Google is a global powerhouse in search engines, processing approximately 8.5 billion search queries daily. There are many people flocking to Google to search for different products and services, inventions, new ways of doing things, and locations among other things. This means that there is a significant opportunity for businesses, both small and big to improve their online visibility through Google.

If you are a small business and have just finished creating your website, Google Ads can really be a powerful tool to help you get in front of the audience and complement the search engine optimization strategy. However, just like all the marketing strategies, it is important for one to understand the tricks to make their Google Ads strategy successful. Keep reading this article to learn expert opinion that has been developed through interaction with different clients to make Google Ads work for you and your brand.

How Google Advertising Work

Google Ads provides different ways to promote your products or services across Google’s online properties, such as search engine, YouTube, and partner websites. There is a certain fee that a user pays for their ad to appear on Google. The cost is determined through “bidding.” Think of bidding as an auction where a business decides the maximum amount it is willing to pay for someone to click its ads.

Why pay when there are free listings on Google?

The free listings are called organic results. Ciriz Digital Services can help you with search engine optimization services to ensure you benefit from organic results. The organic results appear based on the relevance to a users’ search engine queries. Google has hundreds of factors used to organically rank content.

Why use Google Ads

• Immediate Visibility: Google Ads ensures that your advertisement gets seen promptly. Ads are prominently displayed prominently based on the ad quality and bid amount. The benefit of this is that if you have a new product launch, website, special promotion or anything that may need the attention of your audience, it gets the attention it deserves right away.
• Placement: Google Ads can be placed in different places within Google search engine result page (SERP), such as top of the search results, or on the Google shopping tab. The ads can also be placed on YouTube, Gmail or affiliate sites (Google Display Network).
• Flexibility: Google Ads supports different ad formats, such as text, videos, images. This flexibility and variety can suit different business needs depending on their size and type of products or services they are marketing.
• Targeting Options: Google Ads can be targeted by demographics, keywords, interest, and/or placement. Businesses can also choose to target existing customers or persons who are similar to their existing customers via remarketing, in-market audiences or similar audience campaigns.
• Remarketing: Google Ads allows you to re-engage users who have previously visited your website but have not completed a desired action, such as checking out or signing in for a newsletter. Google Ads displays your ads on other sites they visit keeping your brand in their mind.
• Bidding strategy: The Google Ads bidding system works in a way that the winning bidder gets the best placement. There are different bidding models that one can choose from: cost-per-click (CPC), cost-per-mile (CPM or cost per 1,000 ad impressions), or cost-per-engagement. These flexible options allows one to choose the most cost-effective strategy they can use to reach the widest of audience based on their campaign goals.
• Ranking factors: The Ad Rank is determined mainly by the bid amount and the quality of your ads. The quality is influenced by the quality of content in your website or landing page. Other ranking factors include competitiveness of an auction based on the context of a person’s search (location and time of the search).
• Measurable results: Google Ads have many performance reports. There are different metrics that can be tracked including number of views and clicks your ad receives and the number of conversions it drives. The measurable results can help one determine the ad that performs best, allocate more resources to such ads and improve the efficiency of their marketing spend. There are different marketing goals that can be achieved through Google Ads like capturing leads, increasing website traffic, and driving sales. The success of your ads depends on different factors including the type of Google Ads you choose.

Types of Google Ads

1. Google Search Ads

These are ads that appear on Google’s search engine results page (SERP) when users search for specific keywords.

A Google Ad contains three main elements:

• Title and description: The headline and additional text that offers a quick overview of the product or service(s).
• Ad Assets: These were previously known as extensions. These are additional details, such as page links that can be selected during ad setup.

Ads are typically placed either at the top or bottom or the search engine results page (SERP). The number of ads placed on a page can vary depending on the popularity of the search query.

Ad Rank

Ad Rank is a set of values which determines whether your ad is eligible to show; and if eligible, where on the page is the ad shown relative to the competitors’ ads. In any auction, your ad rank is calculated first to establish whether your ad is eligible to show, and a second time to establish where your ad is placed relative to the competition. The ad rank values are calculated based on different factors including competition, ad quality, context of a user’s search. You can monitor where your ads are showing on the results page by always monitoring your top and absolute top metrics.

Ads are placed based on their Ad Rank scores. The Ad Rank scores are based on six factors:

• Your bid – this is the maximum amount an advertiser is willing to spend for a click on the ad. How much money one spends is actually less, and one can change their bid at any time.
• The quality of your ads and the landing page – Google checks how relevant and useful your ad and the website it links are to the customer making the search query. The Quality Score is reported on a 1-10 scale and includes expected clickthrough rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience. The more relevant your ads and landing pages are to the users, the more it is likely that your Quality Score will be higher.
• The Ad Rank thresholds – Google Ads sets minimum thresholds that an ad must achieve in order for it to show in the results page.
• The competitiveness of an auction – All ads with the same Ad Rank have an equal opportunity of winning a position. However, Google will display an ad with a higher Ad rank first.
• The context of a user’s search – The context is determined by the search terms entered, the type of device the user is using (whether desktop or mobile), the nature of the search terms, the time of the search, other ads and search results that show on the page, and other user signals and attributes.
• Expected impact from your ad assets and other ad formats – When an advertiser creates their ad, they have an opportunity of adding additional information, such as phone number or more links to specific pages on the website. These are ad assets. Google Ads estimates how the assets and other ad formats are likely to impact the ads performance.

How Google Search Ad Works

When a user enters a search query, the Google algorithm evaluates all ads set to target that keyword. One can set a “match type” for each keyword. The match type determines how closely the user’s search query needs to align with the keyword for your ad to appear. Match types can be:

• Exact: Exact keywords match is required.
• Phrase: Exact phrase with additional words allowed.
• Broad: Any word in the keyword phrase, in any order.

