Create a Google AdWords campaign in 15 minutes

Video: The 5 pillars of AdWords success

Over the past two weeks we talked about the benefits of pay per click and search engine advertising. Now it's time to try it for yourself.

Create your first campaign

Log in at www.google.co.za/adwords to start creating your first campaign. When you click on "create new campaign" you'll be asked what language and region you want to target. For now choose English and South Africa. Stick with the other default options recommended for sites and devices - we'll refine these later. Name your campaign and click Save and Continue.

Ad Campaigns and Ad Groups

Next you'll be asked to name your Ad Group. Ad groups help you segment and target your campaigns in more detail.

Let's say our goal is to sell shoes. Your campaign name will be "shoes", but you may be selling different types of shoes - running shoes and work shoes. When people search on Google, they're likely to use different search terms, or key words, when they're looking for a good pair of sports shoes, as opposed to when they're looking for a nice pair of work shoes. So you are given the option to create different ad groups within your campaign for each of these - one ad group could be called "running shoes", another "work shoes".

For now, let's start by creating just one ad group. Give it a name and let's move on to writing our ad.

Write your AdWords ad

Each AdWords ad consists of:

1. 

   A title of 25 characters: try and make this as catchy and relevant to your offering as possible
   

2. A description of 70 characters: give a brief description of what you are offering and try to include a call to action, such as "buy now", "call us" or" "get your discount".
   
3. The URL: this is the website you want to direct people to. If your actual URL is long or complicated, you can enter a simplified URL in the "Display URL" field - this is what users will see in the ad.
   

Choose your keywords

As the name AdWords indicates, you can specify certain words that you want to trigger your ad. These are also called keywords or search terms. Basically, it refers to the words someone types into the search box on Google when they're looking for something specific. With AdWords you can choose the keywords, or search terms, that you want to trigger your ad.

Make your keywords as specific as possible in order to attract the right customers. For instance "running shoes" is better than "shoes"; and "running shoes Johannesburg" may help you target people in your store area.

Start with a maximum of 10 keywords - we'll refine these later.

How much do you want to pay?

Lastly, you must decide how much you want to pay for each click your ad receives. The higher your bid, the more likely your ad is to appear at the top of the ad results. But start with a low bid, we recommend R2 - you can always adjust this upwards later and next week we'll take a more in-depth look at how and when you should do that.

That's it - now activate your campaign! Enter your billing details.

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