“Someone please explain Google AdWords campaign in plain English.” We hear that a lot from our new clients. If this sounds like you, you’ve landed at the right place. Well Googled!With 1.2 Billion websites vying for Google’s attention, most new sites will be waiting a VERY long time to rank organically, even with killer content and textbook SEO.
Unless you’re building a site for your unborn grandchild, we recommend paid search for immediate results. Don’t run away - it’s not as difficult or costly as some marketers would like you to think. In fact, we prefer to call it ‘earn per click,’ but you do need to choose the right campaign types to compliment your advertising goals.
Search Campaign
When a user executes a search using terms related to your chosen keywords, your text advertisement can appear next to their search results. Advertising on the Google Search Network includes Google search sites (naturally), and hundreds of non-Google partner websites including AOL and YouTube.
Search campaigns are focused around presenting your business to users actively seeking out information. They are also an excellent leverage for businesses looking to drive visitors to your site or to encourage people to take specific action, such as calling your business. These campaigns are perfect if you only want to reach customers searching specifically for your product or service. We recommend starting here if you have a small budget and need to drive conversions to support your campaign.
Display Campaigns
In addition to Google sites such as Gmail and YouTube, the GDN (Google display network) is a collection of over 3 million sites and apps ranging from news sites to blogs, and the latest gaming apps.Users on the GDN are typically just going about their day and not necessarily searching for your services; therefore it can be a little more challenging to encourage prospects to click on your ad and quantify a return.
Display ads can be in text format, rich media, interactive or animated banners and images. Display ads are a great option for people wanting to raise brand awareness and can be targeted to customer interests and demographics. You need a gorgeous, eye-catching design or product. If your service is not pleasing to the eye, perhaps a search campaign is a better fit. If your product is a trip to the Bahamas - go for it!
Search & Display Select Campaigns
What were you thinking Google? Sure, the Search and Display option does have it’s place; but more often than not, it’s better to run dual campaigns separately. This campaign option allows you to show your ads on the Google search network and relevant Display network sites, while the budget is shared across both. While you may think you’re getting the best of both worlds, it is difficult to craft keywords that will succeed for both campaign types.
Under Search and Display select, your display ad is shown on only parts of the display network. Additionally, the joined performance data makes it difficult to gauge an accurate view of the effectiveness of your spend.Many businesses will benefit from a dual network strategy, especially if you have put significant effort into your marketing collateral, and have videos or beautiful designs in your arsenal; but you’ll benefit much more from segmenting your search and display budgets separately if you can.
New Smart Display
Smart Display campaigns are Google’s answer to the problem of optimising and targeting display ads to the audiences and networks that will drive conversions. This option is available to those who have had at least 100 conversions on the Display network or 1000+ conversions from search ads in the past 30 days.
In Smart Display, you’re given the option to choose a marketing objective for your campaign.For example, ‘buy on your website’, ‘take an action on your website’ or ‘install your mobile app’. You need to nominate a campaign budget and target Cost Per Action (CPA) goal. In contrast to creating a standard display ad, Google will help you build a series of responsive ads for your campaign.
Google then automatically targets your ads to achieve as many possible conversions within your CPA goal. According to Adwords, well set up Smart Display campaigns are averaging a 20% increase in conversions at the same CPA, in comparison to their traditional display campaign counterparts.
The Shopping Network (Google Merchant)
Shopping campaigns are essential support to ecommerce websites. They also suit retailers wishing to boost brand awareness and drive more traffic to their website or shopfront.
Shopping ads show users a photo of your product, which gives consumers a good idea of your item before they click the ad; this aids the advantage of more qualified leads. In some cases advertisers have experienced double or triple the click through rates with a shopping ad compared to a text campaign. Cost per click is applied only when a user clicks an ad leading to your website landing page, or a Google-hosted landing page for your inventory. When you create your campaign, you nominate how much you’re willing to pay per click. Use the powerful reporting and competitive data to gain insight into the performance of your products and the preferences of your buyers.
Video Campaigns
YouTube video campaigns are highly targeted and are increasing in popularity. If you have highly competitive keywords, you may see significant savings by investing in a video campaign. Advertisers are gaining leads from making clever ‘how to’ videos and entertaining ‘helpful’ videos that are of more interest to their prospects than a standard advertisement video. Remember the old spice guy campaigns?
Within more than one billion YouTube users, you target your audience based on age, gender, location, interests and more. You only pay per ‘view’ when users engage with your ad for 30secs or to the end. It’s beyond us why people still pour money into TV advertising. Videos can be shared across most of your marketing channels, often with a much higher success rate compared to a TV advertisement, and for a fraction of the cost.
Universal App Campaigns
App advertising made easy. AdWords does all the hard work using text and assets from your app's store listing to design a series of adverts in varied formats to test across multiple networks. Targeting and bidding is automated, and you can optimise your campaign based on actions that are important to you, such as in-app conversions.
The automated system will rotate your ads to find those that perform best and utilise the top performers more often to boost conversions. During setup, you set your daily budget and nominate how much you’d like to spend each time your app is downloaded. Your app campaigns will appear in Google Search, Google play, YouTube, the Display network and with relevant Google search partners.
Subtypes
In case there wasn’t enough categories to choose from, AdWords will also ask you to select a subtype. Most common are ‘standard’ and ‘all features’ which are fairly self-explanatory. All features include options such as ad scheduling, delivery methods, advanced location options, as well as social and experimental settings.
AdWords campaign subtypes – Remarketing
Remarketing will show your text, video or image adverts to people who have already visited your site as they browse other websites on the Display Network. This is a popular choice for retailers who are aware their consumers will ‘shop around’ particularly if their product is high-end. Creating an audience list through AdWords and leveraging remarketing is very powerful when you know you have competitive pricing.
AdWords campaign subtypes – Ads in mobile apps
Extend your reach by showing your ads in apps though the display network. The mobile media revolution now surpasses desktop usage. By activating ads in mobile apps you can choose to let AdWords match your ad to apps through the display network, or you can target particular app categories.
Gmail Remarketing
Last year Google announced Gmail has more than 1 billion monthly active users. When you participate in Gmail Sponsored Promotions your beautiful dynamic ads will appear inside your targeted audience’s emails.
As always there’s a plethora of targeting options such as interests, topics targeting and affinity segments. In addition to the usual, there is contextual keyword targeting. With Gmail you can target prospects that have received emails featuring your keywords. You can also choose to target ads based on domains, and utilise Customer Match to launch a Gmail Remarketing Campaign.
Get Google working for you
We all work hard to get on Google. When set up efficiently with your business objectives at the helm, AdWords can be a swift, inexpensive and highly effective way to get Google working for you. If you’re not seeing a healthy ROI and your digital dollars are going down the Google gurgler, you need to adjust your campaign strategies or engage a professional helping hand.
Regardless of your network choices, it is essential to test different ads and landing pages for each campaign. If one advert and landing page combination is working well in the search network, it doesn’t necessarily mean it will perform well in the display network. Just like maintaining your site, AdWords campaign testing is crucial, ongoing and it should be very rewarding.
Anchor digital are a crew of SEM strategists, creatives, coders, account managers and techs. We are a digital agency powered by your business goals.With Anchor in your corner you can expect tailored expertise and measurable results. Our business model is simple: Consult, Create, Convert.Through close collaboration, accountability and total transparency, Anchor combine the forces that set your digital brand sailing. From the ground up, we’re your partners in the climb.
