How Google Ads Work 2020 for Beginners

Please Try again 

Total Free

• + Views
•  + Subscribers
•  Likes + Share Comments
•  + Watch-Time
•  YouTube Google Approved

Digital marketing consultant and this Google ads tutorial for beginners, you're going to learn what the heck Google ads are, how they work. And most importantly, the top five reasons you might want to avoid them. if you're looking for a viable solution for driving more traffic and sales to your business. 

Google ads tutorial for beginners

So make sure you check out the timestamp table of contents in the description, along with some other helpful videos, that will walk you through how to set up Google ads, if you decide it's right for you. So, before we get into those five big warnings, let's go and talk about what Google ads are and how they actually work to drive, potentially drive more customers and sales, keyword being potential. So, you have four different ad types. 

You have searched, you have displayed, you have video and you have app of course, app is all about downloading mobile applications. Videos are ads that are displayed across YouTube and some search partners. Google display ads are ones that show up in Gmail and across other websites. 

Google display ads

And then, of course, the one we're going to be focusing on is search, which are the ads that show up on the search results page. So, here's how Google ads work for search. Someone is looking to buy something. So, they head over to Google and they type in whatever their question or query or product they're looking for us. And as an advertiser, you can say, “Hey, someone types that in, I want my ad to show up.” And is pretty much as complicated as it gets. Of course, when we get to the warning, number three, you're going to see that it can actually get pretty convoluted pretty fast, but that's just a basic overview. Someone goes to Google because they're looking for something you say, 

                                    “Hey, when someone is looking for this, then show my ad” And then you have the opportunity for them to click on your ad, which is when you pay and then they go to your website, or if they're doing it on their phone, they can click and directly call you, if you're doing call ads. I won't get into the different types of ads you can do on search, but that's just a general overview of how search ads work. So why would you not want to do these right?

Google search ads 

 Because there's a lot of reasons why you might want to do these, because it's a great opportunity to get in front of people who are actively looking for your product or service, but here's the big downside. Other businesses have already figured out that they can find customers on Google, which means prices are high. And they're going to continue to go up as more and more businesses, jump on the Google advertising train. So here's the thing, unless you're going to spend at least $1,500 a month for the next three to four months, Google search ads is not a good solution for you. Now, this doesn't mean at minimum, you have to spend 1500 in order to be successful. It's just a good rule of thumb or bar to look out for because your first two to three months, you're probably not going to see a great return, if any, because you it's just a time to learn and test. 

PPC nerds or pay-per-click nerds

So if you have a tight marketing budget and you're trying to figure out where can I immediately spend some money and actually start seeing some results back, because you don't have any time to test, then Google ads really isn't the place for you. Google ads is a proven platform, but it's an expensive platform, especially if you're just joining because there are a lot of PPC nerds or pay-per-click nerds, that’s what PPC stands for, who do Google ads day in and day out. And it's just not reasonable as a beginner to think that you can jump on the platform and be successful and compete with those people who pretty much do it every single day. 

Google ads are great

Now the second big reason you might not want to do Google ads, is if you have a long lead time. Google ads are great where local services-based businesses because you can target by geolocation like a city or a zipcode or a state. And then if you're selling products online via eCommerce store, you can have your product listing show up exactly when someone's looking for the exact product that you have, which is awesome. But, if you're in a niche or industry or you have a service where it takes a longer period of time to educate your potential prospect and warm them up to the idea of doing business with you, then 

Google ads probably isn't the best place to spend your advertising dollars because Google ads is great for people who are actively looking to buy right now, it's not necessarily always an impulse buy, but it's an easy way to think of Google ads as an impulse buy versus trying to warm people up and bring them into a prolonged sales process. Now, the third reason Google ads might not be for you is if you're not a type an OCD personality. So, in the beginning of this tutorial video, I talked about how search ads work, right? Someone type something in and you say, “Hey when they type that in, I want me to show up”. Well, the problem is via something called match types, which we won't get convoluted and get into. Essentially, you can tell Google how strict you want to be with what someone is typing in. And part of the problem is unless you know exactly what people are typing in, you're going to spend a lot of money, figuring out which search phrases actually produce the results that you want, meaning customers. 

br />

And then also, number two, it's really hard to know what keywords are actually working, if you're not super OCD because Google will show your ad pretty much any time, it is remotely possible to show your ad. And this just goes into Google's business model, right? The more they show your ad and the more it gets clicked, the more they make money, but they don't make money necessarily by sending you the most qualified traffic, which means you can get a lot of unqualified traffic from Google search ads. Now I almost didn't include this because I know there's going to be some people in the comments who say, “Well, that's really the advertiser's fault”. And that's true to an extent, but when you're just getting started, you're not going to know which keywords are going to be good and going to be bad, or which keywords are going to give you a bunch of unqualified people hitting your website, who are just lookie-loo, right?

So you're going to get a lot of unqualified traffic. And even after a few months, you could possibly still be paying for unqualified traffic. So that's a big downside. And that's why in number one, I talk about needing a significant budget and stomach to continue to spend that amount of money, while you try and filter out all those unqualified people. 

Now the fourth big warning I have for you here, a reason you don't want to use Google ads is, if you're going to just rely on Google setting it up for you. Now, there's going to be some pushback on this. But when it comes to Google ads reps, they really aren't experts, when it comes to setting up your account. Just as an example, not necessarily a brag, we had a client who spent over 14 K over six months and in just two weeks of reworking his account and $750, we cut his cost per click by half and he got more leads off that $750, than he did in spending 14K and six months. And this is something we see as a digital agency over and over and over and over again to the point where,