The ads are ranked once the algorithm identifies ads with relevant keywords and appropriate match types. As has been mentioned, the ranking is based on different factors including bid amounts, ad relevance and Quality Score.

1. Google Display Ads

Google Display Network (GDN) ads are visual ads that appear on apps, websites, and other digital platforms that have partnered with Google to host ads. These platforms team up with Google through the AdSense program. The program allows the partners to showcase relevant ads served by Google to their visitors.

Website owners have the choice of showcasing the ads in various places on their webpage. These could be placed on top of the website (banner), footer, or sidebar.

The display ads help marketers to reach people not based on what they are searching for but based on what they are interested in. So rather than showing up when someone is searching for a specific term, the ads appear based on a user’s interests or the content they are viewing or interacting with on a website.

For instance, if one reads articles about computers or watches YouTube videos about computers, they are likely to find ad for cybersecurity when on a news website. In this case, Google Display Network recognizes their interests in computing and displays to them an ad based on this interest.

How Google Display Ads Work

Unlike Google Search Ads, Google Display Ads depend on demographics, user interests, or specific topics.

When a user visits a website within the Google Display Network, the Google algorithms evaluate the page’s content, the user’s past behavior and the targeting criteria established by advertisers. The algorithm then displays the most relevant ads on the page.

• Google Shopping Ads

Google Shopping Ads showcase products directly in the search results with price, image and the store name. The shopping ads appear when one searches for specific products on Google.

One of the main benefits of Google Shopping Ads is the visual and detailed product presentation. This is like having a digital storefront on Google.

How Google Shopping Ads Work

These depend mainly on the product data submitted through Merchant Center account.

When a user searches for a specific product, the Google algorithm compared the search query with the product data. It then ranks the ads based on bid amount, ad relevance, and the product’s customer rating. The top-ranking products appear in the shopping carousel.

1. Google Video Ads

Google Videos Ads are those that appear on YouTube. The ads can play before a user’s selected video (pre-roll), during longer videos (mid-roll), or after the video has finished playing (post-roll).

Here is an example of a video ad playing before the start of a video.

YouTube is one of the biggest search engines in the world meaning that using Google Video Ads can be a sure way of reaching many people.

The benefit of Google Video Ads is that they leverage on the power of visuals, sounds and storytelling. Humans can relate well to this multimedia approach and bring in their emotions which can promote purchasing intention towards the product or service. In addition, the videos can demonstrate the product functionality through entertainment thereby making your online campaign memorable.

How Google Video Ads Work

These ads use mainly demographic and interest-based targeting. In this case, Google evaluates the video content a user is watching and the previous video interactions. Google determines whether an ad is good fit by checking specific audience criteria like interests, gender, and age.

1. Google App Ads

Google App Ads helps you get your mobile application in front of the intended audience. You have to provide the important elements like images and texts. Google will automatically create various ad formats which can appear in the Google ecosystem including search engine, Google Play Store, YouTube and the Google Display Network.

How Google App Ads Work

Google App Ads are generated in different formats and for various platforms using the images, text ideas, and videos provided by marketers. The app ads are targeted based on user behavior, search history, and contextual factors, such as device type, location, and time of the day. The Google algorithm considers your bid and Quality Score to place the ad on the Google ecosystem.

Smart Mode vs. Expert Mode

Starting your Google Ads is easy, especially since you have the option of choosing between Smart Mode and Expert Mode. Smart mode is ideal mainly for businesses seeking a low-maintenance approach to pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. The smart mode offers a streamlined experience with the user not needing technical knowledge in deep PPC strategies. In smart mode, the user delegates most of the tasks to Google.

Expert mode gives users ultimate control over their ads. The user can control everything including the campaign type, the targeting, bidding structure, and exact ad appearance. However, in Expert Mode, one has to invest time and effort to monitor the ads and spend. This is the best choice for advanced marketers. However, this mode can also be a good option is one is willing to spend time testing, learning and tinkering with Google Ads.

How to Advertise on Google

Smart Mode

The following are the setup instructions for Smart Mode:

• Do your due diligence
• Create a Google Ads account
• Write your ad
• Select keyword themes
• Choose your geographic parameters
• Set your budget
• Review and pay
• Analyze and strategize
• Do your due diligence

Before jumping into Google Ads, one needs to map out the goals of Google advertising. This will help one better organize their campaigns. For starters, one should ask themselves the following questions: what is the purpose of advertising on Google? Is it to drive more traffic to the website or to boost sales? Or you simply want to raise brand awareness? Consider other factors like:

• Your target audience – What is the demographic of the persons you intend to reach with the ad? What characteristics, interests, values, and features are common among the different user groups? What should you consider while setting up an ad copy?
• Your budget – How much are you willing to spend in a month on Google ads? It is important to set a realistic budget that aligns with your financial goals and objectives. You should also factor in the competitiveness of the industry.
• Unique selling proposition (USP) – This is the thing that sets you apart from the competition. It could be your pricing, your product, the convenience of using the product among other factors. The USP helps you create a compelling copy.
• Relevant keywords – Keywords are the different terms or phrases that people search on Google to find businesses or products like yours. Google has the keyword planner that help you see the monthly search volume and the average cost of certain keywords.
• Relevant landing pages – These are the page(s) you will be sending people who click on your ad. It is important to note that clicking on the ad does not necessarily mean that one is converting. This means that the landing page should be closely aligned with the ad and the content that visitors expect to see.
• Create a Google Ads Account

You can set up the Google Ads account by using your Gmail address, so signing up is as easy as clicking “Start Now” from the Google Ads homepage. You will be prompted to provide basic information, such as business name, the website URL, and advertising goals. You can choose from the following goals:

