I believe we are live. Welcome to today's Youtube live stream. My name is Uzair and in today's session, I'm going to be talking about Google Ads for beginners. I've got quite a few emails, requests, messages that, "Please start with how someone who's new to Google Ads can get started." So, what I've done is I'm going to be covering this topic in great detail and length.
It will be covered over many sessions and each session will be covered using a particular topic or subject because Google Ads is like flying a jumbo jet. It's got so many bells and whistles. You need to know which button to press when and what to do at a particular stage of running a campaign. We'll start off with the basics in campaign management and laying the foundations of your Google Ads account.
Before that, just a quick reminder to everyone who's new, that I go live every day at this time which is four o'clock in the UK. Every weekday in fact and these sessions last for about 25 to 30 minutes long. You're going to get a lot of information in a fairly short space of time and then you can go and implement those changes or things which you learned into your Google Ads campaigns.
I will answer any questions you may have. There is a box on the right-hand side or under the video wherever it is on your screen or device. Please put them in and before the end of the session I'll do my best to answer them for you. Hello Aamish, Rajesh, Sandy, good to see you guys and yeah, you can fire away from your questions.
Don't wait until the end and I'll go through the questions in the order they have been put up. Let's head into our Google Ads interface. Now, if you are new to Google Ads and you just set up your account, I'm sure you are very excited to get going and just jump straight in creating a campaign for your business but you don't want to do that.
You just need to take a couple of steps back. See and plan what you need to achieve using this campaign. Work out some numbers as to what is profitable for you and what can be profitable if you were to generate a lead or a sale at a particular cost per lead or cost per acquisition. The aim of these campaigns is obviously to generate more business but it needs to be profitable and this is what most people struggle because initially, it might be that the campaign is running very well but as you start to scale up, the profit margins go down and it is very difficult to maintain that cost per acquisition or the cost per conversion when you're trying to scale up.
Over the course of the next few weeks, I'm going to go through in great detail as to how you can maintain, manage and scale your profitability. The first thing is the goals of the campaign. What you want to do. Are you looking to raise awareness? Are you wanting to put your message across to your audience? Do you want to get a lead or a sale?
There are various and different campaigns for each one of these types of goals and it is literally horses for courses. You need to run the right campaign for the right goal you are trying to achieve in your campaigns. Most business owners or especially small to medium-sized businesses, they hardly run any branding or brand awareness campaigns. They just want to generate leads or sales to help improve their cash flow as well as grow the business.
I'm going to focus initially on those kinds of campaigns where you can get instant results. Now, what I mean by the instant result it's not that you switch on the campaign today and you're going to get results tomorrow or within a matter of hours. We do have some clients when we do set up a campaign, up and running and after a couple of hours, they'll phone me or my office and saying, "Oh, we still haven't received any calls or a lead or a conversion." If it was that easy, the whole world will be doing Google Ads and running ads over here it is getting more and more difficult.
More and more competitive to get good results and to be two steps in front of your competitors so that you don't get outbidded in the auction, you don't lose your ad ranks and your ads stay at the top and you get that click which you want on your website. We want that click to be very relevant and not any Tom, Dick or Harry clicking away on your ads, wasting your budget and then bouncing off of your website within a matter of seconds.
I'll cover targeting in great details. I'll cover how to write great ads, which keywords to target, which audiences to target. It's going to be, I don't know how many days it will be but it will be of a fairly long series I should say and it will be exciting because it won't be a case of giving you and showing you everything in a massive three or four-hour session.
If the information gets too much you get overwhelmed. You get bored. You give up and you're not going to do that so I've broken this and designed this series in small chunks so you can follow. You can watch, re-watch these videos, put into practice what I'm showing you and how to take your campaigns to the next level.
As I said, that you are very keen and excited to get started and you want to get the campaign up and running but we want to lay the right foundation. If you don't have a strong foundation, so let's say you're building a house or a block of flats or whatever. You've got to have that foundation really strong so that when you build upon it, the building is not going to collapse, right?
The same applies with these campaigns. If you don't set up your foundation the right way, it's not going to work. Never going to work. You're going to lose a lot of money. You'll be frustrated and you're eventually going to give up. I'm saying that "Google Ads don't work. Google has taken all my money. I've run out of cash." and all that.
What we do is, first of all before you go anywhere near this plus, the blue button where you create the ad. You want to head over to the top right-hand corner. Today I will be mostly focusing on setting up the foundation. What you need to do to get started. What I would like you to do is just follow me and not try to do this at the same time because this is recorded and you can re-watch it in the same playlist where it's on our Youtube channel.
