Frequently asked
questions
Google AdWords has now been renamed Google Ads – it allows businesses to reach people when they search on Google and/or actively engage with a product or service.
The simplest form of ads appears at the top of Google’s search results. For example, if you search for “Google AdWords Management Hamburg”, you will probably see Google ads in the first 4 positions with a small “Ads” logo next to the listing. These ads were written to appear to searchers when that specific phrase or “keyword” is typed into the Google search bar. Advertisers only pay for these ads when someone actually clicks on them – which is why this form of advertising is also known as “pay-per-click” (PPC) advertising.
The order or “rank” in which these ads appear is determined by the “Ad Auction”. This auction is influenced by several factors and calculated for each individual search. These can be narrowed down as follows:
A) The price you are willing to pay per click; and
B) How relevant your ad and website are to the search term you are looking for.
Other factors such as the page load speed and the frequency with which your ad was previously clicked also influence this calculation.
Ads can come in many variations – some can be several lines long, include phone numbers, an address, prices, special offers, and even pictures of the specific products. These variations are determined by a number of ad extensions and ad types that advertisers can use to attract the attention of searchers.
When an agency like tikitaka manages your Google ad campaign, there are two separate costs to consider:
Media costs
Also known as your click budget, this is the media cost that Google charges you every time your ad is clicked. As an advertiser, you determine the amount you want to spend on Google. There are tools that allow an advertiser to calculate the average cost per click (CPC) for the keywords they want to target and how much search volume there is for those keywords in the targeted locations in a given month.
Using this information, advertisers can determine how much media spend they would need to reach all or part of their target audience. For example, if the search term “Google AdWords Management Hamburg” costs an average of €10.00 per click and there are 100 searches per month in Hamburg, then the advertiser could spend up to €1,000 per month to reach these searches. The figures given are averages and would also require additional testing and verification to ensure that the desired range is achieved.
Management costs
The costs associated with a Google AdWords agency or partner managing an advertiser’s Google AdWords activity can vary widely. The size of the agency – whether it is a one-man-band agency or an international agency – may impact the overhead and costs associated with management, but may not reflect the quality and communication required for effective account management.
The true success of a Google AdWords campaign is the return on investment achieved. With Google Ads, this is often easy to calculate because media spend is tied to specific clicks and conversions.
There are few different ways that Hamburg digital agencies charge advertisers for managing their Google AdWords campaigns:
A) Graduated structure
B) Share of media expenditure
The main goal of tikitaka is to go beyond generating arbitrary clicks and website traffic and create an actual return on investment for our clients. At tikitaka, we work with a tiered structure that allows for a variety of solutions and options without tying advertisers to excessive media spend.
Ultimately, Google provided a product that allows businesses to run their own Google AdWords accounts. It may not be easy or practical to have your own advertising account, but it is possible. This means that many companies offering Google AdWords management are not the most qualified to manage an advertiser’s marketing investment.
An analogy would be if accountants did not need mandatory accreditation to operate, but could acquire qualifications as an option. Would you trust your money to someone without qualifications?
As a Google partner, tikitaka must maintain certifications and qualifications that are updated annually. In addition, Google is constantly supporting and auditing our Google Ads accounts to ensure best practices are being followed.
In addition, Google partners get access to Google’s German support as well as frequent training and early access to beta features, giving their advertisers an edge over their competitors.
Google uses various methods to prevent fraudulent ad clicks, including modifying search results for users based on their past search history and behavior. Even with these preventative measures, it is easy for a malicious user to bypass these barriers, which can cost advertisers significantly in fraudulent clicks.
To prevent fraudulent clicks from affecting your bottom line, tikitaka also uses third-party software that allows us to personalize protection for each of our customers’ accounts. With this software, we can prevent users from seeing ads based on their behavior and location. Since implementing this software, we have proven savings of tens of thousands of wasted clicks per year.
Google AdWords and Google AdWords Express are the former names for the new, improved Google Ads.
Google Ads works by displaying your ad when people search online for the products and services you offer. Using smart technology, Google Ads helps put your ads in front of potential customers at the exact moment they are ready to take action.
- You start by choosing your goal, such as driving more traffic to your website or getting more calls for your business.
- Next, select the geographical area where you want your ad to be placed. This can be a small radius around your company or a much larger one, such as cities, counties or entire countries.
- Finally, you design your ad and set your monthly budget.
Once your ad is approved, it can be displayed when users in your target area search for a product or service like yours. You only pay when users respond to your ad, i.e. click on your ad or call your company.
- Search network campaigns – usually in text form, these ads can appear on Google search results pages when someone searches for a product or service similar to yours
- Display network campaigns – usually in the form of images. These ads appear on websites or apps that your customers visit.
- Video campaigns – usually 6- or 15-second videos, these ads are displayed right before or during YouTube content
CPC (Cost Per Click) or PPC (Pay Per Click) means that you only pay for an ad when someone clicks on it.
Other advertising models are:
- Cost Per Impression, where you pay based on how many times your ad has been shown (not clicked on)
- Cost Per Engagement: You pay when a user performs a predefined engagement (e.g. watches your video ad).
When we hear this opinion about AdWords, it’s usually because people are either running the campaigns themselves without the proper knowledge or have had a bad experience with an agency that ripped off clients with hard sells to sell them cheap.
Launching an AdWords campaign without knowing how to use the platform can be a recipe for burning money quickly.In the first campaign we ran for a client, we saved nearly 50% of his ad spend within minutes because ads were being served for completely inappropriate keywords. For another client who was running their campaigns with a general Google hotline, we were able to cut the cost per click in half from €2 to €1, meaning they were previously spending twice as much as they needed to. It’s also not uncommon for us to take an internally managed AdWords account and increase the average click-through rate from 1-2% to over 10% (and sometimes even higher) and get results that are many times the ad spend.
These are all good metrics, but we also take care of your conversion tracking so you can track monetary values, which is the ultimate metric
Setting up an AdWords campaign is quite complicated, if done well, and requires a good knowledge of the platform. It’s not just about clicking a few buttons. Setting up a new campaign includes the following items, among others:
- Understanding your advertising goals
- Understanding of your products and their profitability
- Decide which campaign types are most suitable
- Keyword research
- Create the right campaign structure to reduce costs
- Your campaign ideas may result in multiple AdWords campaigns being created to increase effectiveness
- Creation of numerous “ad extensions” to make your ads more attractive
- Writing copy for many different ads
(It is not uncommon for a “simple” campaign to have 100 ad variations if done well) - Create or provide input for multiple different banner ads (if you are using display ads).
- Setting up conversion tracking in Google Analytics
(this can be simple, but also very time-consuming) - Minor changes to your website to enable conversion tracking
…and much more.
It’s time consuming, but ultimately it means your money keeps flowing and you get better results. Well set up campaigns will definitely save you money, and potentially a lot of money.
To get started with Google Ads, click here to sign up. The guided Google Ads setup will take you through the creation of your first ad in just a few steps. If you need help signing up, Google Ads experts are available to set up your new account and even help you create your first campaign – at no additional cost.