Paid Search is paid advertising on Google that lets you place ads in the SERP, on YouTube, and in Shopping and Display formats, reaching users at the exact moment they search. OTO Agency, a certified Google Partner based in Bergamo, designs and optimizes performance-driven Google Ads campaigns: more qualified leads, less cost per conversion.

Advertising on Google (Paid Search) is an excellent way to bring qualified traffic to your site and raise awareness of your products and services.
However, for Google advertising to deliver effective results, you need to set up Google Ads campaigns correctly and optimize them to make the most of your return on investment.

But let’s take it step by step: what are Google Ads campaigns? How do they work? How do you set them up? We’ll explain it here.

Google Ads (formerly known as Google AdWords) is Google’s advertising platform, the world’s number one search engine. It lets you advertise online in Search mode, by placing ad spots within the SERP, i.e. the search results pages generated based on users’ searches. But that’s not all.

Beyond Search campaigns, there’s also Display Advertising, which shows your ads on websites that partner with Google: in this case, the goal isn’t to increase visits to your site, but to advertise your brand and ensure visibility.

Another option is Google Shopping: here, Google lets you sell your products directly online by giving you a digital storefront that’s shown when users type a given search phrase. You can also advertise by leveraging YouTube’s potential: in this case, your ads will appear directly within videos on the platform.

Over the years, Google Ads campaigns have become an increasingly powerful but complex tool: to create campaigns that deliver results, you need to set them up in the most correct and strategic way.

There are several steps we need to follow to build high-performing Paid Search campaigns.

Before opening an AdWords account and before launching your ad campaign, we need to define your goal, your target audience and the keywords that best identify you.

First of all, for the campaign to be truly effective, we need to establish your campaign’s actual goal (sales or lead acquisition? site traffic or brand awareness?): Google actually lets us run a campaign to sell products, to get the email address of interested people, or even to promote your brand or your app.

The second key step is defining your buyer personas, i.e. your target audience: what are your ideal customers’ habits?
What traits do they have?
Where do they live?
How do they behave online?

A crucial phase for determining the results of all Google Ads campaigns is keyword research and analysis. In other words, we need to answer the question:
How do your buyer personas find your services or products on Google?
What words do they type into the search engine?

Once the AdWords account is set up, we can move on to creating your campaign by defining the campaign type (Search, Display, Shopping, Video), the geographic target and language, the daily budget and bidding strategy, adding the keywords and then the actual ad itself, and also setting up conversion tracking and the remarketing feature.

Managing Google Ads campaigns doesn’t end here: next, we complete the account optimization and monitor how the campaigns are performing and the results achieved, making adjustments to the campaign as needed.

As we always like to point out, running Google Ads campaigns doesn’t just mean publishing ads within search results: Google Ads’ advertising possibilities are much broader. Beyond the Search feature, it’s also possible to advertise on YouTube, or in Shopping or Display mode.

YouTube (owned by Google) lets you advertise through video content, i.e. place your ads (necessarily in video format) within videos on the platform.

With YouTube, you’re not required to enter keywords, only your target audience and geographic area.

You’ll pay for each click you receive, at a much lower cost than a Search-type click.

In this case, Google lets you create a real virtual storefront to sell your products directly.

Compared to a regular text ad, Shopping ads show users the product photo, title, price, store name, etc.: products are presented in detail before the user clicks on the ad, letting you get more qualified leads.

When you create a Shopping campaign, you can decide how much you’re willing to pay per click or engagement: as with traditional Google Ads ad formats, the cost is set through an auction.

With this format, your ad is shown within blogs, apps or sites outside of Google, letting you reach audience segments genuinely interested in your products.

In this case, your ad’s pricing can be Cost-per-Click (you pay only when someone clicks and visits your site), Cost-per-Thousand Impressions (you pay per thousand views) or Cost-per-Acquisition (you pay every time you get a conversion, e.g. a purchase or a sign-up).

For years, our Google Ads agency in Bergamo has specialized in providing Google Ads campaigns as a certified Google Partner, a credential that demonstrates our experience and professionalism.

What sets us apart is our strong focus on performance and results: the goal of our campaigns is to increase your number of leads while working to lower your cost per lead.