In here you got lots of different things which you need to do but you don't need to worry about pretty much or not all of it but some of it is very important and some of it is critical. The critical bit is this one. These two, conversions and Google Analytics. Let's start with the easy bit. What you want to do is to go in here in Google Analytics and then (I) think what I will do is, because we are live, it will show up all our client accounts as well which I can't do.
All you do is you need to, first of all, go in here and you'll get an option to link your Google Analytics account. You need to link Google Analytics to Google Ads. If you don't understand why I'm saying that, to do the first a bit, is because I'm going to show you why it is important but it is absolutely necessary and critical that you do that so we can import the goals, the audiences when we set up in analytics and import them in Google Ads.
Analytics is kind of like the dashboard in your car. Let's say the car is your Google Ads. The dashboard is your analytics and the car is, we're going to use our car to go from A to B or to our destination. When we start the car when we sit in the car, the first thing we look at when we start the car is the dashboard, right?
How much fuel we've got? Any red lights or warning signals popping up or not and as we keep on driving towards our destination, we are constantly looking at that dashboard. What speed we are going at? How much fuel we've got? Have we got any warning signs or not? If I were to blank out that dashboard and then ask you to drive your car, it will be pretty dangerous and difficult to drive without that dashboard and that's what happens when we don't link analytics to Google Ads you are pretty much blindfolded and you're flying blind.
We will start up conversions over here as well but a lot of the data which we need to look at will come through analytics. First of all, link that account to it. It takes literally not even five seconds. It's that easy, it is, then you go into your conversions. What you want to do is to think of what conversions you have got on your website.
Have you got a call button? Have you got a form on a contact page or anywhere on the website? Have you got let's say a Facebook Messenger or a chatbox on there where a visitor can come onto that website and submit their details and get in touch with you or any other call to action which you may have on your site?
To start off with setting up that conversion, you click on that button and we've got various options over here. Let's start with website conversions. Now, you've got these various categories: purchase, add to basket, begin, check out, subscribe, contact and so on. I want to go with this one. Somebody signs up or submits a lead form on our landing page or a website.
You can name it if you like or keep it the same. Then, what you want to do is to set up a value for that conversion. How much is that lead valuable to you or your business? You will need to work that out and I'm going to go through that in the next session as to how to work out these conversion values but you don't want to be doing that because as it says here, not recommended.
Google won't know what the value is. You can either use the same one which is for a lead generation or it can be a different value. If it is you know different forms can have different values or if you're making a purchase then we will import that conversion value from Google Analytics and straight into Google Ads or you can set it up over here.
What we'll do is, we'll go for that for the time being. Okay. Now, there are two counts. One is every and the other one is one. If you read just underneath that, 'recommended for purchases,' because every purchase is different. Somebody can come to your website, make a purchase for 10 pounds or they may buy something of your website for a hundred.
Every transaction will be a different amount. You want every conversion. The same person can keep coming back and buying more stuff so it needs to be attributed over here. The one is for lead generations or service based in businesses. Recommended for leads, sign-ups, other conversions and so on. If I come to your website, submit a lead, I'm converted but sometimes people think that "Oh, the form did not go through properly." and they resubmit the form.
You don't want to count it again because you will be then over counting the conversions. All you want to do is to keep it as one. Then your 'View-through conversions,' you can set up to 90-days or custom, whichever one you want. Usually, we keep it to 30. 'View-through conversions,' if it's for a display campaign or any other campaigns you can also set it up.
Here's another confusion which a lot of people have. They will include certain conversions which shouldn't be in the conversion column and what I mean by that is, let's say in here, you can set up a conversion for a page view. Let's say you want somebody to go to a particular page which is of value to your business but not in monetary terms but they have not become a customer.
They have not become a lead but it is of value because you know that if 10 people come to my website, let's say a test customer testimonial page, the more they're checking you out and they are starting to trust you because your clients are saying good things about you and you can optimise your campaigns for this but what you don't want to do is include that in the conversion.
So, I'm going to cover the micro and the macro goals in great details in the follow-up sessions but for now, all we would do is we've got our lead form which is a lead. I want to include that in the conversions. 'Last click' attribution is the default. We don't use it. You can either have a time decay, position-based and if you hover the mouse and it will tell you what it means.
The position base gives 40% of the credit of that conversion. You bought the first and the last click and distributes the rest of the 20% among the other clicks. You will see that in your analytics and in the conversion path. Before... A path to conversion is not straightforward. It's pretty confusing. They'll go here. They'll go there. They'll click on an ad then go to your website then come back then go to Google again.
