Search Ads Beginners Guide.
Target Your Customers When They Search Online
What Are Search Ads?
Lots of us do it, when we need something we search online and the place to start is Google or Bing. When you search for sometimes you might notice a result marked ‘ad’ on the search page, clicking on these ads will charge the ad owner as they bid in an auction for the pages ad space in the Google and Bing respected ad management platforms.
Google Ads
Google is the biggest search engine in the world and makes up to 80-90% of user searches.
Microsoft Ads (Bing)
Bing is the 2nd biggest search engine in the world and makes up to 10-20% of user searches.
Why Work With Search Ads?
Perfect for catching customers when they have intent or interest in your product or service when they’re searching online. With the simple platforms, you bid on search terms in an eBay like auction and the more you bid the higher your ad will likely appear on the search page. This will usually result in more clicks you will potentially get depending on how much you are willing to spend and the quality of your ads and account.
As well as building your own ads to appear on the search page the platform gives you a ton of data to work with. You can easily see how many times your ad is seen or clicked and how much you’ve spent with control over your daily spend. You can then set up to track conversions on your website and work out if you are profitable. Further to this in the auction you can also get insights into how your rival competitors are doing by seeing how often they are appearing on the search page compared to you.
Search ads tend to be associated with the ‘consideration’ and ‘action’ in the funnel but can also work for some ‘interest’ search terms.
How To Do Search Ads Yourself
Both platforms have a simple set up for people that don’t have much knowledge on search ads. We would recommend setting up Google Ads first as not only just the largest but later you can export your Google campaign data to Microsoft Ads (Bing) for a quicker setup.
Before starting up a Google ads account you will need a website with access to edit and we also recommend creating a Google My Business account if you haven’t already. Now just follow the Google ads instructions.
Educate Yourself
Once you’ve created your first campaign you can keep this simplistic version with Google providing you a training wheel version of Google Ads or you can switch to ‘expert’ in the settings to get more data and control of your ads.
Be warned that although switching to ‘expert’ can bring you better results, you will need to put in more time into your account to optimise and to earn these results. You can sign up for free training in the Google Skillshop and enroll in a search course to get to grip with the basics.
We calculate it would take you between 4-6 hours to train yourself on the very basics Google search ads then an hour to set up an account with one campaign. To get the very best out of your campaign with 10-20 keywords you should put in an hour a week to optimise this one campaign.
You should also regularly reading up on the latest trends by signing up to PPC newsletters from our useful links list.
The Future
After you’ve got to grips with Google Ads, you can then transfer your campaign(s) to Microsoft Ads platform where your ads will appear on Bing and Yahoo search pages. Many of the skills you pick up on Google are transferable to Microsoft with a similar pay-per-click setup. You could also setup a campaign from scratch like you did in Google Ads but this will take more time.
The Microsoft search network is smaller than Google you could save money as it tends to have cheaper bids for search terms. Its also more widely known to be used by older demographics (Generation X) so could be a better fit for your business.
Useful links:
Google My Business – Manage your business account and how you appear on Google maps.
Google Ads Skillshop – Learn how to do Google Search.
Microsoft Ads Platform – Create & manage your ads here.
Google Ads Platform – Create & manage your ads here.
Google Search Console – See the searches you appear for organically.
SEMrush – Useful tool for seeing further details on keywords and your competitors.
Similar Web – Useful tool for seeing further details on keywords and your competitors.
Wordstream Newsletter – Good source on the latest in search and recent tests.
PPC Engine Land Newsletter – Good source on the latest in search and recent tests.
Our Blog – Learn about our work with search.
How We Can Help.
Search Ads platforms can get a bit overwhelming and with Google regularly adding new features and making changes. We’re here to help! Drop us a message and we can provide some free advice. If it still proves to much you can potentially hire us if we have space. Find the contact form here.
The Author.
Tom Haynes
Worked with Search Ads for five years, has experience running multiple campaigns including in eCommerce, travel and construction.
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