• Receive more calls: When you select this goal, Google will drive more calls to your business. The ads will have a call button that users can click and be connected to your business.
• Get more visitors to your physical location: The purpose of this goal it to help brick and mortar organizations get more customers to their physical location. Google will optimize the campaign to drive more traffic to your store. The business can see the number of people who have interacted with the Google profile on Google Maps.
• Get more website sales or leads: This can be used by service businesses to generate more leads, newspaper signups or similar actions via the website. For businesses dealing in products, they can use this campaign with the objective of selling their products. Google Ads can help you accomplish this by optimizing for trackable actions. There is need to set up Google Analytics to track these actions on the website.
• Get more views and engagement on YouTube: If your business is not well known, then this goal can help improve your brand awareness. A video views campaign can be helpful for creators and influencers who need more views.
• Write Your Ad

Google has an easy setup process that makes it fastens the process of creating the first Smart Campaign Ad. Google will pre-populate some text suggestions based on the provided business information. These suggestions can be tweaked based on the intended audience that a business has in mind.

One can add up to four headlines, each headline containing up to 30 characters. Google will show the headlines in any order it deems fit. Make sure the headlines make sense on its own. The headlines should include strong action words and relevant keywords.

Google advices that the headlines should work together, building on one another to say something about what customers could be searching about your products or services (without necessarily repeating themselves).

For example, if you are a small business selling TVs, your three headlines might be: ‘TVs for sale’, ‘Find your perfect TVs’, [and] ‘Shop our TV collection!’

Add up to three descriptions – each description containing up to 90 characters. The descriptions will appear below the headline of the text ad. Google may not show one of the descriptions depending on the SERP. This means that the descriptions should be good enough to stand on their own. They should include a strong call to action. Avoid making claims that are not supported by evidence. Example: “the best TV of all time!” Do not spam the description with keywords.

• Select Keyword Themes

Keyword themes are the phrases that Google uses to understand the keywords you want to use with your ad. In other words, instead of picking individual keywords to target, you can feed Google with a few keyword themes. Google will show the Smart ad for similar keywords.

For instance, by picking the keyword theme “restaurant,” your ad may appear for “restaurant near me”, or “local restaurant.” This means that you will need to pick a keyword that has the right intent. Do not simply look at the search volumes that can be generated from the keyword.

It is recommended that you add at most 10 keyword themes. If you add more than this, there is a risk that the audience will be too broad. If you have more keywords than you know what to do with, you can always create separate campaigns for various keyword themes and thereby monitor your targeting and spending.

Negative keyword themes

Negative keywords are words or phrases which appear in search terms and which you do not want to show ads for in Google Search or Google Shopping campaigns. Negative keywords come in three forms and their usage within an account varies by form.

• Broad match negative keyword: This is the broadest version of negative keyword. If the words or phrases are in the search query, then no matter then context or order, Google will not show your ad for search items containing that word or phrase.

One needs to simply enter the word or phrase to create a broad match keyword. Examples of broad match keywords are: how, training, house supplies.

• Phrase match negative keywords: Just as the name suggests, if the phrase appears in the search query, then your ad will not show. However, unlike the broad match, in order for this to take effect, the words have to be in the order entered.
• A negative keyword phrase of “house supplies” will still match a search for example of: “can I use Google Ads to advertise supplies of houses”. To create a phrase matched keyword, enter the word or phrase and add quotation marks around the phrase. Examples include “house supplies”, “how to”, “near me”
• Exact match negative keywords: Google will only negative the search if the searched term matches the negative keyword exactly. If there are any other words, phrases or characters before or after the search term the negative keyword will not take effect.

For example, an exact match negative keyword of [house supplies] would still match searches for “can I use Google ads to advertise house supplies” as the search does not exactly match the negative exact keyword added.

To create an exact match, enter the word or phrase and add square brackets “[“and”]” at the beginning and the end. Examples of exact matches are [Google ads], [Google].

How to add negative keywords to Google Ads

Negative keywords can be added in three ways:

Adding Negative Keywords at Ad Group Level

Negative keywords can be added at the ad group level. These negative keywords only affect searches which could match keywords in that specific ad group.

For example, a campaign may have an Ad Group for

Benefits of Negative Keywords

Negative keywords prevent your ads from appearing for search terms which would waste your budget. This ensures that the search terms appear only for those with a higher intent and are more likely to convert into leads or sales.

Negative keywords reduce the overall costs of running Google Ads limiting the amount of low interest clicks thereby improving the return on investments on the campaigns.

When to apply negative keywords

It is important that the negative keywords list is populated before the campaign is set live. One question that may be asked is why rush into this. Would it be better to allow the ad run and see what people are searching for and react to that. One can approach it this way. However, the way PPC advertising works, every negative click could be a source of money savings.

However, this does not mean that once you have entered the negative keyword then you leave it at that. Always check the search terms report. Check the search terms that have matched your keywords regularly to make sure the negative keywords are up to date and are the best they can be.

For example, a campaign may have an Ad Group for “Tours and Travels” keywords and a separate Ad Group for Tour Hotels keywords.

Knowing that a search for “Tour Hotels” could match either of the keywords, adding “hotels” as a negative keyword in the “Tours and Travel” Ad Group increases the chances of Google matching the search item to the more relevant, “Tour Hotels” keyword in the Tours and Hotels Ad Group.

The result of this is increased ad and page relevance. This then improves the Quality Score and Ad Rank, CTR and traffic volume also improve. More importantly, this improves the conversion rates.

Adding Negative Keywords at Campaign Level

Adding negative keywords at campaign level affects searches which may match keywords in ALL Ad Groups in the campaign.

