Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last twenty years, you’ve seen all types of Google Ads without even realizing it. While Google Ads may look a little complicated at first, like all seemingly difficult things, Google advertising gets much easier once you break the process step by step. It can help you advertise your products and services to people that are searching for them at that exact moment in time. Some people are drawn away from its complicated interface and configuration process. There are many Google Ads best practices to learn, and there is a steep learning curve involved. If you don’t fully understand what you are doing when choosing your campaign types, keywords, bids and targeting, you can end up wasting your money.
A lot of businesses start on Google Ads by outsourcing or using a free Google Ads Creator that creates and configures their Google Ads campaigns for them. Regardless, a smart place to begin is to learn about the different Google Ads campaigns and ad types. You’ll want to understand how they can help your business and what to expect from them. Here we discuss five different types of ad campaigns with Google Ads, associated terminology and how Avatardesk can partner with your team to leverage these strategies to help you drive growth.
Google Ads For Sales
There are 5 different types of ad campaigns with Google Ads:
- Video – Video ads on YouTube
- Display – Image ads on websites or on Gmail
- Shopping – Product listings on Google
- App – Your app promotion on many channels
- Search – Text ads on Google search results
Before we dive into more specifics, here’s a terminology primer:
Google Ads
Google Ads is a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising solution where advertisers pay per click or impression on an ad. With Google Ads, you can configure Search Ads that promote your business directly in the search results of specific keywords or queries. From there you can narrow it down to people searching from specific locations.
Bidding
Google ads work like an auction. If you want to advertise on Google, you need to select a maximum amount of money (your bid) that you’re willing to pay for a specific action on your ad. Naturally, higher bids get better ad placements.
- CPC (cost-per-click) – The amount you pay for a click on your ad.
- CPM (cost per mille) – The amount you pay for 1,000 impressions of your ad.
Ad campaign
A set of ads that have the same budget, location targeting, and other settings.
Keywords
Words or phrases that describe your product or service. Keywords determine when and where your ads can appear, so choose such keywords that best match your ideal customers’ search intent.
Conversion
When a user performs your wanted action (makes a purchase, signs up to your newsletter, etc).
As you’ll start running your first ad campaigns, you’ll learn more terms, but for now, these will be sufficient to follow this article.
1. Video
Best used for: getting your product or service in front of a relevant audience.
YouTube is the third most-visited site on the web worldwide after Google and Facebook, having users watch more than one billion hours of videos daily. Your video ad campaigns are placed before, during, or after YouTube videos and in the search results. With video ads, you can use demographic targeting and reach your ideal audiences based on age, gender, and interests. In-stream video ads have a 5-second timer before people can switch to their intended video or watch the ad for its entire duration. You have plenty of time to get your message across in either case. For maximum impact, use this ad format together with display advertising.
Best practices
- Narrow audiences
Remember, if you advertise to everyone, you advertise to no one. To run successful video ad campaigns, create separate video ads that target ultra-specific keywords, topics, or demographics. This way, you’ll have ads that are genuinely relevant to your target audiences, and they’ll be more likely to get into your marketing funnel.
- Short ads
Ad play rates drop off significantly after 45 seconds, so make sure to deliver your most important messages early in the video.
- Direct messaging
Because your video ad may be your only communication with YouTube viewers, be direct about what your business offers. Provide your target audience with clear next steps to take after watching the video.
- Campaign settings
Optimize your video ads with advanced campaign settings. For example, you can set your ads to run during certain hours or days of the week when you’re most likely to reach your target audience. You can also set a frequency cap to limit the number of times your ads appear on YouTube or partners on the Google Display Network to avoid ad fatigue.
2. Display
Best used for: Reach your potential clients early in the buying cycle and increase your brand awareness. Display ads can help you to introduce your business to specific target audiences who are likely to be interested in what you’re selling. This way, you can reach more people compared to only using search ads.
While search ads are based on text and let you target specific keywords, Display ads are image-based and allow you to target people who are likely to be interested in your products but aren’t looking for them yet. You can usually see display campaigns when you’re browsing your favorite websites. However, they can also appear on your Gmail account, apps, or videos.
Best practices
- Google Display Network
To show your Display campaigns to relevant people, Google uses the Google Display Network (GDN). It’s a network of more than 2 million websites, apps, and videos where your Google Ads can appear. It lets you set where or when you want your ads to be shown based on features of your ideal audience, such as their age, gender, or interests. With Google Display Network, you can reach more than 90% of internet users worldwide.
- Responsive Display ads
You can choose between three types of display ads: responsive display ads, Gmail ads, and uploaded image ads. While all three ad formats are effective and can serve different marketing strategies, Google says that responsive display ads get the most reach of all types. Responsive display ads are automatically adjusted in appearance, size, and format so they could fit all the available placements on the Google Display Network.
- New users vs remarketing audiences
Display ads allow for remarketing, which is a great way to remind your website visitors of your products. However, make sure you exclude people who have already been to your online store or watched one of your YouTube videos from your new audiences. They are already familiar with your brand and will probably need a different kind of messaging than people who have never heard of you.
