How to Create a Google Search Campaign - Google Ads Help

 

Create a Search campaign

Google Ads provides the option to run a Search campaign, which enables you to display your ads throughout Google's vast network of search results. With this campaign type, you can effectively target people who are actively looking for your products or services online.

Benefits of a Search campaign include the ability to achieve your specific business goals, such as generating more sales, leads, or website traffic. Additionally, you can utilize highly relevant targeting to reach potential customers who are searching for your specific offerings. The setup process for creating ads is user-friendly and doesn't require any special assets.

To get started with a Search campaign, begin by creating a new campaign within your Google Ads account and selecting your desired campaign goal.

1. Create the Search Campaign and Goal

Step 1: In your Google Ads account, click the Campaigns icon Campaigns Icon.

Step 2: Click the Campaigns drop down in the section menu.

Step 3: Click Campaigns.

Step 4: Click the plus icon  to create a New campaign.

Step 5: Choose the goal of Sales, Leads, or Website traffic.

Step 6: You can also select Create a campaign without a goal’s guidance.

Step 7: Under “Select a campaign type” select Search.

Step 8: Under “Select the ways you’d like to reach your goal”, you can enter additional information about your business.

Step 9: Click Continue.

Step 10: On the next page, you'll enter a name for your campaign.

Note: Display Ads, Shopping Ads, and Video campaigns can also help you reach the same goals of sales, leads, and website traffic, but require additional assets like images, product feeds, and videos.

2. Select Campaign Settings

You’ll now choose who to target with your ads, how you’d like to spend your budget, and how to enhance your campaign with assets.

When selecting your initial targeting for your ad campaign, it's important to consider the types of people who are most likely to take action, such as making a purchase, signing up to learn more, or visiting your website. You have the option to include Google search partners, which expands the reach of your ads to additional search engines beyond Google. If you choose to exclude search partners, your ads will only appear on Google search pages within the Search Network.

To further expand your reach, you can choose to display your ads on other sites through the Display Network. While most of your ads will likely appear on search results pages, Google will take advantage of opportunities to effectively show your ads on other relevant sites.

You can refine your targeting by selecting specific geographic locations, and you also have the option to exclude certain areas within a broader geographic location. Additionally, you can choose to target people searching for your targeted locations, which may be helpful for events or promotions that attract people from out of town.

Language targeting is another important consideration. You should create ads and select keywords in the languages you want to target.

You can also add audiences to your targeting based on demographics, interests, online behavior, and remarketing. Finally, browse the available options to identify any relevant targeting options that align with your campaign goals.

3. Set-up Your Bidding

Your bidding strategy determines the actions you want potential customers to take when viewing your ads. When selecting your bidding strategy, it's important to consider your campaign goal. If you want to generate sales or leads, you may focus on Conversions and set up conversion tracking for your website. If your goal is to drive website traffic, you may focus on Clicks.

If you've set up conversions and assigned a specific value to them, you may consider targeting a specific return on ad spend by focusing on Conversion Value. To maximize the frequency with which your ads are shown, you can select Impression Share and aim for your ad to be displayed on a certain percentage of relevant search result pages.

If you're an experienced bidder, you have the option to Select a Bid Strategy directly based on your goals. Additionally, you can click Show more settings to select additional options such as the type of conversion you want to bid for, the specific time and day you want your ads to run, and the ad rotation option that best aligns with your goals.

4. Enhance ads with assets

Ad assets are a crucial part of your ad as they provide various ways for potential customers to interact with your ad, like phone numbers, sitelinks, and lead forms. Additionally, they can make your ads appear more prominent in search results.

To select the appropriate assets, consider what might be most useful to your potential customers. Here are some examples:

1. Sitelink assets: Direct visitors to relevant pages on your website.
2. Callout assets: Showcase unique offerings and promotions.
3. Call assets: Allow people to call your business directly.
4. Structured snippet assets: List your products or services.
5. App assets: Encourage people to download or visit your app.
6. Promotion assets: Offer discounts on a product or service.
7. Lead form asset: Collect customer information via a form to provide more information about your business.
8. Price assets: Display prices of your products or services.
9. Location assets: Display the location of your business and directions to get there.
10. Image assets: Add images to complement your existing text ads.

You can either create new assets or select assets you have already created. By default, sitelink, callout, and call assets will appear. To view all available assets, click "Ad asset".

After selecting your assets, click "Save and continue" to save your campaign settings and create ad groups.