For example, you may add keywords to prevent ads from showing for traffic which is irrelevant and would not convert, such as certificates, jobs, editor etc.

Adding Negative Keywords to a Negative Keywords List

You can create a negative keywords list to improve the effectiveness of your campaign optimization. For example, if your business is not related to search terms like qualifications, jobs, promotion etc., then you could consider creating a negative keyword list for these terms. The keyword list can then be applied to all campaigns – and therefore Ad Groups within the campaigns to which the negative keyword list is applied.

• Choose your Geographic Parameters

At this stage, you can select whether you want your ad to appear to a broader audience or audiences within a specific location. Enter the address, zip code, city, state, or country.

Location targeting is useful if you have brick and mortar location. For example, if you are a search engine optimization company in Nairobi like Ciriz Digital Services, you can set up your ads to appears within 50kms of Nairobi. Alternatively, if you target the whole country as Ciriz Digital Services does with its search engine optimization services, then you can set the location to Kenya.

• Set your Budget

Google will provide you with budget options with estimates for how many ad clicks each budget can get you. Alternatively, you can enter your own ad budget – however, you should note that your daily spending will fluctuate. You may spend more than your daily average in a day and spend lesser the following day. However, the Google algorithm will not exceed your monthly max.

• Review and Pay

Double check everything before activating your campaign. You can make edits even before your ads are live.

If everything looks good, confirm the payment information. At this point, you can set up either automatic payments in which Google charges you on the 1^st of every month or manual payments.

• Analyze and Strategize

The Google Ads dashboard tracks four main metrics: impressions, clicks, calls, conversions.

• Conversions – refer to the number of people who visited the website or interacted with the Google Ad and became a customer. Conversion types are qualified by inbound leads, such as form fills and phone calls, number of pages visited and website transactions.
• Conversions show marketers how customers engage and take action when they visit a website, instead of just glancing through the website and bouncing off. Conversion rate is calculated by dividing the number of conversions by the total number of website visitors and multiplying by 100.
• Impression – this is counted every time an ad or content is displayed to someone. This provides insights into the reach and visibility of the campaigns. Monitoring impressions help advertisers understand the number of times the ad content has been seen by potential customers. This indicates broader reach and increased visibility for the brand.
• Click-through rates (CTR) – this is a metric used to measure the percentage of persons who click through your ad after viewing it. A low CTR indicates that the ad is not resonating well with the target audience and therefore the need to experiment with a new ad copy. By continuously monitoring and optimizing your CTR, you can refine your digital marketing strategy improve your audience targeting and create compelling content that will resonate well with your target audience.
• Cost per conversion (also known as Cost per action (CPA)) – this is the average amount a marketer pays per each conversion. The objective should be to keep this cost as low as possible, while still generating conversions. If the CPA is high, then there is need to optimize the bidding strategy, improve the landing page, refine the ad copy to better attract and convince potential customers.
• Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) – This is the amount of revenue generated from every dollar spend on advertising. This is an important metric for campaigns where the goal is direct sales which results to profitability. If the ROAS is low, then you could be spending more on your ads than what you are earning suggesting the need to improve efficiency and profitability.

How to advertise on Google (Expert Mode)

As has been mentioned, consider switching to Expert Mode for more customization options and control of your ad copy. The Expert Mode also allows you delve deeper into your campaign. Expert Mode requires more maintenance and strategic thinking. When working in Expert Mode, you will need to:

• Choose your objective
• Define your campaign settings
• Set your budget and bidding
• Decide on ad rotation
• Create your ad groups
• Add your keywords
• Construct your ads
• Incorporate assets
• Confirm payment info and launch
• Choose your ad objectives

When switching to Expert Mode, you will see many options for how to set up your campaign. You can choose from:

• Sales – The purpose of the sales objective is to drive sales online, by phone or in store. It is available for different campaign types, such as search, performance maximization, shopping, video, and discovery campaigns.

Search is the most popular if one has a sales objective. In this case, an advertiser uses keywords and text ads to reach people looking for products or services on Google. The search objective works well for B2B and B2C industries and for non-profits.

Shopping campaign is preferrable for ecommerce sites and online retailers. As has been mentioned, shopping campaigns give product name, image, description and price making it easy for advertisers to realize better conversions since potential customers find more information on the ad.

• Leads – this helps one get the leads and conversions by encouraging customers to take action. This is available for search, performance maximization, display, shopping, video, and discovery campaigns.

Search is the most important campaign type for leads objective. For many marketers, this means targeting people who are actively searching on Google and its display partners.

You can also test performance maximization campaigns. Your ads are automatically placed on Google owned and operated platforms. The bid is set to get you the most quality leads.

• Website traffic – with this objective, one would be looking to get the right people visit their website. The objective is to get as many people as possible visit the website. You should therefore start with an automated bid strategy like maximize clicks to get maximum click traffic.

This objective is available for search, performance max, display, shopping, video, and discovery campaigns.

• Product and brand consideration – the purpose of this objective is to encourage people to explore your products or services. This objective is available for video campaigns meaning that it allows users to engage audience across YouTube and across the web.

You can also set up two sub-campaign types to choose from. The first is influencing consideration with skippable in-stream ads or in-feed video ads. You can also use ad sequence by telling your story by showing ads in a particular sequence with skippable in-stream Ads, non-skippable in-stream ads, bumper ads, or a mix.

• Brand awareness and reach – this allows you to reach a broad audience and build awareness for your brand, its products and services. This is available for display and video campaigns only. With display, you can create responsive display ads or use uploaded image ads that you create yourself or both to advertise across the web. With video, you are able to engage the audience on YouTube and across the Google network with video ads.
• App promotion – this is mainly for advertisers with apps. The purpose of this is to get more installs, interactions, and pre-registration for your app. This is available for app campaigns only. You can set up separate campaign for your iOS and Android app.
• Local store visits and promotions – with this campaign, you are able to drive visitors to your local shops including dealership and restaurant. This is an objective that can be used when one is targeting local audience in a town or city or within a given neighborhood.

