Now that you know how the bidding system works in the Google Ads network, we’re going to have a look at the interface together. Then, I’ll guide you through creating and launching your first campaign.
Let’s get started!
Access the Google Ads Tool
To access the interface, click on this link or type Google Ads into your preferred search engine, Google.
If you’re new to Google Ads, you’ll be asked for ID and payment details before you can create your first campaign: Google Ads wants to make it as easy as possible for you, as an advertiser, to launch your campaign!
Because you’re here to learn and you’re almost certainly new to Google Ads, I’d encourage you to use Google’s Smart Mode to create your campaign.
In just a few clicks, you’ll see the key steps involved in creating a campaign.
You’ll need to select your advertising goal, name your account, and provide the URL for your website. Then Google Ads will scan your website and create an ad campaign based on the elements it can find. Google will automatically create an ad and define the keywords. You just need to provide a geographic location, budget, and payment method.
Google will then launch an ad and optimize it using this basic information.
This solution is ideal for people who don’t necessarily have in-depth marketing knowledge, but who want to advertise online.
This is a way for Google to help them.
Once you’ve gone through the beginners’ campaign creation process, you can always switch to expert mode by clicking top right in the Tools and Settings menu.
Right, let's get into Google Ads expert mode!
So, here we are in the full Google Ads interface. By the end of the course, you’ll feel completely at home using it.
At the moment, there’s no campaign, no ad groups, no ads, no keywords... there's nothing. So, it’s quite easy to find your way around for now, but you’ll see that things can get complicated quite quickly!
Let’s go back to our example of the online mountain sports store. Here we can see what it looks like once you’ve created some campaigns with a certain amount of activity on your account.
Structure Your Account Into Several Layers
We’re going to finish off this chapter by learning how best to organize and structure your account so that you can easily find your way around.
To do this, we need to create a sort of hierarchy between your various campaigns, ad groups, and ads.
We can think of this hierarchy as a way of logically dividing an account into a number of campaigns, which are themselves divided into ad groups, which then broken-down into individual ads.
Okay, but what do we mean by a campaign? Similarly, what do we mean by an ad group or an ad?
To answer this question, you need to think in terms of layers.
You’re going to structure your Google Ads account in the same way that your business is structured. This means you have a number of layers:
Layer 1 = your Google Ads account
Layer 2 = an advertising campaign belonging to the layer 1 account
Layer 3 = an ad group belonging to the layer 2 campaign
Layer 4 = an ad belonging to a layer 3 ad group
Whether your company provides products or services, the way you organize your campaigns should reflect the structure of your product or service catalog.
As a general rule, this will also be reflected in your website navigation.
If we look at our Mountain Sports website, we can create an initial campaign for Men's Clothes, which will be split into a number of ad groups:
Helmets
Pants
Jackets
etc.
We could also create a campaign for skiwear, special offers, or anything else, just as we can on the website.
So, here’s an example of an account structure. Each campaign refers to a navigation element and uses the contents of the dropdown menus broken down into their sub-categories.
Another example could be a clothing store. You could create separate campaigns for pants, jackets, and shoes.
Within the Pants campaign, you could have different sub-categories (ad groups), such as jeans, chinos, and shorts, and you could create specific ads for particular brands or styles of jeans, chinos, or shorts.
Let’s Recap!
Google Ads expert mode gives you full access to the platform and unlocks all of the tools and options available when creating ads.
A Google Ads account is structured into several layers: account, campaigns, ad groups, and ads.
The structure of your Google Ads account should ideally reflect the structure of your business and your website.
Now you know how to organize your account, come join me in the next chapter so that we can look at what you need to consider to target the right audience on the right network.
