How to Run a Google Search Campaign

A Google search campaign delivers your text-based ads to people using the Google search bar. One of the ways Google search campaigns help you reach customers is by allowing you to target people who are already looking for more information about the products or services you offer. 

Use this tutorial to familiarize yourself with running a Google search campaign using Google Ads and be ready to try it yourself. 

How to run a Google search campaign 

At a high-level overview, you will need to set up a new campaign, select bidding, targeting, and ad asset settings, create ad groups, create ads, and set your budget to run a Google search campaign. To familiarize yourself with the process, let’s review the steps you must take in more detail.

1. Create a new search campaign 

To begin, click on the Campaigns icon. You will then click the Campaigns drop-down menu and select Campaigns for the third time. Click on the Plus icon, and you’ll be ready to start your new campaign’s creation. 

Enter the goal of your website— sales, leads, website traffic— and select Search under campaign type. You can add additional information about your campaign if you wish. Click Continue. 

2. Select bidding, targeting, and ad assets

Next, you must enter some additional settings for your campaign. Setting up your targeting means selecting who you want to view your ads. If you’d like to extend your campaign beyond Google search engine, choose Include Google search partners. If you’d like your ads to be used beyond search results when applicable, select Display network. 

You can also add targeting information based on language, interests, geographic location, etc. For example, you can limit your ad to users in a particular city, or extend to a broader region while excluding specific locations. 

Setting up bidding helps you direct what people will do with your ads, whether you seek Conversions, Clicks, Conversion value, or Impression Share. You can also add an optional ad schedule or ad rotation in this step of the process. 

3. Create dynamic and standard ad groups

Once you have bidding set up, creating your ad groups is your next step in the process. For example, if you sell office supply products, you may set up an ad group targeting “printers” and a separate group for “staplers.” You can use standard ad groups or dynamic ad groups based on keywords you manually enter, where Google automatically selects keywords based on your content. 

To create a standard ad group, you will need to enter a name, keywords, and a definition of how broadly the keywords should match search queries. After completing that step, click Save and continue.

Ad groups will be standard by default, but you can turn on dynamic groups by selecting Dynamic under Ad group type. You then will need to name your ad group, enter your site's domain, select categories to target, and choose specific pages that can be targeted with related ads. You can then choose New ad group to add more ad groups, or press Save and continue to finish your dynamic ad category selections. 

4. Create ads

Next, you will create the ads that users will see on Google search. If desired, you must add a destination URL, one to three headlines (the part that appears in blue text), a URL customization, and a few lines of descriptive text. 

You will have up to 90 characters of space in the descriptive text box. In this step, you can add tracking parameters to improve your understanding of where your traffic comes from. You can create one or click New ad to add multiple ads to each ad group. 

Once you’ve written ads for each ad group, click Save and continue. 

5. Set budget 

Determining your daily budget is the final action you need to take before finalizing your Google search campaign. Google will recommend campaigns similar to yours based on similar campaigns created by other users. 

Your daily budget is an average of the sum you spend daily within a one-month period. Some days you might have more traffic and clicks, and you may spend over your daily budget. When that happens, you will receive less traffic on other days in the month to average out to your daily budget. 

Learn more about Google Ads.

If you want to learn more about Google Ads, consider taking the next step and earning your Google Digital Marketing & E-commerce Professional Certificate. This course can help you go from a complete beginner to job-ready in as little as six months. Prepare for a marketing coordinator or E-commerce associate career and learn skills like display advertising, email marketing, search engine optimization, and more.