Initially, this was available for local campaigns only. However, this is now available for performance max campaigns too.

Create a campaign without a goals guidance – You can also set up a campaign without a goal’s guidance. You choose a campaign type first without a recommendation based on your objective. This is available for nine campaign types: search, performance max, display, shopping, video, discovery, local, app, and smart campaigns.

This is for experienced users and is not recommended for people new to Google Ads.

• Search campaign: these are text ads that appear on search engine results page (SERP). The campaigns are suitable for driving sales, leading traffic to website, as the ads are displayed to users when they are searching for products and services.

Benefits of search campaigns:

• Sales – drive traffic to your website. Generate leads and sales.
• Easy setup – simply write text ads and pick your keywords. No imagery is required.
• Highly targeted – Allow you to reach people as they search for products and services.
• Display campaigns: these campaigns target relevant audience with visual ads as they visit millions of websites, Google owned properties, YouTube, and apps. Display campaigns are a great way to reach many people beyond the Google search engine. Display campaigns also leverage on data to send adverts to people who have visited your website or used your app.

Benefits of display campaigns:

• Sales and leads – Use a visually engaging call to action to drive sales and sign-ups.
• Awareness and consideration – create striking ads to boost brand awareness.
• Reach – target customers outside the search results when they are browsing websites and apps.
• Retargeting – advertise to people who have previously viewed your ads or visited your website.
• Video campaigns: Video campaigns display video ads on YouTube and other domains. Some video campaigns boost general awareness while others drive conversions and traffic.

Benefits of video campaigns

• Awareness and consideration – build brand awareness.
• Sales and leads – use the drive conversions campaigns subtype to create action-focused video ads.
• Expand your reach – target people while they are on YouTube.
• Retargeting – target people who have already seen your ads or visited your website.

NOTE: You will need to create your video ad and upload it to YouTube.

• Shopping campaigns: these are product listing ads. This format is ideal for retailers looking to sell product inventory. Shopping ads are shown on the shopping tab of the SERP.

Benefits of shopping campaigns

• Visual merchandising – use engaging product listings to promote your retail products.
• Generate sales – drive traffic to your online shop.
• Advertise your local shop – sell your local shop inventory to local people.

NOTE: You need a Merchant Center account where you can upload your product inventory to set up a shopping campaign.

• App campaigns: these campaigns enable advertisers reach app users and boost sales within the app. This campaign type uses data from your app to optimize adverts across search, YouTube, Play Store and discovery networks.

Benefits of app campaigns

• App promotion – boost installs, engagements, and signups for your app on mobile devices.
• Multi-channel marketing – promote your app on search, display, Play, YouTube under one campaign.
• Easy setup and management – This campaign features automatic targeting, bidding, and ad creation for optimal performance.
• Local campaigns: Local campaigns drive people to your local business. Ads appear on search, display, Google Maps, and YouTube.

Benefits of Local campaigns

• IRW store sales – promote your physical inventory and bring shoppers to your real-world shops.
• Promote offers and events – promote in-store events and local promotions.
• Detailed location info – help customers find your business address and opening hours.
• Multi-channel marketing – show ads on search, display, maps and YouTube under one campaign.

NOTE: To create a local campaign, you need to have active location extensions or affiliate location extensions in your account or Google Business Profile connected to Google Ads.

• Smart campaign: this is a simple way to automate your campaigns and get advertising. All you need to enter is your business information and a few ads. Google uses machine learning to optimize the ads for the audience.

Benefits of smart campaigns

• Sales and leads – boost sales and signups.
• Simple setup – enter your business information and create a few ads, and Google will automate your campaigns.
• Advanced optimization – Google will optimize the ads and targeting for you.
• Performance Max: This is a goal-based campaign type that allows advertisers to access all Google Ads inventory from a single campaign. Performance Max helps drive performance on your conversion goals, using smart bidding to optimize performance in real-time.

Benefits of Performance Max

• Simple to setup, fully automated – Performance max are simple and easy to setup; once the campaign is live, it will be optimized automatically.
• Increase conversions and value – automation optimizes your budget and bids to identify conversion opportunities in real-time.
• Find new customers – reach new audience segments with relevant ads based on real-time user intent, behavior and search context analysis.
• Insights – Performance max campaigns Insights page helps you understand how automation is working and how it will improve your campaign.
• Discovery Campaigns: these enable advertisers to reach 3 billion users across Googles feeds. The campaigns use Google’s audience and customer insights signals to deliver highly visual, personalized ad experiences to users who are ready to discover and engage with your brand.

Benefits of Discovery Campaigns

• Use a single ad campaign to reach many people on Google – Reach up to 3 billion people on YouTube Home and Watch Next feeds, Discover and the Gmail promotions and social tabs.
• Drive engagement with rich, relevant ads – Google uses indicators of customer intent to display relevant ads to users when they are ready to engage with your brand.
• Display visually rich ads displayed across Google’s Properties – Discovery ads are designed to engage with consumers as they browse their favorite content. The ad layouts use machine learning to combine and display your assets seamlessly across devices helping spark customer interest and action.
• Automated bidding – Discover ads support maximize conversion bidding, Target CPA, or Target ROAS to optimize your campaign bids to meet your marketing objectives.
• Define your campaign settings

Each campaign type has a different page set up depending on the name and campaign objectives. However, you will need to fill the following details:

• Campaign name: choose a name that is easy to understand and which defines the intention of your ads. The campaign name is for internal purposes but is important to help you remain organized.
• Networks: When applicable, it will be important to choose whether to show the ads on Google partner sites to broaden your reach.
• Locations: Decide the regions you want to target, whether it is country, city or zip code. You can choose to exclude certain locations depending on how you want to do your location targeting. You can also choose to target the people only in your present location, or those who are present and/or have shown interest in your location.
• Languages: Choose the language that apply to the target customers.
• Audience segments: This is an optional setting that allows you to add a remarketing list, or additional parameters for targeting, such as only parents of toddlers, or people who have shown interest in children’s toys.

