How do I set up a Google Adwords campaign? We have 9 easy steps to help you build a basic Google Adwords campaign that is customized for your business and designed to drive targeted traffic to your website or blog.
A few things to define before we get started: A Google Adwords pay-per-click marketing campaign is made up of Ad Groups and within each group are keywords and ads. When your ad appears in a search query and the person clicks on it, you pay Google for that click. The amount that you pay depends on how many other companies are also bidding on the keywords that you are targeting.
If what brought you here were any of the following, you are in the right spot:
- I know I need to advertise on Google but not sure where to start.
- I don’t want to waste money driving traffic to my site that is irrelevant to my business.
- I’ve got a great site but my traffic volume stinks.
- I have a great product or service but I’m not reaching enough prospects.
Let’s start with a company…
- Company: Broken Spoke Bicycle Repair
- Owner: Bob ‘The Wrench’ Williams
- Location: Austin, TX
- Specialty: Repairs medium to high end bikes of all models and types.
- Best prospective customer: Lives 15 miles from the shop, household owns 2+ bikes purchased for $500 or more.
- Bob logs into his gmail account, or creates one, and then goes here to the Campaign Management. He clicks on ‘Create your first campaign.
- After clicking, Bob will be taken to the Type page. Here he changes the selection to ‘Search Network only’ and then names his campaign Broken Spoke Bike Repair. (This type of campaign will target people searching on Google and Google search partners.)
The next change Bob makes is in the Locations section since Google defaults the target location as ‘United States and Canada’. Bob knows that his best prospective customers live within 15 miles of his shop so he clicks the ‘Advanced search’ link to target by geographic radius.
Bob then clicks the Radius Targeting link to target the 15 mile radius.
Then he enters his address, changes the mile radius from the default of 20 to 15, and clicks search. Google shows him the radius of his campaign and it’s exactly the area that he wants to target so he clicks ADD and then DONE.
Next Bob changes the Bid Strategy from ‘I’ll manually set my bids for clicks’ to ‘Adwords will set my bids…’ since he’s new to Adwords and wants Google to maximize his traffic based on his daily budget. He then selects the amount that he is willing to pay each day to drive Adwords traffic. Bob chooses $50 to get started and then clicks Save and Continue.
Next Bob enters the landing page where he wants the traffic delivered from his first ad group. Bob chooses his homepage since his business focuses on repairs and his first ad group will have more general keywords which he adds in the Keywords section.
Bob now creates a great ad that is clear and specific with a title (25 characters) and two description lines (35 characters each) with a call-to-action to drive quality traffic to his website.
Bob clicks ‘Save and Finish’ and is all set with his first Google Adwords campaign!
This example provides a basic overview on how to create a campaign targeting a specific geographic area but just scratches the surface of what is possible using ppc marketing to grow your business. The best strategy is to create a group and let the ads run for a few days, then make adjustments to tailor your campaign to your business goals.
Good luck!
