Introduction to Google Ads

This page outlines some basics and answers some frequently asked questions about Google Ads, suitable for complete beginners or anyone looking to understand the core principles.

What are Google Ads?

Google Ads refers to any advertising on Google properties - search, YouTube, Google news feeds, and other third party sites that partner with Google (aka “display”).

For our purposes, Google Ads only refers to ads that show up in search results. You want your ads to show here:

The reason we focus only on search ads and not any other kind of Google Ads, or Meta Ads or any other platform, is that people searching in Google have a very high intent for your service. Someone searching for “therapy for anxiety” is actively looking to work with a therapist at the moment they’re searching.

With Google Ads, you specify exactly what searches you want your ads to show for. That’s extremely powerful and why Google Ads are very effective.

How do Google Ads work?

Think of Google Ads as an auction system where millions of auctions are happening every second. You’re competing with lots of other advertisers who also want to target the same people that you do. Whoever has the best ‘bid’ wins and their ad shows in the top placement.

But it’s a lot more complicated than that.

Your chance of winning any given auction is determined by your bidding strategy (how much you’re willing to pay for each click), how well your ads are structured, how good your website is, how well your website matches the intent of what someone is searching, how many other competitors there are, as well as lots of other factors.

If that all sounds way too complicated, what you have control over boils down to this: consider what your ideal client/customer is searching, target that keyword, and make sure your ad and website is designed to give the person searching what they want to find.

Example

You’re a therapist and you want to get new clients. You could run an ad that targets people searching for “therapy near me” and send them to your homepage because your whole website is about therapy so it must be relevant.

While that’s true, such a generic keyword might have a lot of advertisers and it’ll be more expensive and harder to stand out. Instead, maybe you want to get more clients for couples counseling because you charge more for that and you like working with couples. In this case, having your ad go to your website homepage might not make the most sense because it’s not specific to couples counseling.

Instead, if you had a page on your website dedicated to only couples counseling your ads could send people there and your ad can speak specifically to “improving your relationship”, which will make your ads more relevant and therefore cheaper.

You should have a page on your website specific to each specialty/service that you offer. This is what we’ll use for Google Ads, but it’s also beneficial for SEO.

FAQs about Google Ads

  • As much or as little as you like! With Google Ads you set your own daily budget, which can be as low as $5.

    Google Ads may spend slightly more or less than your daily budget on any given day, but in a 30-day period it won’t spend more than your daily budget * 30.

    I recommend spending a minimum $15/day, ideally $20-30. Any less and it’s very hard to get traction.

  • Working with me you’ll have your own Google Ads account. You’ll add a payment method to the account and Google Ads will charge you directly.

    For new accounts, Google Ads typically charges with every $100 spend, but this varies by account and by how much you’re spending.

  • YES! Please never, ever work with any agencies or freelancers who want to use their own accounts. If you ever stop working with them you’ll lose access to the account and all its past data, which will make starting ads from scratch somewhere else very expensive and time-consuming. Historical data is extremely important in the success of Google Ads.

    Working with me I’ll help you make your own Google Ads account that you have complete ownership of at all times.

  • Technically it’s very easy to get started with Google Ads. You can have an ad live in less than 30 minutes if you wanted.

    However, the money you save by setting up ads yourself you’ll lose very quickly if your campaign isn’t setup effectively or optimized poorly.

    If you want to run ads yourself, let me know and I can tailor our work to eventually hand off ongoing management to you.

  • Most businesses can have success with Google Ads if set up correctly.

    I wrote a post here that outlines the types of business that will have the most success. If your industry isn’t included, reach out and I’ll share my thoughts with you!

  • Technically you can spend as little as $5/day on Google Ads and you might be successful.

    However, for almost all businesses I recommend starting with a minimum $15/day USD. If you’re in lower-income or less-competitive countries/regions, you could probably spend less.

    $15/day is a good baseline for getting enough data to optimize effectively while still being affordable to even the smallest businesses.