Click on your ad again. They may click on multiple ads before they convert and this is what we want to do is to be in front of that person throughout that conversion path or the journey to that conversion. This attribution model will allow us to attribute how valuable each one of these ads are and those clicks. The position-based is that the first and the last one get the most credit and the middle ones get a little bit.
Time decay, the first click gets the least and the last click gets the most credit. Linear is all if they clicked on five or four ads before they converted. All of them got equal attribution. The first click is only the first one that gets the attribution and none of the others. The last one as the name suggests is the last one.
Data-driven is for bigger accounts and most of the accounts which are small but all the accounts which are smaller will not be eligible to use data-driven. Once you've done that, you create your... Once I create that, now you've got three options to install that tag. I would highly recommend that you use the tag manager because you will have other tags like the Facebook, Pixel, Twitter, LinkedIn, Remarketing, conversion linker, call ads or any other conversions which you are making in Google Ads or other third-party tags.
You can put all of them in here. You get these tags and you can then set up the Google Tag Manager which I will also go into in one of the forthcoming sessions. You can either email the tag to your web dev and say okay 'What you want to do?' Or you can install it yourself if it's a WordPress website or you can set it up fairly quickly and easily.
Now, there are two options one is a page load and one is a click. Now, when you submit a form there on a website, there are two things which happens one is you are sometimes taken to a thank you page and sometimes a little thank you message pops up. I would highly recommend you take them to a thank you page because if something is not working, we can track.
What's happening with those pop-ups and the JavaScript sometimes it's not working and it's very difficult to work it out what's wrong and the other thing is, on a thank you page you can then give them some other call to action. You can give a link to your calendar, the book in your schedule or show them a little video to get them more excited about that forthcoming call with you.
Page load is what I would definitely go with. Once you're done, you click on the done. The other one which over here which is important and most people will be using is this call ads but then you've got three options. One is using call extensions or call-only ads. You want to be running call ads as well as lead forms because some people prefer to call and talk to somebody while other people want a callback and they submit the details to the form.
Calls to a phone number on your website or clicks on your number on your mobile website, so we start with that one and with this one you don't need to set up any tags or anything like that. It is just set up in here. You call it 'Call from Ads'. I'm going to cover this, how to work out this value, next week.
This is really important. One is good. Call length, how long you want somebody to stay on the call. You don't want a caller who calls you and hangs up after five seconds to be considered a conversion. They're not. They could be a wrong number, they click the ad by mistake or whatever. You can make it 30 seconds because 30 seconds a fairly long time and somebody's speaking to you or your receptionist or somebody at your company.
'Click-through' window is fine. You want this to be included in the conversion and again the last attribution, it's entirely up to you. I would not recommend, although this is the default. Stick with either time decay or position based but time decay is the one which we use and you create and as you can see, we did not get any tags.
This does not mean that there is some error or something is not right. It means that it has been set up and you are good to go because this goes through the call extensions. I think this is enough for today. What you want to do is to set these two conversions at least for a form and a call on your website and once you've done that then obviously, we can take it to the next stage of setting up the campaigns and lots of other fun things you will need to do before you start running up the campaign.
I know this may seem or you might find this a bit boring but this is absolutely important and critical before you get started. Now, it's your chance to put in your questions and I'm gonna go and have a read what it is. Hi Sandy, "What is the advantage if we enable priority high in campaign setup when it actually works?" Are you talking about Google Shopping?
A high priority campaign, so you can have low medium and high priority but for search campaigns, you don't need to worry about that and I'm pretty sure you are running a lead generation business and not shopping. If you are running a shopping campaign then you will need to do that. That is the right way to do it because you can then prioritise the low-value products, the medium and the high value and then bid accordingly.
Most people just throw everything in one campaign and it's not the right way to do it and quite often it never works. Hi Mateusz. Okay. Sandy, "What is the difference between lead generation campaign, search ads versus Youtube ads?" It's the same. Whether it's search, display, or video, a campaign is a campaign and your goal is the goal which is to generate your leads.
It really doesn't matter. You just showing text ads, image ads, video ads, different types of ads or call ads could be another one which is audio or not audio. Sorry, it is text ads but the call to action is, somebody, phoning you and calling you. These are the four different types of ads which you can use to generate leads.
