The world of Google advertising can be confusing for beginners.
And if you're building an ecommerce business from scratch, it's going to take some time to gain visitors organically, which is why launching paid advertising strategies and using Google Ads can help you reach a pool of your potential clients is a great first step.
Simply put, Google Ads campaigns can help you jump the line in organic rankings on Google and send traffic to your website and/or store right away.
We recently published a "Guide to Google Ads for Beginners" post, which we recommend you read, but first, let's start from zero and set some expectations with exactly what you can expect with your first Google Ads campaign.
What Is Google Ads?
You're familiar with how Google works, yes? (If not, I'm surprised you stumbled across this blog!) Well, using Google Ads, essentially, is a way to ensure that your website and brand are appearing for relevant searches made by Google users.
As a result, the visibility of your online business magnifies when using Google Ads, appearing at the top of search results and promoting your products.
Before we continue, here are some key Google Ads terms to familiarize yourself with.
- Keywords: Keywords refer to the search phrases people use that have the probability to make your ads appear.
- Bid: Bid represents the maximum cost you are willing to pay when a visitor clicks on your ad.
- Quality Score: Quality score reveals the relevancy of keywords to the ad and the landing page where people are taken to when they click that ad.
- Budget: Total cost allocated for the campaign.
- Ad rank: It determines how likely your ad will show up—based on bid, quality scores, and keywords.
- Average Order Value (AOV): The mean amount a customer spends on a site, which is calculated by dividing total revenue by the order number.
- Cost Per Click (CPC): The cost that you pay for each click on your ad.
- Click-Through Rate (CTR): The number of times your ad appeared compared to the number of users who clicked on it.
- Conversion: The desired action a user takes on your website (email sign ups, purchases, etc).
- Return On Ad Spend (ROAS): The ROI of your ads, which looks at your ad spend compared to your conversion dollars.
The Importance of Return on Ad Spend
Although we listed Return on Ad Spend as the last item on the above list, it's crucial that we call it out specifically here, as it's a crucial measure in the effectiveness of your ads.
Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) is the metric that measures the effectiveness of the advertising programs by calculating the revenue made by your business for each dollar it invests in advertising.
You can measure ROAS by dividing the conversion value (or sales made) by total advertising costs. While there are other terms like CPA to measure the value of conversion that your website has, ROAS is superior because, unlike other factors, it's associated with more than a single action.
Just remember: The higher the ROAS, the bigger the benefit for your ecommerce business.
Why Should You Use Google Ads?
According to Google, businesses generally make an average of $2 in revenue for every $1 they spend on Google Ads..
And with 64.6% of people who buy products online clicking on Google Ads, there is a huge amount of potential for your company.
Those stats alone don't wow you? Consider some other key benefits:
- With the help of Google Ads, you can use the massive reach of Google to find clients from anywhere over the world, directing a potential group of leads to your website.
- You will only be paying for the times people click on your Google ads, and you're in control. With better keywords, high-quality scores, and lower bids, you can optimize your ROAS and maximize your business model.
- Brings your way high-quality traffic with better conversion rates.
- Helps you understand your audience and your competitors while placing you at the top of the SERP to increase your brand’s visibility.
How Do I Set Up My First Google Ads Account?
We recommend (and yes, shameless plug here) that you go ahead and get Ampd—we make it really easy to get started by either walking you through the setup of a new Google Ads account (plus, qualified customers can get up to $150 in Google Ads credit!) or auditing your existing one.
But if you want to get started on your own, here's the process you'll need to follow:
- Go to the official Google Ads website.
- Click to sign and and link with your existing Google account (or create one if you don't have it).
- You'll be prompted with a question of "What's your advertising goal?" You could walk through the process with them, but given that you want to create an account (and not a campaign quite yet), at the bottom of the page, click "Switch to Expert Mode."
- Next, you will have to plug in some information about your business, such as billing country, time zone, and currency.
- After clicking submit, you'll land on the main account page. Upon choosing the correct options, click “Submit.”
After this, this is where the real legwork starts (unless you use Ampd—because we, in conjunction with Google, will take care of all this for you when launching a Site Wide campaign) because before creating your campaign, you'd need to:
- Prepare a target/keyword list.
- Know your audience to know what phrases they are most likely to make a search query.
- Use keyword research tools to general keyword ideas and so on.
- Use the products, location, brand names, and seasonality of your products to segment the campaigns and monitor accordingly.
- Set up all necessary tracking and actions to ensure you're scaling your campaigns and maximizing success.
Again, we want to remind you that Ampd is fastest, simplest, and most effective way to launch, manage, and maximize Google Ads for your ecommerce business. We're here to help take that off your plate in running your paid advertising campaigns so that you can focus on your to-do list.
How Do I Select A Google Ads budget?
Google Ads requires a daily budget, so before you get started, you need to decide how much you're willing to invest.
To begin, we recommend jotting down your goals and how much money you can start off with so the system can learn and optimize before you start seeing ROAS.
You can set a maximum ad budget for a month and have the ads bid automatically adjust to optimize according to requirements, which prevents your campaigns from overspending. (You can also implement bidding strategies like Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) and Cost Per Thousand Impression (CPM).
Additionally, you'll need to decide if you want to share your budget among couples of different campaigns rather than spending it all on a single campaign.
How Long Does It Take To See Results From Your First Google Ads Campaign?
Google Ads has the power to help your business reach potential customers and get exposure quickly, but it's not a short-cut tool that will start making leads, sales, and revenues for you right away.
Initial Google Ads campaigns—within the first six weeks—should be a way to observe quality score, keywords, and client behavior, then you can continue making optimizations to drive up toward that desired 1x ROAS.
Just remember to be patient. It can take weeks to optimize and show some noticeable progress as Google learns what's most relevant for their users—and your business.
What To Look For In First Google Ads Campaign
Although every business is different, here's a general timeline based on our data of what we consider to be the "norm" when launching a first Google Ads campaign:
- Expect to see some spikes of activity that send your impression graphs up and down before you see a steady growth of your campaign learning and picking up the pace.
- Just remember that your ads are shown when users are searching, so you might be able to pick up on patterns of what days/times generate the highest activity.
- CTR is the most important factor to decide how alluring the visitors found your link, but in the initial days of your campaign, Google will also ensure that your website loads quickly and people aren't bouncing immediately.
Conclusion
We hope this post helped clear up some of your questions on what you can expect with your first Google Ads campaign.
As we mentioned above, a great next step for you is to read through our Guide to Google Ads, which is targeted toward beginners, but you can also go ahead and get Ampd today, and we'll help you start Google Ads for free today!
