword: [clătite cu nutella]
Example of search for which the ad will be displayed: nutella pancakes
Sample search for which the advert notwill be displayed: pancakes with nutella and bananas

Step 6 – Create the ad

The structure of a Google Ads ad is very simple. You:

• 2 titles (30 characters each)
• A description (80 characters)
• A URL

How you write copy to get people to click on your ad and not your competition’s is all up to your creativity.

And below we’ll look at some simple ways we can do that.

How to quickly create effective ads, even if you’re not a creative person (copy and adapt the examples below)

The most effective structure we used at unosoft is very simple:

Title 1: Promise (what you get)
Title 2: Benefit and/or offer
Description: Why would people click on our ad and not the “neighbor’s” ad.
Display URL: add keyword.

We play with these 3 elements depending on the product or service being promoted.

1. Use benefits right in the title

Don’t just say what the product is, but how it helps the potential customer.

1 TB hard drive – Stores 1 million songs

1000 mAh external battery – Watch movies for 10 hours

1000 mAh external battery – Stay online for up to 10 hours

We have cheap tiles. And we deliver them in 2 days. Order now.

Aluminium frame mountain bike – Lighter than a handbag

Tank for kids. Batteries included – Can be played with immediately

Dual-Lens Tripple X Camera – Take great pictures at night

2. Use offers in title

Running sneakers – 40% discount. Stock clearance

Hot and fluffy pizza – pay one get two

LG K700 TV – Free Shipping

3. Tell people why you’re unique

The First Growth Hacking Agency – From Romania

4. Use social proof to gain people’s trust

Accounting management software. Over 5000 users.

6. Reply to objections

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7. Use figures and keywords in title and description

Numbers attract attention and make your ads “click” more than the rest.

Also, when the keyword entered by people is found in the title, it will be bolded. That means you have an extra chance to get people’s attention.

Instead of conclusions

Creating a Google Ads campaign isn’t hard. Creating a campaign that also delivers results requires continuous optimization.

So remember:

• Use specific words, not general (sneakers – women’s running sneakers pink)
• Always think about why someone would click on your ad and not the one below or above it
• Tell how the product helps you, not what the product is (1 TB Hard Drive – Stores 1 million songs)