5. Set-up Ad Groups

Once you have selected your campaign settings, the next step is to create ad groups that are relevant to what potential customers are searching for. For example, if you own a furniture business, you might create an ad group named "Couches" and target keywords like "leather couches," "sofas," and "loveseats." You would then create ads specifically about couches and link to the couches section of your website.

There are two ways to create ad groups:

1. Standard: You enter a set of keywords related to searches and create ads that match those keywords.
2. Dynamic: Google uses content on your site to automatically target searches and create ads.

1. Create Standard Ad Group: Setting up a Standard ad group is the default option, but remember that you can only use one ad group type per campaign.

• First, give your ad group a name.
• Then, add keywords that are relevant to your ad group. These keywords will determine the search queries that trigger your ads to show up.
• To find keyword ideas, you can use the "Get keyword ideas" feature or the Keyword Planner tool for more comprehensive guidance.
• You can also choose keyword match types to better control which search queries trigger your ads. By default, your keywords will match to a broad set of related searches. However, to target specific customer groups, you can modify your keywords by adding the following symbols:
• 
  
• Use quotation marks " " around your keyword to create a phrase match and include close variations of that phrase.
• Use brackets [ ] around your keyword for an exact match.
• Use a minus sign - in front of your keyword to exclude certain searches.
• Finally, click Save and continue to proceed.

2. Create Dynamic Ad Group: Note that you can only choose one ad group type per campaign.

To create a Dynamic Ad group, follow these steps:

• Select "Dynamic" as the Ad group type.
• Give your ad group a name.
• Enter the domain or subdomain of your website.
• If applicable, choose the categories you want to target.
• Enter the web pages you want to promote with your ads.
• Select pages that are relevant and can be promoted with similar ads.
• Use rules to target pages based on specific criteria such as keywords in the URL, content, or title.
• Create ads for pages with shoe-related categories that are relevant to your website if your ad group is about promoting shoes.
• Click "New ad group" to create more ad groups.
• Finally, click "Save and continue" to complete the setup of your dynamic ads.

6. Create Search Ads

When setting up your Search ads, it is crucial to prioritize relevance to your keywords. Ensure that your headlines and descriptions closely match the keywords in your ad group.

In addition, it is recommended to create a minimum of three ads per ad group. You can learn how to write effective text ads to increase the chances of your ads being clicked on by potential customers.

To create effective Search ads, relevance to your keywords is key. Here's how to do it:

• Enter your final URL, the page where people will land when they click your ad.
• Fill out the display URL to show more of your URL on your ad.
• Write 1-3 headlines that match your keywords.
• Customize the URL that shows up on your ad by changing the display path.
• Write up to 2 lines of description text, up to 90 characters each.
• Add tracking parameters to your URL to help track your traffic.
• Click Done to finish your ad and New ad to add more to your ad group.
• Review your ad groups for completeness and fix any issues, such as billing or invalid URLs.
• Once your campaign is ready, click Publish to launch it.
• You can always edit your settings, ad groups, and ads in the ‘Overview’ page.

7. Create Dynamic Ads

When creating Dynamic Search Ads, Google generates the final URL, headline, and display URL automatically. However, you can still customize the ad description text.

• Write up to 2 lines of description text. You can use up to 90 characters to describe your product or service and how it’s relevant to your customers.
• You can add tracking parameters to your URL. These additions to the URL can help you track where your traffic is coming from, such as mobile devices.
• Click Done to finish this ad.
• Click New ad to add more ads to your ad group.
• Scroll between ad groups to ensure you've created ads for all of them.
• Click Save and continue.
• On the review page, you can access a list of issues that may limit your campaign's performance.
• Click on Fix it to resolve the issues.
• Once your campaign is ready, click the Publish button.
• You can edit your settings, ad groups, and ads on the 'Overview' page.

8. Set Your Daily Budget

Your budget determines how many people will view your ads, while targeting determines who those people are and bidding determines what you want them to do.

Enter the average amount you want to spend each day. This is your daily budget.

Google provides several budget options based on campaigns that are similar to the new one you're creating, including similar advertisers and your previous campaigns (if applicable). Along with the recommended budget options, you can set a custom budget amount.

Your ad spending may fluctuate on days with more clicks and conversions, but your monthly budget will average out to the amount you specify here. For details, refer to "Charges and your average daily budget."

After completing the setup of your campaign, it can take a few days for your ads to start appearing. Usually, ads are approved within one business day. However, it may take longer for bidding to optimize performance fully.