Tip: You can exclude this setting or start broad to begin your search and narrow your audience once your campaign goes live and you have more data to work with.

• Set your budget and bidding

This is the point to decide on your daily budget. The goal at this stage is to spend just enough to get enough reach (and as a result data to work from) without necessarily overspending, or paying for irrelevant impressions and clicks. It is important to conduct keyword research. This is where you check the average CPC for your target keywords, and make sure to identify keywords that – like your budget – are not too narrow or too broad.

Use the research to calculate the daily budget. Google may go above or below the daily budget in some days. However, it will not go above your monthly budget. Also note that the budget may fluctuate depending on seasonal demand and other factors.

After you have set the budget, decide on how you want to be charged. Bidding options will vary by campaign type. Understanding each bidding strategy is important to help you achieve your search engine marketing (SEM) objectives like boosting sales and generating leads.

Manual Cost-per-Click (CPC) Bidding

This bidding strategy is ideal for campaigns that generate website traffic since it allows for precise budget control. The primary purpose of this bidding strategy is to drive traffic while the advertiser maintains control over each cost per click. This is chosen by marketers who prefer a direct handle of their campaign costs.

How Manual CPC Bidding Works

• Decide the maximum amount you are willing to pay for a click on your ad.
• Manually adjust bids to manage your ad spending and meet your advertising budget.
• Frequently monitor and change bids to optimize ad performance.

For example, a business selling high-value items like cars, electronics can use manual CPC to control costs while also targeting high-intent buyers.

The manual CPC can also be used by a local service provider, such as an electrician to set bids for specific services to maximize their return on investments.

Manual CPC bidding is available for both search and display networks.

Advantages of Manual CPC Bidding

• Allows one to respond quickly to market changes or campaign data.
• Allows for detailed management of bids at the keyword or ad group level.
• One can adjust bids for high-performing keywords or placements to effectively allocate budgets.

Limitations of Manual CPC Bidding

• Time consuming
• Demands constant oversight and regular adjustments
• Potential risk of over or underbidding due to manual handling

Enhanced CPC (ECPC) Bidding

Enhanced CPC is a semi-automated bidding strategy that modifies the manual bids to increase the chances of conversions.

This bidding strategy is ideal if you want to balance manual control and automation efficiency.

How Enhanced CPC Bidding Works

• Adjust your manual bids for each auction based on the likelihood of a click leading to a conversion.
• Use auction-time signals like browser, location, and time of the day for bid optimization.
• The purpose of ECPC is to keep the average CPC under your maximum set bid. However, there are times it could exceed this CPC temporarily for high-potential opportunities that can lead to better conversions.

ECPC is available on Search Network and Display Network (except for app install campaigns).

Advantages of Enhanced CPC Bidding

• Balances between manual controls and automated efficiency.
• Can adapt bids for higher value conversions, prioritizing more profitable clicks.
• Offers more manual control compared to fully automated Smart Bidding strategies like target cost per action (tCPA) and target return on ad spend (tROAS).
• Works alongside your campaign settings, adjusting bids within the confines of your max CPC.
• Does not require setting explicit targets for CPA or ROAS.

Limitations of Enhanced CPC Bidding

• Optimal performance with ECPC depends on implementing conversion tracking to guide bid adjustments.
• ECPC can temporarily increase your average CPC to exceed the maximum CPC bid opportunities deemed likely to result in conversions.

Cost-per-Thousand Impressions (CPM) Bidding

CPM bidding prioritizes visibility and brand awareness over direct clicks or conversions. This strategy allows a marketer to bid and pay for every thousand impressions your ad receives. This makes it ideal for a campaign where exposure is the main objective.

How CPM Bidding Works

• CPM bidding can be implemented based on these use cases:
• Brand awareness campaigns: For increasing brand awareness and visibility.
• Video ad campaigns: For campaigns aiming to boost views or interactions with the video content.

Google Display Network: For display ads where the focus is how many times the ad appears.

For example, let’s say you are introducing a new product as a marketer. CPC bidding can be used to increase the likelihood that the promotional ads reach a vast audience across the Google Display Network to promote product visibility and brand recognition.

There is another variation of CPM, the viewable CPM (vCPM). This enables one to only pay when users can see their ads.

Advantages of CPM Bidding

• Broadens the ad reach for increased brand exposure.
• Provides control over impression costs, effective for managing budgets in awareness campaigns.

Limitations of CPM Bidding

• Prioritizes ad exposure over engagement, potentially leading to spending on ads that do not result in clicks or conversions.
• Target Cost-per-Action (CPA) Bidding
• Target CPA helps one optimize for conversions while sticking to an average cost per action. This automated bid strategy is ideal when you have a clear ROI target and want each conversion to bring similar value to your business.

How Target CPA Bidding Works

• Google Ads sets bids to achieve as many conversions as possible at your targeted CPA.
• Google Ads uses your campaign’s historical information and real-time contextual signals at auction time.
• While some conversions may cost more than your target, others may cost less. Google aims to balance these to align with your set target CPA.

Let’s say you set the target CPA of $7. Google Ads aims to secure as many conversions as possible at this average rate. This is done by employing auction-time adjustments based on various signals to enhance the effectiveness of your bid.

