Creating your first Google Ads campaign in 5 steps

If you've done some research on Google Ads, you've probably discovered that it's a powerful tool with seemingly endless configurations and settings.

So starting out as a new advertiser can be daunting.

However, once you understand the basic principles of Google Ads and its various components, creating your first campaign is surprisingly easy.

The process takes about an hour for an initial campaign, but once you understand the “twist,” subsequent campaigns take about 20 minutes or less to create.

In this tutorial on creating your first Google Ads campaign, we show you the step-by-step process so you can get up to speed with the basics of setting up your first Google Ads account:

1. Determine your Google advertising goals
2. Determine your advertising budget
3. Select your ad format
4. Select your keywords and ad groups
5. Select your targeting method (s)

Step 1: Figure out your Google advertising goals.

The most important part of creating a Google ad campaign is figuring out what you want to achieve with your ad.

There are endless ways you can use Google ads to promote your products or services, but you need to decide which methods are best for your business.

This can be a difficult task, but understanding your goals will help you determine the best ways to use Google ads to achieve those goals.

Whether your goal is to generate leads, drive traffic to a given page, drive sales, or increase brand awareness, Google ads can help.

However, you need to determine what goals are most important to your business and how you want to use Google ads to achieve those goals.

For example, if you want to drive sales on your website, you might decide to use Google's Shopping campaign type.

On the other hand, if you want to increase brand awareness, you can choose to use the Google Network campaign type.

Here is what Google offers for its part:

Step 2: Determine your advertising budget

This may be the trickiest part of creating your first Google Ads campaign.

I don't want to scare you either, but it's important to be realistic and to avoid doing all this work for nothing.

Also, be aware that the higher the amount invested, the more quickly you will get results.

In fact, in the last 5 years, my customers spent between $750 and $120,000 per month on their Google Ads campaigns.

Customers with a budget of $750/month required several months before seeing results.

Customers with a budget of $120,000/month needed a week before seeing results.

The amount you spend will depend on several factors, including your goals, the quantity of keywords, the bids to reach the top of the results page, the types of ads.

The rule of thumb for evaluating a budget: Start with the concept that only 1 click out of 100 will end up buying or contacting you.

What are the bids for your keywords to reach the top of the page?

For example, let's say $5 per click.

You got 100 clicks.

So 5 x 100 = $500.

Now ask yourself the question.

Is the $500 marketing cost effective? Am I making a profit?

For service businesses, customer contact is not an automatic sale. Calculate with your successful sales rate.

So how many successful sales do you need to be profitable?

In this example, let's go with 10 successful sales to be profitable.

1 sale = $500//10 sales = $5,000

Our budget will therefore be a minimum of $5,000/month.

While it's possible to spend $1,000 per month on your Google Ads campaign, you might not reach the same number of people or generate the same number of sales as someone who spends $5,000 per month.

There's no magic number to hit when setting your budget, but it's important to know that you don't have to empty out your little piggy to get great results with Google Ads.

Start small and grow the budget as you generate sales.

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Step 3: Select your ad format

Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords) has several ad formats, including two main ones: text ads and display ads.

Text ads are the standard ad format in Google Ads and are the easiest to create and edit.

Text ads can be created in just a few minutes and allow you to include two titles, one main body text, and two URL links.

Display ads are more sophisticated than text ads. They allow you to create highly customizable visual ads, designed to attract the user's attention and stand out from the other ads on the page.

Unlike text ads, display ads can include images, videos, or custom animations.

The advertising format you choose for your campaign will depend on your business goals. If you're looking for conversions, it's best to start with text ads. If you want to spread the word about your brand, it's best to start with display ads.

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Step 4: Select your keywords and ad groups

There are a number of ways to choose your keywords and ad groups, but you should select your top keywords based on their search volume.

If you're creating a Google Network text campaign or a Shopping campaign, you can use the Google Keyword Planner to discover search volume and cost-per-click (CPC) data for keywords related to your products.

Keyword match types

After selecting your keywords, the next step is to figure out how you want Google Ads to treat those keywords.

There are three types of keyword matches:

1. Broad query (lots of variations)

2. Exact expression (several variations)

3. Exact keyword (few variations)

Depending on your goals, you may want to treat all of your keywords as general keywords or select some as exact matches and others as phrases.

The best way to determine what types of matches to use for your keywords is to use the Google Ad Preview and Diagnosis tool. This tool allows you to enter multiple keywords, select match types for each keyword, and see how your ads will appear.

To find out more about keyword match types.

Step 5: Select your targeting method (s)

After creating your campaign and selecting your ad format, you need to determine how you want to target your audience.

There are two ways to target your audience: targeting and observation.

Targeting: You can use audience targeting to only show your ads to a specific audience defined by age, gender, interests, and other characteristics.

For example, if you are a real estate agent and you want to target people in your area who are interested in buying or selling real estate, you can create an audience based on these characteristics.

This will allow you to show your ads to a specific group of people who may be interested in what you have to offer.

This is a great option if you want to show your ads to a specific group of people.

You can also target users who have already visited your website.

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Final report: You can use this targeting method to indicate that you want to target this type of user and anyone who looks like that type.

Thanks to this method, you can show your ads to a slightly larger audience, but possibly interested in your products or services.

You can use this method to expand your reach and increase your customer base by targeting new customers based on similar people who have already visited your website.

This is a great option if you're looking to show your ads to relevant customers who are likely to convert.

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Last step: Celebrate the event!

You succeeded! You've created your first Google Ads campaign.

Be careful not to celebrate for too long. A campaign launched does not mean that you can sit idly by all year round. You need to make changes to your ads and keywords at least once a week.

Not sure where to start? Here it is 6 easy tips to optimize your Google Ads ads.

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