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Digital Marketing - Study Notes:

Google Ads

We’re going to begin with Google Ads, because it is the market leader, it is the biggest search engine, and ultimately it is the standard for search.

So search on Google Ads is in terms of campaign setup, and in terms of all of the elements, is reflected exactly on Bing. So if you can use Google Ads, you can use Bing. And it also is associated, and it is a platform where you can also pull in your display activity with Google, your YouTube video ads and their shopping campaigns. All of this is run through the Google Ads platform, so it’s a very powerful digital marketing area.

The starting point of any of this is setting up the Google Ads account. So, this involves setting up your Google Ads account by following the steps such as logging in with your Gmail and then going to Google Ads.google.com. It’s a straightforward process when you click to CTA, and just you’ll be guided through your setup.

Types of account

There are two types of Google Ads account:

  • Standard: The first is a standard Google Ads account. The standard Google Ads account will contain all your campaigns and your keywords and different things like that.
  • Manager: With the manager account, you can manage multiple standard Google Ads accounts from a standard Google Ads account that’s contained within a manager account. This is called a child account, and that’s the hierarchy.

Standard account

A standard Google Ads account is used to manage paid search campaigns. It’s best practice now to keep one account per client. So, if you have a number of clients, you don’t put them all in the same standalone account or a child account. It is best practice to have one account per client because there is restrictions around sharing data, there’s restrictions around privacy, and generally the clients just don’t like to have their data visible to other parties even if they’re not related whatsoever. So, it’s best practice to keep them separate.

You can create your keyword lists in your standard account. You organize those keyword lists into what’s called ad groups. Ad groups might contain between 10 and 50 keywords, and will contain the ads related to the other keywords. And that’s where you write your copy. And then you can report on performance of your campaigns within that standalone account itself.

Manager account

The manager accounts are very powerful tools. You use a single login to access your manager account, and within that manager account. So think of it like an agency account, and this would be what an agency would have. Now they’re free, anyone can open them. If you look up, if you simply do a search for Google manager account, and you can set it up yourself.

However, you can’t setup a manager account with an email address that’s already assigned to another Google Ads account. It must be an email address that’s not associated with any Google Ads account. It does allow you to search and navigate between all your different accounts. So if you have multiple clients or indeed multiple product lines, you can very easily jump between them in one single dashboard.

You can create and manage your campaigns, and you can compare performance across accounts and campaigns, so it’ll give you that extra level. If you are a large electronics retailer for example, you might have a manager account that contains your TV product line, your computer product line, your white products product line like washing machines, and so on.

So you can compare across your product lines what’s working in terms of your investment and what you’re getting out of it. In terms of management for any kind of bigger activity, a manager account would be the way to go. And in most cases, it’s best to begin with a manager account because it’s free and it just allows you to build out. So you might start with that one child account, but then you’ll find in time you will need a second one or a third one.

You know, so begin with the manager account. It gives you the flexibility to keep adding on additional accounts as you need to. It is free, and it’s a lot more straightforward to set up a new Google Ads account in a manager account, so there are benefits around efficiency there. And because agencies are any kind of big companies that will have multiple clients to manage, it is essential for them just for efficiency too.

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Cathal Melinn

Cathal Melinn is a well-known digital marketing director, commercial analyst, and ecommerce specialist with over 15 years’ experience.

Cathal is a respected international conference speaker, course lecturer, and digital trainer. He specialises in driving complete understanding from students across a number of digital marketing disciplines including: paid and organic search (PPC and SEO), analytics, strategy and planning, social media, reporting, and optimisition.  Cathal works with digital professionals in over 80 countries and teaches at all levels of experience from beginner to advanced.

Alongside his training and course work, Cathal runs his own digital marketing agency and is considered an analytics and revenue generating guru - at enterprise level. He has extensive local and international experience working with top B2B and B2C brands across multiple industries.

Over his career, Cathal has worked client-Side, in digital marketing agencies and media owners with brands including HSBC, Amazon, Apple, Red Bull, Dell, Vodafone, Compare the Market, Aer Lingus, and Expedia.

He can be reached on LinkedIn here.

Data protection regulations affect almost all aspects of digital marketing. Therefore, DMI has produced a short course on GDPR for all of our students. If you wish to learn more about GDPR, you can do so here:

DMI Short Course: GDPR

The following pieces of content from the Digital Marketing Institute's Membership Library have been chosen to offer additional material that you might find interesting or insightful.

You can find more information and content like this on the Digital Marketing Institute's Membership Library

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    ABOUT THIS DIGITAL MARKETING MODULE

    Paid Search
    Cathal Melinn
    Skills Expert

    This module begins with the key concepts of paid search and demonstrates how to set up a Google Ads account and create a paid search campaign. It explains how to manage a paid search campaign budget effectively and outlines the different methods that can be used to optimize your paid search campaign. It also covers how to measure and report on the success of a paid search campaign.