Pay Per Click Marketing

Google Ads is Google's online advertising program where you can advertise your business, products or services on Google's network. Google Ads was formerly known as Google Adwords.

Google Ads are displayed on Google Search, YouTube and partner websites across the Internet.

Through your Google Ads account you can set-up advertising campaigns and manage their targeting and daily budgets. You can also choose when to start or stop a campaign, ad group or individual ad.

Google Adwords is the old name for what is now known as Google Ads. Google Ads and Google Adwords are therefore effectively the same thing.

Google Ads are displayed when someone searches in Google for a term (keyword) you have added to your ad campaign. Usually the keyword will be one of your services or products for which you want to be found in searches.

Google Ads works like this:

1. You choose a goal, such as getting more telephone calls or visitors to your website.
2. You then choose the geographical area you want to advertise in. This could be nationally, internationally or even within a 20 mile radius of your location. You can choose how locally or globally your ad is seen.
3. You create your Google Ad, which consists of a hierarchy of a campaign, ad groups and individual ads.
4. You set your maximum daily budget.

When you are finished, Google will let you know when your ad is approved and it will appear in the search results. How prominent your ad is shown will depend upon the relevance of your ad, your budget and whether others are outbidding you (i.e. they have set higher budgets).

Yes, they do have different types of ads. there are currently three main ad types:

• Search network campaigns - these are primarily text ads, which display in the Google Search results when somebody searches for a keyword you are bidding on.
• Display network campaigns - these ads are image ads, which are displayed on websites or apps.
• Shopping - these are ads for specific products and are displayed in a bar in Google Search and Google Shopping.
• Video campaigns - these are video ads, which display on YouTube before the main video is shown.

Nothing. They are the same thing. CPC and PPC means that you only pay for your ad if somebody clicks on it. There is no fee for setting up the ad campaign and running it. You are only charged if it is actually clicked.

Google Ads themselves do not cost a penny! It is only when an ad is clicked that you start to be charged.

The cost you incur for a Google Ads campaign will depend upon your budget. Google Ads works for advertisers of all sizes, as there is no minimum spend or contract length. You have total control over how much you plan to spend over a specific time period.

The cost of a click varies enormously, depending upon the keywords you are bidding on and the competition. You can get some clicks for just pennies, whilst some competitive sectors can cost you over £50 per click! Always do your research before starting to advertise, so you have a good idea of the budget and cost per click you can expect for your campaign.

PPC (Pay per Click) advertising and SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) are polar opposites.

SEO is a long-term strategy to get your services, products or brand found in the organic search results. Organic search results are the non-advertising search results which are returned based upon relevance and authoritativeness from Google's index. SEO results cost nothing, but is an investment in high quality content, optimised for search, on your web pages.

PPC advertising is where you pay for your ad to show in the advertising sections of the search results pages (usually the top and bottom of each page) and you are charged every time somebody clicks on your ad. PPC advertising is a method of getting quick traffic to your website, though at a cost to you financially.

Dabbling in Google Ads without the knowledge of how it works can be a way for you to spend large amounts of money for no results. there are ways to run an ad campaign and there are ways to lose money!

We use tried and tested techniques to minimise advertising risk and for gaining the best returns on your investment.

Most people who first try Google Ads will use their Smart Campaign tools, not knowing that the far more controllable manual interface is hidden in plain sight. The manual interface is intended for PPC professionals. It allows you far more control over your ads than the Smart Campaigns. If you set your account up using a Smart Campaign there is no way of getting to the manual interface, unless you contact Google  support and request the account to be reset by them for manual advertising.

Yes, you can run your own Google Ads campaigns in-house. However, only do so if you have a good working knowledge of using Google Ads. If not, you will burn money needlessly.

Some small businesses want to take on their own advertising as they have had a bad experience with a PPC agency which uses poor strategies and is simply after its own revenue. We use best-practice techniques to maximise click-through rates for you at the lowest costs.

There is a lot more to do than many people realise, if a successful Google Ad campaign is to be created. It is complicated and time-consuming - not just following a few button clicks. Some of the stages include:

• Determining your goals and objectives for the ad campaign.
• Determining how sought after your products or services are (or are not) and whether advertising them will  profitable, or not.
• Understanding the different Google Ads campaign-types and which is best suited to your campaign.
• Spending time and effort in keyword research.
• Building a robust campaign structure to keep your costs down.
• Running different Google Ad campaigns in A/B testing to see which ideas work best.
• Using 'ad extensions' to make your ads stand out and be more appealing to visitors.
• Writing engaging copy for many ads. Google ads are not like traditional advertising. A single ad group or campaign may have hundreds of different ads running at the same time. It takes time and skill to write great ads.
• Setting up Google Analytics to track your conversions Google Analytics can drill down into minutiae of data, which can help you understand how your campaign is performing at the tiniest level. Doing this set-up is time-consuming and complex.
• Building landing pages on your website dedicated specifically to your Google Ads campaign. the weakest part of an ad campaign can sometimes be the place you are sending your visitors to once they have clicked the ad (and landed you with the cost of the click). Do not skimp on your website end of things.

These are just a few of the things involved in creating a Google Ad campaign. Time = money, but time well spent in preparation and set-up can pay for itself hugely in the long-run.

Advertising is constantly changing as people's tastes and demands change. What worked in your PPC campaign this week may not do so in two weeks time. Beyond this, you have Google's algorithms, which calculate how and when your ads are displayed. Leaving ads unattended is a recipe for either disaster or the loss of a lot of money.

Close management of an ad campaign is necessary so that you pick up on when an ad is underperforming, or starting to cost you click for no return. When this is spotted, you will pause the ad or ad group, or you will tweak the ad's text and test it again. You also need to make sure the ad is not being displayed for keywords which are not relevant to you. You may even need to add more negative keywords to the campaign to stop irrelevant ads showing.