Some of the conversions may be above $7 while others may be below $7. However, the average will be approximately $7.

Advantages of Target CPA Bidding

• Adjusts bids using real-time signals, such as device, location, and time of the day.
• Helps in achieving a specific return on investment by maintaining a consistent cost per action.

Limitations of Target CPA Bidding

• Despite targeting a consistent CPA, actual CPA may fluctuate because of external influences, such as changes to website traffic and shifts in market competition.
• Target CPA bidding requires historical conversion data which may be unavailable for new campaigns or those with low conversion volumes.
• Google Ads may limit ad exposure in more competitive or expensive auctions while maintaining CPA targets. This may potentially reduce overall visibility.

Target Return on Ad Spend (tROAS) Bidding

Target ROAS bidding is a smart bidding strategy that allows one to optimize their campaigns for conversion value relative to your ad spend. This strategy is ideal when you have specific ROI targets and different conversions have varying values.

How Target ROAS Bidding Works

• Target bidding uses Google’s algorithm to predict the value of a potential conversion at the time of a user’s search.
• Adjust bids in real time to maximize conversion value while aiming to achieve your specific ROAS.

For example, if you are an interior design company, your aim is to make $15 in sales for every $10 spent in advertising. This sets your target ROAS at 130%. Google ads will adjust your bids to increase the value of conversions while trying to maintain your ROAS at 150%.

Assigning accurate values to the conversions you are tracking will help you better understand the campaign ROAS and optimize your marketing efforts to maximum effectiveness.

Advantages of Target ROAS Bidding

• It is available for use in both standard and portfolio strategies (strategies that use Google AI to set bids to help you reach your performance goals) across multiple campaigns, including search and shopping ads.
• It factors in real-time signals like device and location for bid adjustments

Limitations of Target ROAS Bidding

• Most campaign types need at least 15 conversions in the last 30 days to effectively use this strategy. This data provides a reliable foundation for the algorithm to predict future performance.
• Google AI needs a substantial history of conversions to make more accurate predictions and adjustments, ensuring that your target ROAS is based on solid, real-world data.

Maximize Conversions Bidding

Maximize conversions bidding uses your entire budget to secure the most conversions. This Google ads bid strategy is ideal if the primary goal is to use up the budget without targeting a specific ROI or CPA.

How Maximize Conversions Bidding Works

• Analyzes your campaign’s past performance and considers real-time contextual signals during each auction.
• Adjusts bids dynamically to secure the most cost-effective conversions within your budget.
• Tailors bids for each auction to increase the chances of winning valuable ad placements.

For example, a furniture shop seeking to clear the seasonal stock could use the maximize conversions bid strategy to ensure Google Ads uses the entire ads budget. This approach maximizes exposure and potential sales without targeting a specific cost per sale.

Advantages of Maximize Conversions Bidding

• Aims to fully use your daily budget to get as many conversions as possible.
• Adjusts bids for each auction in real time to maximize conversions within your budget.
• Quickly adapts to search behavior and competition changes for more competitive bids.

Limitations of Maximize Conversions Bidding

• It aims to spend your entire ads budget. This could lead to increased spending if your current expenditure is below your set budget.
• It is not ideal for campaigns with specific ROI goals like target CPA or ROAS.
• It requires monitoring after implementation to ensure it aligns with your campaign goals and does not overshoot your budget.

Maximize Conversion Value Bidding

This is designed for campaigns that aim to optimize for the highest possible conversion value within a given budget. The strategy is ideal when conversions hold varying degrees of value for your business and you are not targeting a specific ROAS.

How Maximize Conversions Value Bidding Works

• Utilizes AI to set bids at auction time and aims to maximize the total value of conversions, like sales revenue or profit margins.
• Tends to use your specific budget to optimize for the highest conversion value.
• Considers real-time signals and historical data to determine optimal bids for each auction.

Use maximize conversion value bidding if specific conversions (like selling a high-end product) are more valuable than others.

Advantages of Maximize Conversions Value Bidding

• Focuses on maximizing the total conversions value within your budget. This is ideal for ROI-driven campaigns.
• Adapts to real-time market changes and search behavior, potentially increasing conversions value under varying conditions.

Limitations of Maximize Conversions Value Bidding

• Performance is heavily influenced by the set advertising budget, which can limit its effectiveness if budget is too low.
• Depends on accurate conversions tracking and value assignment to gauge performance effectively.
• Offers less control over targeting specific type of conversions, focusing instead on overall value.
• While focusing on maximizing value, it may also lead to higher costs per conversion in competitive markets.

Target Impression Share Bidding

This helps you maximize your ads visibility on the Google SERP. This strategy focuses on placing your ad at the top of the page – either at the very top, among the top positions, or anywhere else on the results page, depending on your settings.

How Target Impression Share Bidding Works

• You set the desired percentage of ad impressions your campaign receives.
• This bid strategy is effective for campaigns prioritizing brand visibility, especially when targeting specific brand terms.

For example, let’s say you run a furniture store competing with bigger stores. A target impression share strategy can help ensure your brand remains visible in crucial searches. If you want your ad to appear 100% of the time for searches related to your brand, setting the target impression to 100% aims to achieve this visibility.

Advantages of Target Impression Share Bidding

• It aims to increase the likelihood of your ad appearing in the desired position, thereby boosting brand presence.
• It allows you implement precise targeting based on where you want your ads to show up in the search results.

Limitations of Target Impression Share Bidding

• The strategy may not align with all your campaign goals, especially those not focused on brand visibility.
• The strategy may lead to higher costs in competitive markets to maintain desired impression share, impacting budget efficiency.

