How to place an advert on Google

How to place an advert on Google

Learning how to place an advert on Google is simple. You set up your account, provide your business information, and start building your first campaign with guidance from a Google expert. But to create an engine for lasting growth, it helps to learn a little more about which campaign is right for your goals, how to engage interested customers, and ways to optimise your Google Ads budget.

Setting up your Google Ads account

Advertising through Google begins with account setup where you provide basic information about your business. You can set up your Google Ads account in one of two ways: Smart Mode or Expert Mode.

• Smart Mode is designed specifically for new Google Ads users, automating a lot of the heavy lifting to help you get live quickly.
• Expert Mode is designed for more experienced users looking for more control over advanced bidding strategies and campaign structures.

For most new users, Smart Mode is the preferred way to begin. While the exact setup screens will look different depending on the type of campaign you choose (Search, Display, Performance Max, etc.), every Google Ads setup revolves around a few core phases:

1. Basic information: You’ll start by signing in, entering your business details, and selecting your primary goal (like website traffic or phone calls). Smart Mode will automatically recommend the campaign type most suited to your goal.
2. Targeting: Next, you’ll tell Google who should see your ads. This might involve choosing keyword themes, geographic locations, or specific audience demographics.
3. Creative assets: This is where you build the ad itself. You’ll draft headlines, write descriptions, and — depending on the campaign type — upload images or videos.
4. Budgeting, bidding, and billing: Finally, you’ll pick a bidding strategy to optimise your goals, set a maximum daily budget you’re comfortable with, and enter your billing details to launch.

Choosing the right campaign type

Google Ads offers a wide variety of easy-to-use ad formats. Each campaign type lends itself to specific business goals, such as increasing brand visibility, focusing on lead generation, or converting users with high purchase intent. Here’s a breakdown of the different types of Google Ads campaigns and when you might use them:

Keyword selection and audience targeting

Effective Google advertisements target specific audience segments. Your targeting strategy depends heavily on your selected campaign type.

Here’s how to approach targeting across the different formats:

Intent-based targeting (Search campaigns)

Search targeting is driven by keyword selection based on user intent. Short-tail keywords (like “plumber”) help you reach broad audiences, while long-tail keywords (like “emergency plumber near me”) target specific, high-intent searches from users closer to making a purchase. When building your campaign, use the Keyword Planner tool to discover exact terms your customers are searching for, and organise similar keywords into dedicated ad groups.

Audience-based targeting (Display, Video, and Demand Gen)

Visual formats focus less on specific search terms and more on audience signals. You define your ideal customer through demographics, interests, and online behaviours. To refine your targeting, you can use your existing customer lists or build custom audience segments based on the types of websites your ideal customers visit or the apps they use.

Hybrid targeting (Performance Max)

Performance Max combines both keywords and audience signals, using Google AI to target users dynamically across multiple channels. You can help provide the system with a stronger foundation by uploading high-quality text and image assets, alongside your best audience signals, to help the AI find relevant customers more efficiently.

Budget basics for Google Ads

When you’re running a business with strict budget limits, you need to get the most out of every penny. Google Ads offers several levers to help you control costs while maximising your reach. Familiarising yourself with these basic components will help you evaluate your bidding strategies effectively over time:

• Daily and monthly budget caps: You set a maximum daily Google Ads budget to control daily costs. Because search traffic fluctuates, Google might overdeliver on busy days to capture more clicks, but the system is designed to help you stay within your monthly charging limit (your daily budget multiplied by the average number of days in a month).
• Cost-per-click (CPC): This is the amount you pay each time a user clicks on your ad. Monitoring your average CPC helps you understand the competitiveness of your keywords.
• Cost-per-acquisition (CPA): This metric represents the average amount you spend to acquire a single conversion (like a sale or lead). Tracking your CPA helps determine the true profitability of your campaigns, which you can use to make more informed decisions on whether an acquisition strategy is worth it or not.
• Billing thresholds: This is a set amount of spend that triggers an automatic charge to your primary payment method.

Setting up conversion tracking

To measure your return on investment, you need to know which campaigns, keywords, and ads are driving real business value. Conversion tracking provides the data you need to analyse performance and understand how to optimise your budget effectively.

Conversion tracking starts by defining a conversion for your business. A conversion is any specific user action that contributes directly to your bottom line. For an online shop, a conversion is typically a completed purchase. For a service-based business, a conversion might be a phone call, a newsletter signup, or a submitted lead form.

To help capture this data accurately, you will need to install Google Tags on your website. A tag is a small snippet of code that registers when a user completes your defined conversion action after clicking an ad. This conversion data acts as the fuel that trains the algorithm. As the system gathers more data, it helps Google’s AI power smart bidding strategies like Target CPA to automatically find more valuable customers based on historical performance.

Creating effective ad copy

Writing compelling ad copy requires a balance of clear messaging and strict character constraints. When creating Google Ads copy, you should aim to maximise the limited space available to capture attention. Responsive Search Ads allow you to input up to 15 headlines (maximum 30 characters each) and four descriptions (maximum 90 characters each).

Google tests different combinations of your assets to find the highest-performing variations. Because of this mix-and-match approach, every headline and description should make sense individually and when paired together. Focus on highlighting concrete benefits and unique selling points rather than just listing features. Finally, always include a strong call-to-action (CTA) — such as “Book an appointment,” “Shop the sale,” or “Get a quote” — to tell potential customers exactly what step to take next.

Selecting high-quality visual assets

While text drives Search campaigns, images and videos do a lot of the heavy lifting for formats like Display, Demand Gen, and Performance Max. High-quality visual assets can give potential customers an immediate impression of your product’s value before they ever read a description.

It helps to use clear, high-resolution images that highlight the product or service in context. Supplying a variety of image dimensions — such as landscape, square, and vertical formats — allows the system to adapt the ad for different screens and websites, increasing the number of places your ad may appear. It’s also considered a good practice to avoid heavy text overlays on images, as too much text could make the asset look cluttered on smaller mobile screens and distract from the core visual message. Finally, it’s generally best to include your business logo to help establish immediate brand recognition.

The importance of landing page relevance

An ad click is only the first half of the user journey. The destination page should aim to deliver on the promise made in your ad copy. High-quality, relevant landing pages directly improve your Quality Score, which is the metric Google uses to evaluate the quality and relevance of both your keywords and PPC ads. A high Quality Score has the potential to significantly lower your cost-per-click and improve your ad rank.

To build a landing page that helps drive conversions, use page headlines that closely mirror your ad copy to maintain clear and seamless messaging. Additionally, consider how to optimise the page for a lower-friction user experience. This means faster load times, mobile responsiveness, and placing your lead forms or purchase buttons prominently above the fold.

Your pre-publish checklist

Before launching your campaign, use this checklist to make sure your Google Ads campaign is configured correctly:

• Define campaign goals and settings: Double-check that your chosen campaign type aligns with your primary business objective, whether that is driving website sales or generating local leads.
• Conduct keyword and audience research: Review your targeting parameters to confirm you are reaching the right users based on search intent and audience signals.
• Create relevant ads and assets: Ensure your headlines, descriptions, and visual assets are tailored to your target audience and follow character limit guidelines.
• Verify your daily budget: Confirm your maximum daily budget is set to an amount you are comfortable spending, keeping in mind that daily spend can fluctuate.
• Confirm geographic targeting: Check your location settings to help ensure your ads only show to users in the specific regions your business serves.
• Test your conversion tracking: Run a test conversion on your website to ensure the Google Tag fires correctly and accurately records the action in your account.