Did you know that there are nine different types of Google Ads advertising campaigns that you can run? While breaking all different options down is coming in a future blog post, we’re going to focus on an option called Performance Max for this article. Google is a diverse advertising platform that offers brands a lot of customization opportunities.
So, how do you set up a campaign that is right for your marketing goals? Team True is here to walk you through some core details like choosing the right targeting, crafting engaging creative, and setting up your website to support the campaign’s goals. If you’re ready to set up successful Google Ads campaigns, let’s look at how the unique capabilities of the Google platform can be matched up to your specific marketing goals.
For any Google Ads campaign to be successful, performance tracking needs to be in place on your website. An important first step is defining what the measure of success is for the campaign. For example, driving traffic to your website or getting potential leads to filling out a form. From there, you’ll want to set up that conversion action in the campaign so that results can be measured and evaluated.
Each campaign type on Google has its own unique capabilities when it comes to certain goals. For our purposes, we’re going to focus on Performance Max campaigns, since they are a great way for brands to see increased ROI. Performance Max campaigns (help drive performance based on specific conversion goals), for example, are good for brands focusing on more bottom-of-the-funnel efforts. If you want prospects to order a sample, Performance Max will work to figure out how to get the most out of that goal.
It’s important to invest the time in setting up the correct tracking so that your website and Google Ads can talk to each other. Each conversion for your campaign needs to be set up in Google Tag Manager, so that success can be attributed to the campaign and adjustments can be made accordingly.
Google Ads bidding strategies can get very specific, but two of the most common tactics used are “max clicks” and “max conversions.” When you’re running an ad campaign, Google needs a lot of data to optimize itself before reaching peak performance. It’s one of the main reasons why we usually recommend starting with a max click bidding strategy to help speed up the optimization process. Once the campaign is off the ground and has accumulated enough data, you can switch to a max conversions bidding strategy.
As a campaign continues to run, you’ll have the opportunity to layer in additional bid strategies specific to your goals. If there’s a certain cost-per-action you’re aiming for, it’s best to wait to achieve that goal until Google is mostly done with its optimization phase. The bidding strategies we mentioned above are considered “smart” bidding. It’s an automated system run by Google and doesn’t need to be constantly adjusted like some manual bidding strategies.
How do you know when your Google Ads campaign is targeting the right people? One way to make the most out of a campaign’s targeting is to leverage lookalike audiences. Lookalike audiences use a list of information curated from people your brand has already done business with. Google will take that list and look to serve your ads to people who are like those from that list.
It's important to remember that Google is continuously learning while your ad campaigns are running. For example, if your brand needs to convert C-suite professionals, Google will catch on and could start looking for people with higher incomes. Another best practice to follow is targeting specific locations. You can geo-target by state and ZIP codes to hit locations in which your brand has a strong foothold. This tactic is especially effective for brands with a more limited budget that are still looking to make an impact on marketing goals.
While the type of creative you’ll need differs depending on the specific campaign being run, there are some universal best practices to follow to help ensure the best ad performance. For starters, True and other digital marketing experts recommend that ad copy focus on a pain point that your product or service helps solve. Ad copy should also include keywords that are relevant to your audience and their search queries.
These tips factor into the quality score of your Google ads. The platform is going to favor ads with higher quality scores because Google deems them more relevant to users. As you’re plugging ad copy into Google, it will display the ad quality and give recommendations on how it can be improved.
If your brand wants to maximize the performance of Google Ads campaigns, Team True is here to help. Contact us today to learn more about how our digital marketing team can take your Google Ads campaigns to the next level.
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