Mateusz, "I cannot wait for the Google Tag Manager video." Okay. Alright. Yeah, what I will do is I'm going to, I'll try and put a schedule on our website so that you guys know what's happening when. Nikhil, "Can you please share the link for live video recordings?" This is the page, Nikhil. You're over here Youtube.com. I'll try and put this in.
This is where we go live every weekday. Declap, "For new campaigns, we should bid aggressively or go slow when impressions come then start increasing the bids?" I would go aggressive because I want that impression to start running. I want to get the campaigns starting to get the clicks. I want hopefully the conversions to start coming in or if the conversions are not coming in then I want to get the list of negative keywords as quickly as possible through the search term report and keep adding them in to keep on optimising the campaign.
I would go a bit higher. I won't go crazy high, but I don't want to wait 24 hours then see when I come next day or nothing has happened and then beat up a bit and then wait another 24 hours and see what's happening. I want to get started and then I can keep on reducing the bids.
Sandy, "Can you tell about flying wheel for Google Analytics?" I'm not too sure what you mean by that, at all. Okay. If you guys have been running any Google Ads campaigns and you have not set up your conversion tracking and linked your analytics, you must do that because when it when we come to switching the campaigns from manual to smart bidding you won't have any conversion data.
It will never work so right from the start you've got to make sure that you've got everything set up. Nikhil, "I mean the session which you are talking on a daily basis. Where we can see after the session is over? Okay. It's on our Youtube channel, in the playlist. Youtube Q&A, I think is called. When you go on there, all of them, I think this is the 96th session we have.
Let me quickly dig out that playlist for you, if you hold on. Those of you who are watching this live, to put in the question because there is a 30 seconds delay so I don't see. If you put the question at the last minute, I may not see it. Okay. So, here's the playlist. So, all of these sessions are recorded and they're placed over there.
Okay. (Nikhil:) "More clicks and conversion depends upon the content quality or high budget?" Well, you will get more clicks and hopefully more conversions if you got a higher budget compared to a low budget. That's dependent obviously on your budget. With regards to what you mean by the content quality, I think you are referring to how good or bad that landing page is because it's a chain.
You got to make sure you know everything is working. If something breaks in that chain, the campaigns won't work. You've got your keywords, your ads, your landing page and your offer. You got to make sure you clear target the right keyword. When somebody types in something in Google they see your ad. Then you need to make sure that your ads are enticing enough and exciting enough for somebody to say, "Oh this looks really good.
I'm going to go and check it out." That means the keyword and the ad has done its job to bring that visitor to your website. Now, let's say you had a restaurant. You got the customer in through the door. If your restaurant is beautiful, nice, you know, the atmosphere is really good, they are going to stay in but if it is dirty and there's no warm welcome to the new visitors, they'll probably go away straight, straight off and that's what happens on the website.
If your website is loading up very slowly, the navigation is not good, the design, photography, video, you know lots of things are taken into account before somebody says, "Wow, this is a really good website." So, you got to make sure that everything is in its place and it's easy for somebody to navigate your site. The message is crystal clear.
The copywriting is extremely important. Not many people pay attention to it. Your messaging needs to be absolutely crystal clear that within three seconds they know what they've come there for and then you will find that if your website is good and they are converting and not converting, then you can see they've clicked on the add to cart button.
They've gone through to the checkout, billing or shipping, and then at the last minute, they did not convert. What's the bottleneck? Is there something wrong? Is everything working or not working? So, this is how you will then keep on optimising your campaigns. To optimise one part of that campaign. One bit at a time and then try to increase your conversion rates.
Mateusz, "What are the critical elements of campaign optimisation?" Well, as I've just said these are the things which we need to do and there are lots of things you need to optimise in here. I'll try and break it down into small chunks so that you know what to optimise at the campaign level, ad group level, ad level and keyword level.
These are the four most important ones where you need to optimise and obviously the extensions if you're not getting the clicks on those but these four players. If you keep an eye on these four places then you won't go wrong. Okay. I think I've covered pretty much everybody's questions. Okay. Last one. Sandy, "I'm doing content for every day.
It's giving me tons of traffic. You are my guru." Brilliant! Thank you and well done. You've got to create content. I'm creating content every day. It's in video format. If your content is a text or podcast or any other format, yeah, just stick to it. Keep going and you will find that you are head and shoulders above your competitors.
Let's wrap it up for today. Thank you, guys, for being here today and I shall see you back on Monday because tomorrow is my lovely wife who will be live and I'm not sure what she's talking about today but I'm sure it will be really good for you. Hopefully, see you guys tomorrow here at four o'clock. Till then, stay safe and goodbye.