Setting up an AdWords Account

You have thought about the objectives of your AdWords campaigns, you may have also started to think about keywords that could be used within the campaign and now feel ready to start.

The following page will take you through the setup process and provide some invaluable advice and first time AdWords users.

The four basic steps in creating a Google AdWords account are:

1. Target languages and locations
2. Create the first ad group
3. Specify your daily budget
4. Confirm and add payment info

Target languages and locations

Google AdWords will allow you to target people of over 40 languages within over 250 countries. You can target bespoke areas using their custom mapping tool allowing your advert to only appear within a 10 mile radius of your physical store.

Suppose you sell German history books. Most probably, you’ll want to target your ads for native Germans. Then, you choose the ads to be displayed only to users that access the Internet from Germany. This can be done, because Google identifies the user’s IP address.

Another slice of your market can be Google users who set their language preference on “German”, though they’re not located in Germany. Those ones will get language-targeted ads.

How is this helpful to you? On one hand, you won’t pay for untargeted visitors - those persons that would never buy your product. On the other hand, by taking advantage of language preferences, you increase the power of your ads to convert the visitors into customers. You’re speaking their language!

You can edit your language and geographical settings at any time and they only effect the selected campaigns, which enables you to target multiple target markets within your AdWords account.

Create the first ad group

After you have verified your email address Google AdWords will take you through the process of creating your first ad group step by step. We would recommend that you use this opportunity to familiarise yourself with the AdWords environment however, do not worry about the content as this can be changed prior to your advert being displayed.

Five easy steps to create your first ad group:

Create an ad

Although this process is going to create an individual advert for your ad group we would recommend a minimum of two adverts per ad group, this allows you to test and measure the success against each other.

There are some strict restriction regarding the structure and content of your advert, your advert will appear in four lines of text.

Structure:

Line 1, Heading - Max of 25 characters (including spaces and punctuation)
Line 2, Content 1 - Max of 35 characters (including spaces and punctuation)
Line 3, Content 2 - Max of 35 characters (including spaces and punctuation)Line 1, Display URL - Max of 35 characters (including spaces and punctuation)

Actual URL - Max of 1,024 characters (will not be displayed)

Content:

No superficial words such as Best, Greatest etc.
Offers should be supported on the landing page (or within 3 clicks)
Display URL must reflect Actual URL

More information and advice regarding AdWords copy writing can be found within the advanced AdWords advice section of this website.

Select your keywords

The next step is to select your keywords, Google AdWords will already provide you with some suggestions relating to your proposed landing page. These should be themed on the right hand side of your screen, you can either select some of these keywords or choose some of your own.

Once you have completed your initial advert you can use Google AdWords keyword tool and build themed lists of your own. Do not rely on this tool to build you whole list and please edit the suggestions provided to avoid unrelated keywords within your campaign.

Choose your currency

Selecting you currency is not amendable element of your AdWords campaign so be careful when selecting your chosen currency.

Choose maximum cost per click (CPC)

The final two elements are editable once your campaign is setup, the cost per click is the maximum you are willing to pay every time someone clicks on your advert. This is not the actual cost you will pay due to AdWords smart pricing model, details of Google AdWords smart pricing process can be found within our advanced AdWords advice section of this website.

Choose daily budget

Finally set a daily budget for your campaign to put a limit on the amount of money you wish to spend each day for each campaign. Once your daily allowance has been reached your advert will no longer appear during that day however, they will restart at the start of the next day until the budget is spent.

Finally

Here we are: the last step before your Google AdWords account becomes active. All you need to do is enter your payment details along with some contact information.