to create a Google Ads account

Many brands find advertising on Google Ads easy.

Google Ads is a great way to scale up your business.

It can be more difficult than ever to get started. It will be important to decide what type of account you want, and ensure that you have all your verifications.

This article will walk you through the process of setting up Google Ads.

Note – While some strategic advice will be provided, the goal of this article is to make it as universally useful as possible. We will not discuss setting up Local Service Ads and Merchant Center.

Google Ads: How to get started

An email is required to set up a Google Ads account. It can be either Google or not.

You can quickly create an account if you don’t have an email address you plan to use before you set up the ad account.

After you have chosen the email account that you wish to associate with your ad accounts, you will be asked to create a Google Business Profile.

You will, however, be able to lock your account into a Smart Campaign account.

Smart Campaigns are useful for certain brands but it is not ideal for all advertisers to lock the account to support these campaigns.

Make sure you select “Are You a Professional Marketer?” Move to Advanced Mode

After you have converted to a normal account, you will be prompted for your first campaign. You can create an account even if you are not ready.

Google will search for assets that are associated with your email address (such as YouTube channels). These assets can be connected to other audiences or placed in new placements, or you can leave them alone.

You can connect your phone number to the app if you’re promoting it or using it for a landing page. Your phone number will also be connected.

If you use call tracking, it is ideal to have the number available. You can always change it later.

Google Ads accounts must include conversion tracking. After choosing the campaign objective (conversions, brand lift), you can set up conversion tracking.

You should not sign up for multiple conversion goals within a single campaign.

It is impossible to ask one campaign to be responsible only for leads and sales. There are too many conversion values.

Next, you need to decide whether you will create a single-channel or multi-channel campaign (PMax).

Your campaign goals will determine which campaigns you are asked to create. You can choose search or PMax if you do not select any.

PMax requires visual creativity to succeed. It is better to begin with a non-PMax campaign if you don’t have any images or videos.

When you choose to search for something, you will be prompted to start filling out the following information:

• Keywords – You can manually enter them, or you can get suggestions based upon your site or themes.
• Search Ad Text: To create a responsive search ad, you’ll need to enter the headlines, descriptions and final URL.
• Assets (formerly called extensions): Site Links, Structured snippets and Callouts.
• Bidding strategy During this stage, you can only opt in to Smart Bidding or Automated Bidding.
• Campaign settings – Other than naming conventions you can also set audience targets, location targets, ad times, audiences and ad networks.

Campaigns for PMax focus on all Google Ads channels. The majority of the campaign revolves around providing creative.

Although you won’t bid on keywords, you may add an intent audience to the Audience signals.

Google will create a video for you if you don’t have the video creative.

Budgets play a critical role in the success of your Google Ads campaign and account.

A budget that is too low can lead to wasted money. There won’t be enough clicks leading to conversions. Budget misallocation could result if you set it too high.

Be sure to set a daily budget that you are comfortable with increasing by at least 2% each day. Google will try to average your monthly spending to your daily spending over 30.4 days.

Important to remember that your billing profile doesn’t have to match your main ad account.

Agency clients can create the billing profile for themselves or their client. Google Ads accepts most credit cards, PayPal and direct deposits from bank account accounts.

Follow up steps

Congratulations! Your Google Ads account has been set up! You’re not done, however.

After you have completed the initial setup, verify your account and activate two-factor authentication.

To verify your account, you will need to request and send back a postcard attesting that your business is legitimate. Your ad account may be cancelled if you fail to complete this step.

You may also be suspended if you do not incur charges within the first few days.

This can be avoided by linking your Google Ads Console with Google Analytics.

Conversion tracking does not need to be complicated. There are codeless options available:

• Connecting your conversion tracking to Google Tag Assistant
• Copy your conversion tracking code and paste it into your analytics section.

Conversion tracking setup can be sent to your developer as well.

Conversion actions can be either primary or secondary.

• Reporting and the Google Ads algorithm will consider a primary action.
• Secondary actions will only report the data and will not be incorporated into cost per acquisition (CPA).

Set up your Google Ads Account

Campaign structure, ad creativity options can all be included in account setup. If you are not ready to start the campaign, don’t force it.

You can make sure that you are setting yourself up for success by making sure to have your linking accounts (Analytics, Search Console) and your creative ready.

Search Engine Land first published the post How do I set up a Google Ads account.