- Attract high-value visitors
You can use your remarketing audiences made from your previous visitors to expand your top-of-the-funnel audiences (those people who don’t know about you yet). You can take your high-value visitors and use them to find similar people who are likely to become your customers. To do it, use a targeting option called “Similar Audiences.” It allows you to get in front of potential customers who have similar web behavior as people from your remarketing campaign.
3. Shopping
Best used for: Boost traffic to your e-commerce store and increase sales.
Google Shopping Ads are product-based ads. They’re displayed specifically for product searches on Google. Unlike regular search ads, Shopping ads show an image of a product along with its product title, price, store name, and reviews. Essentially, they provide shoppers with important product information before they even visit an online store. There are three types of Shopping campaigns:
- Product Shopping: These are created using the product data provided in your Google Merchant Center account.
- Showcase Shopping: These can be made by grouping together a variety of similar products. Customers will be able to compare a few of your products and choose the best one. This allows people to explore your inventory without even going to your store.
- Local Inventory Shopping: These ads are useful if you have a physical store. They use product feed data from your local inventory to display your products from a physical store to nearby Google shoppers.
Best practices
- Details should be keyword-rich
Google will use your product data to determine whether your products match a search query by a potential shopper. Make sure your product titles and descriptions contain keywords that describe your products the best.
- Double-check product info
If your prices are not 100% accurate, Google won’t show your product ads, especially if you have different international currencies. Make sure you have a foolproof process to update your product info, pricing change, and availability.
- High-quality images
Product images can be the leading factor in your ad campaign’s success, so take good care of them. They should be of high quality and taken in a clear background.
4. App
Best used for: Creating ads to promote your app install or take a specific action within it.
Unlike other ad types on Google Ads, you don’t need to create individual ads for App campaigns. Provide some text, a starting bid, and a budget, as well as the languages and locations for your campaign. Then, Google Ads will adapt this info for a range of ads across various formats and networks.
Best practices of Google App ad campaigns
- Give Google time to optimize your ads
When your ad campaigns are not bringing you the results you were expecting, you might feel tempted to adjust the budget or stop the ad. However, don’t rush into any decisions if your ads have only been running for a few days. Let Google Ads run your campaign for at least 7 days to let it optimize your ad creatives, placements, and bids before you make any decisions.
- Upload diverse assets
Google recommends providing at least one landscape image, one portrait video, and one landscape video. They will then test different asset combinations and run ads that are performing the best more often.
5. Search
Best used for: Getting in front of people who are ready to buy.
Google search ads are text ads that you see on Google search engine results pages (SERPs). Your search ads can appear either at the top above the organic search results or at the very bottom of the page. By targeting keywords with buyer’s intent, you can reach shoppers when they’re searching for the products and services that you offer. Whether your ad campaign is displayed on the top or the bottom of the SERPs depends on your bid price. The more you bid, the better visibility you get.
Best practices of Google search ads
- Write compelling copy
Remember, search ads are text ads, there are no visuals attached, so their effectiveness depends on how well you write them. Your ad copy should be focused not on the features of your products but on user benefits. Appeal to your potential buyer’s needs and emotions. Also, your ad space is limited – make sure you mention the most important thing(s) concisely. Avoid generic phrases and use specific calls-to-action.
- Branded search campaigns
It’s highly recommended to bid on your branded terms, especially if your business is new and you’re not ranking organically yet. This way, you can ensure your potential customers will easily find you if they want to check you out. Running a branded search campaign can also help you discover different variations in how your audience is looking for you on Google.
- Competitor search campaigns
Another way to use text ads is to target your competitors’ branded terms. Chances are people searching for your competitors will be interested in your products, too, so take this opportunity to increase your sales. Plus, if you’re already popular in your niche, it’s very likely your competitors are already bidding on your branded terms.
- Dynamic search ads
To save time and make managing keyword lists easier, run dynamic search ads. They offer the easiest way to reach people who are searching for your products and services on Google.
Dynamic search ads use the content from your online store to target your ads. With Dynamic search ads, you don’t need to manage exhausting keyword lists, and you can also fill in the missing gaps of your usual keyword-based campaigns. There are a few things to keep in mind:
- Dynamic search ads won’t work very well if your website changes very often.
- Dynamic search ads work best for websites with a clear structure.
- Pages must be optimized to help Google identify themes and terms on your website.
- Make sure Googlebot can see the content on your website.
- Responsive search ads
While they may sound similar, responsive search ads are different from dynamic search ads. With dynamic ads, the content is pulled from your website and automatically adjusted to create your ads. Whereas, with responsive ads, the advertiser needs to prepare a list of multiple ad headlines and descriptions for the same ad. Then, Google Ads automatically mixes and matches them to find the best performing combinations.
Strategies to Help You Drive Growth
With multiple campaign types available, you should be able to choose the right ad format for your business. Should you need a trusted partner, we create paid campaigns across platforms including Google Adwords, Facebook advertising, Twitter, Instagram, and Amazon to promote your website and get your business in front of new potential customers. We see ourselves as an extension of your team, ready to work with you and support you in any way we can to meet your goals. Unlike other agencies who assign you an account manager, you will work directly with your strategist and their team – no middleman! This ensures nothing is lost in translation and your team feels ownership over everything they do for you. We don’t believe in one-size-fits all. Our client-centered approach to retainers means it is all about you! We focus on adjusting our services to suit your changing needs and goals.
