How To Create A Google Ads Account in 2021 (Easy Guide)

What is a Google Ads account?

Before we get into the nooks and crannies of how to get your Google Ads account set up, we should probably first understand what a Google Ads account is.

Your Google Ads account is the central hub of where you create, design, and manage your Ad Campaigns. It is here that you can analyse all the data from demographics to campaign performance.

Why do you need a Google Ads Account?

You may be wondering why you need to have a Google Ads account at all. Well, if you want to have any adverts on Google then this is a must.

You may want to have an agency run it for you but whether you run it yourself or not, it is important to understand your central hub for all things Google Ads.

How To Set Up a Google Ads Account

Right, let’s get into it…

Setting up a Google Ads Account may seem like a daunting task, even if you’ve carried out a bit of research, it can still be an intimidating thought, making sure you have done everything properly, avoiding all the pitfalls. Fear not, we’ve put together this guide to help you navigate your way through the process most easily and simply. A straightforward step-by-step tutorial for success.

Getting The Foundations Built: Set Your Business Up For Success With Google Ads

Before you begin your Google Ads journey there are a few things you should have in place to help build the foundation for a successful PPC campaign.

These can often be the places where campaigns sink or swim and should be in place before you create your Google Ads Account.

1. Landing Pages: The point of the PPC campaign is to send qualified traffic to your website getting them to convert. Whether that is filling out a form, purchasing a product, getting in touch, or some other type of positive interaction on your site. If your landing page is confusing, slow, broken, unfinished, unprofessional, etc, then you’re lessening the chances of converting that quality traffic into potential customers. So, get your landing pages looking their best!

2. Strategy: There is no point moving any further forward unless you have a plan of action. We don’t just mean, “Increase CTR or lower CPA”. We mean a robust strategy with defined objectives. What those objectives are will be unique to your business. If you are trying to generate more leads, what sort of leads do you want, trying to increase sales? Why products are before good vs poor?

3. Expectations: PPC Campaigns are a journey, they take time to develop and learn about your industry. Things won’t go to plan straight away and success won’t always happen as quickly as you want. But setting aside a realistic budget and timeline will be a good place to start. At the end of the day, you have to choose a budget that fits your business, but understand the impacts it will have on your campaign.

The Basics: Setting Up Your Google Ads Account

To get the ball rolling and start advertising on Google Ads, you will need to create a Google Account (@Gmail).

If you haven’t got one, head to google.com and click sign in (top right hand corner) and complete the process.

Once you’ve done this, you need to go to ads.google.com and sign in with the correct credentials. Upon the first time signing in you will be prompted with the question of “What’s your main advertising goal?”. This is Google’s first attempt at trying to push its automated processes. Until your campaign has enough data for Google to exploit, we often recommend going into manual mode.

Of course, you need to assess what is right for your company and if you have limited time resources, then you may opt for Google’s shortcuts. So, to enter manual mode, select “Switch to Expert Mode” at the bottom.

You will be swiftly moved onto the next stage where you’ll find yourself being asked to create a campaign. However eager you may be to get going, again we’d recommend skipping this stage for now until you are more familiar with the interface and have further pieces of the puzzle in place.

Next up is your business information. You will be told to confirm this and, it is important this information is correct because you cannot change this in the future.

Congratulations, you have successfully created a Google Ads Account. Have a little explore around and familiarise yourself with the layout. Don’t worry about creating your campaign.

OK, Now What…?

If you are feeling lost then have a little read below where we highlight the main parts of the account you will want to familiarise yourself with the most.

– Keyword Planner

– Negative Keyword Lists

– Shared Budgets

– Conversions

– Billing

If you want to have a more in-depth look at any of the subjects below then make sure to check out our other blogs.

The Main Parts of a Google Ads Account

Keyword Planner: Google’s Keyword Planner is a powerful tool that will be integral to your keyword research ahead of any PPC campaign. The keyword research tool gives you insight into how often certain words are searched and trends of those searches using historical data. Keyword Planner will give you bid estimates for each keyword, these should be used with a pinch of salt but can help determine your advertising budget.

Negative Keyword List: Building a negative keyword list is vital to make sure you get the most bang for your buck. I won’t go into too much detail here but negative keywords let you exclude search terms from your campaigns and help you focus on only the keywords that matter to your customers. Better targeting can put your ad in front of interested users rather than uninterested ones and ultimately lead to more success.

Shared Budgets: Assigning budgets is a major part of Google Ads, so it’s worth getting used to where it is and how to use it. You can choose between setting an average daily budget for each campaign or choosing a shared budget to allocate budget across multiple campaigns.

Conversions: Conversion tracking is an imperative part of setting up campaigns. You must make sure you’re tracking the correct conversions to generate the strongest possible data. How to make sure conversions are tracking properly is another topic but you do not want to forget about this step in the process.

Billing: Billing is fairly self-explanatory, but this is an area of the account interface you want to get used to. All of your information from Tax, to Contact, to Payment. It all sits in here, and if you don’t regularly check it, then you may find problems cropping up without you noticing.

Hopefully, you now feel a lot more confident about your new Google Ads Account and are more comfortable with what’s inside. As always we are happy to have a chat with you if you’d like more information on how to run a successful PPC campaign.

We Are Here To Help You

I hope the above article has been useful to any business considering the benefits of PPC or Google Ads for their customer acquisition.

If there’s anything I’ve missed or if you have any questions, please get in touch and I’ll be delighted to assist. I can be reached on my direct email at james@proven-concept.com.

Thanks for reading, James Warwick