We’re kicking off a series of posts to help people get started with Google Ads (also known as Google AdWords) since we can’t offer our in-person classes during this time (though we’re still doing training virtually). We’re going to start at the beginning with How to Set up Your Google Ads Account – The Right Way. Google Ads accounts are pretty straight-forward to set up but there are a few things you want to do to make sure you don’t have headaches down the line.
Account Set up Basics – First of all, you need a Gmail account so if you don’t have one or if you’re setting up a Google Ads account for digital marketing for a company you work for, we recommend setting up a generic gmail account that everyone at the company can access that’s not your personal account. For example “yourcompanyname”ads@gmail.com or demandquestads@gmail.com would be a smart one to set up.
Next, do NOT set up Smart Campaigns or Google Express Campaigns from Google (they’re the same thing). They make it very easy to set up but you can’t change your campaign settings from Smart to Basic down the line and you will not have as many options with the Smart Campaigns. Don’t do it!
Head over to ads.google.com and sign in. Once signed in you will be prompted with the question of “What’s your main advertising goal?” For best results with your Google Ads account, select “Switch to Expert Mode” at the bottom. Next you will be prompted to confirm your business information. It’s important that this information is correct because you can not change this in the future. Here’s Google’s advice on setting up a new Google Ads account: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6366720?hl=en
Here’s some more information on how to set up a new campaign in Google Ads
You’ll be prompted to set up an expanded text ads and to add keywords. Here are some tips on how to create ads.
Account Organization Video from Google Ads – This will help guide you when you set up your campaigns in Google Ads.
Lastly you’ll want to make sure you have a daily budget. We recommend starting with $5 a day with means around $150 a month to get started. You can adjust this anytime you want but be sure to start small because you can always increase your budgets after you’re sure everything is set up correctly!
“Setting up your budget” video – and yes, this video is for Google Express (also known as Smart campaigns) but will apply for regular Google Campaigns as well.
And there you have it – you should have a Google Ads (Google AdWords) campaign set up and ready to help you sell more online. As always, let us know if you have any questions. Happy digital marketing!
Managing your Google Ads campaigns through COVID-19
We’ve noticed that Google’s been more strict about ad approvals; we’ve had some image and video ads that are approved within hours and then some that are disapproved due to the new guidelines that Google’s implemented so we wanted to share Google’s updated ads guidelines.
Here are Google’s guidelines for evaluating and updating your campaigns during Covid. You can find the original here.
As communities continue to respond and adjust to COVID-19, we know businesses are facing unique challenges. To help you adapt your digital marketing strategy, Google has created this Business Guide and the resources below.
Please let us know if you have any questions. As we mentioned, we’ve had Google Ads campaigns that had video ads that were approved in hours and some that were disapproved for the vague “missing information” policy. We hope these guidelines will help you figure out what’s being approved, what’s not and why. Aim for transparency as always in your advertising!
This is the first time in many years that we didn’t get the opportunity to host the Annual Grow With Google Small Business Week Seminars at Demand Quest. It’s an event that we generally love to host because we get to meet new small business owners and marketers, we get to learn about best practices from Google, and we get to see former students. While we were unable to host, we still want to share Google’s talk so here’s how to Manage Your Business Remotely in Times of Uncertainty from Google
If you have any questions about how to restructure your campaigns during these uncertain times, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us. We’d love to talk about what’s going on and how to stay relevant during Covid. You can reach me at rachael @ demandquest.com
We’re still waiting for summer here in Minnesota and have been paying attention to Google’s big marketing updates; you can catch up on their announcements here: https://adsonair.withgoogle.com/events/marketinglive Here’s what we’re keeping an eye on and what we’re reading for fun:
Game of Thrones: Disappointed in the ending? Most people seem to be. Check out this John Hughes-type alternate ending; it made me laugh: http://bit.ly/2QiARjO
PPC – Google Ads: Key Takeaways from the Google Marketing Live Talks including shopping campaigns & discovery campaigns: http://bit.ly/2WkvMgw 3 Most Common eCommerce Advertising Mistakes (and how to stay away from them): http://bit.ly/2WfaroJ Performance Planner now live in Google Ads: Shows predicted impact of campaign changes on conversions, clicks, more: https://selnd.com/2HNrCo8 10 Visual AdWords Reports You Could Be Using: http://bit.ly/30zHeUR
Search Engine Optimization: Image SEO: Optimizing images for search engines: http://bit.ly/2EsA1w6 Top Three Things A Developer Can Do For Search Rankings Don’t Include Links: http://bit.ly/30F3WLk 12 reasons your SEO traffic is plateauing and how to fix it: http://bit.ly/2X0yd51 7 Proven SEO Reporting Best Practices That Boost Client Retention: http://bit.ly/2WX09Xg
Local Search: Step up your favicon game. Google is making a minor tweak to its search design: http://bit.ly/2X32u2X Google My Business Suggests Positive Reviews to Share as Posts: http://bit.ly/30HHDoj
What else we’re reading: Fake pictures of faces are getting much harder to detect: http://bit.ly/2VWzxt1 Can you spot the real face versus the computer generated face? We passed with 90% but think we’ll do even better after we read the tutorial. Check out the test: http://www.whichfaceisreal.com/ Speaking of fakes, can you tell when you’re reading a fake review on Amazon? Or on any site? Run it through here: https://www.fakespot.com/ Random good news? You can now take your Amazon returns to Kohls: https://tcrn.ch/2YJqWHc And finally, who doesn’t want more emojis to communicate? Here’s an 🥳 Emoji Keyboard so you can include even more: http://bit.ly/2M32Sxg🥳♻️
It’s back! In appreciation of National Small Business Week, we’re hosting a free seminar with Google to help you Drive Business Results with Google Ads to reach more customers with our Livestream on the Fundamentals of Advertising with Google Ads.
There are billions of local searches happening on Google every day. Celebrate National Small Business week by joining us at the DemandQuest Marketing Institute to tune into the Google Livestream where we will show you how to get in front of customers in your area. We’ll explore popular campaign types and how each can help your business connect with local customers online, promote special offers, and grow brand awareness.
Join us on Wednesday, May 8th from 10:30-12:30 pm
We’ve been teaching digital marketing for over 10 years and we’re excited to be teaming up with Google to bring a short morning session of great digital marketing insights, free for local businesses. Bring a laptop to work during class or just bring a notebook for notes. We’ll send out resources via email after class. This class will sell out so we will only be able to offer space for up to 4 team members per company/email address. Please respect our free class offer by respecting this policy. Light refreshments will also be provided.
There’s always a lot going on in the digital marketing world! This fall, we’re saying good-bye to Google+, hello to conversational AI (we now have a Google Home in our house – a little scary), yes to updating our Google Data Studio templates and another good-bye to Google Adwords (it’s now just Google Ads).;
Online Advertising (Search & Social):
YouTube now counts ‘engagement’ for YouTube for action ads at 10 seconds, not 30: https://selnd.com/2q5hgax
emojis to communicate? Here’s an 🥳 Emoji Keyboard so you can include even more: 