Maximize Clicks Bidding

Maximize clicks is an automated Google Ads bid strategy that tries to get as many clicks as possible within a specified budget. This strategy is ideal if your primary goal is driving traffic to a website.

How Maximize Clicks Bidding Works

• When you select maximize click bidding, Google Ads automatically sets your bids to attract the highest possible clicks within your average daily budget.

For example, if you have a seasonal promotion on your website, maximize clicks can help drive substantial traffic to the website without exceeding your ad budget.

Advantages of Maximize Clicks Bidding

• Efficiently uses your budget to increase the total number of visits to your website.
• Offers the option to set a maximum CPC bid limit to prevent overspending as a per-click basis.
• Ideal for campaigns with the primary goal of driving traffic, requiring less hands-on adjustment and oversight.

Limitations of Maximize Clicks Bidding

• Prioritizes increasing click volume potentially at the expense of click quality. This may not align with specific conversion value or goals.
• May attract clicks from less relevant audiences, leading to lower conversion rates.
• Without setting a maximum CPC bid limit, you may pay more per click than intended, affecting your cost efficiency.

Cost-per-View (CPV) Bidding

This is ideal for video ad campaigns, where the primary goal is engagement through views or interactions. This is especially effective for campaigns that increase brand or product consideration through video content.

In CPV bidding, you pay for video views and interactions, like clicks and call-to-action (CTA) overlays, cards, and companion banners.

Google Ads counts a view when someone watches 30 seconds or more of your video (or the entire duration if the video is shorter than 30 seconds). This method allows you to set the maximum price you are willing to pay for a view when setting up your video campaign.

How CPV Works

• You decide to advertise on a platform, such as YouTube, where CPV bidding is most common.
• You target the ad to local viewers who have shown interest in your product or service.
• You set a CPV bid, which means you will pay each time someone watches a significant portion of your video.
• For example, let’s say you are dealing in cakes, since the video is engaging and showcases the quality and artistry of your cakes, viewers who watch it are more likely to be interested in visiting your bakery.
• You pay only when someone watches your video for 30 seconds or interacts with the video making it cost-effective way to ensure customers see your ad.

Advantages of CPV Bidding

• Ideal for situations where video interaction is more valuable than clicks to a website.
• Helps you manage your budget effectively as you set the maximum amount you are willing to pay per view or interaction.
• Provides video ad reporting with data on how viewers engage with your content.

Limitations of CPV Bidding

• Less suited for campaigns where the main objective is to drive traffic to a website rather than engage with video content.
• Decide on rotation

Within your campaign’s settings page, you can click “Show more settings” to change your “ad rotation” settings. By default, your campaign will be set to “Optimize” which means that Google will show the ads that it believes will get the most clicks or conversions.

However, you can choose to rotate your ads evenly or rotate ads indefinitely (without optimization). These options may be good if you’re looking to run controlled tests, but you’ll likely want to begin with the default setting.

• Create your ad groups

As has been mentioned, Ad Groups are specific sets of ads within the larger campaign. Each ad group has its own specific target keywords and ad creatives. The purpose of this is to keep similar themed ads together to ensure that the audience is presented with the most relevant ads.

For example, lets say you have a search campaign that is intended to drive more web traffic to your online clothing store. You may create these ad groups:

Ad group 1: Men’s Clothes

• Keywords: women’s trousers, women’s tops, women’s shoes

• Ad 1: “Shop for men’s clothes online. We have a wide selection of women’s clothes, tops, shoes and more.”
• Ad 2: “Women’s clothes on sale now. Take advantage of our end-year 50% offer.”

Ad group 2: Women’s Clothes

• Keywords: men’s trousers, men’s tops, men’s belts

• Ad 1: “Shop for men’s clothes online. We have a wide selection of men’s clothes and more.”
• Ad 2: “Men’s clothes on sale now. Take advantage of our end-year 50% offer.”

Alternatively, you may wish to create separate ad groups per product, e.g. one group for men belts and another for women belts. This means that the way you organize your ad groups is entirely dependent on your business, your keyword research, and the target audience. You need to ensure that the ad groups have a distinct focus and a large enough audience as indicated by your research and keyword volume.

• Add your keywords

As has been mentioned, you will need to select specific keywords for each ad group. At the beginning you may need to experiment with a variety of keyword match types.

Broader match types capture a wider audience even though they may not attract users with the right intent. However, narrow match types, such as exact match will target more specific users, even though they have limited reach. As a general rule, it is better to start broad and narrow down to specific keywords as you collect more data.

• Construct your ads

Now that you have constructed your ad groups and campaign, you can construct your ad. The steps will vary depending on your campaign type:

• For search ads: Write a clear, captivating, and persuasive copy of the headline and description.
• For display ads: Provide a headline, description and an image or video in the appropriate specs.
• For video ads: Upload a video that is formatted for YouTube.
• For shopping ads: Upload your product information.
• Incorporate assets

Assets or ad extensions are content pieces that can be added to the ad to provide more information to searchers. The assets increase the amount of space your ad takes up and do not cost extra. So it is important to use at least one. Assets lead to better CTR (up to 15%) since they increase the Quality Score of the ad. The nine assets include:

• Sitelink assets: specific page links
• Callout assets: Brief company highlights
• Call assets: Phone number or call button
• Image asset: Visuals that complement text ads
• Location assets: Address and other business information
• Structured snippet assets: Additional header with related values
• Price assets: Interactive price breakdowns
• App assets: App download links
• Lead form assets: Contact form
• Confirm payment info and launch

The final step is where you enter your payment information and confirm that everything looks good as it should. When ready you hit the Submit and launch your ads. Establish a system for checking on ad performance frequently and making tweaks as necessary.

Contact Ciriz Digital Services to help you with Google ads optimization, monitoring and performance tracking.