Tag: Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Google ads as an online advertising option have proven over the past years that it’s a valid choice for businesses which aim at to increase leads, conversions, sales and overall return on investment (ROI) for advertising and marketing campaigns.

The diversity of advertising channels and solutions available when choosing Google ads for promoting your business products and services will help to customize your advertising campaign to appeal to the targeted audience which can be easily identified based on available targeting options.

The increasing number of alternatives of products or services will decrease your business market share unless your customized advertising campaigns reach the potential and current customers while highlighting the competitive advantages that satisfy their desired needs using regular or digital advertising channels.

The digital world is the current optimal choice for targeting the desired audience as over 4,437,000,000 people of the earth population are active online based on the latest researches. So, your potential customers are active online and it’s your choice to select how to reach them either with content marketing campaigns or through search engine marketing and display network advertising campaigns or social media advertising campaigns.

Content marketing (inbound marketing) campaigns are all about adding value to your targeted audience with topics related to your business products and services to increase their trust in your business offerings.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the inbound marketing solutions as your business can reach a targeted audience through the search engine results after optimizing your website content for users and search engines to gain free organic profitable traffic to your website.

Search engine optimization is about fighting for higher ranking in search results pages with competitors that require constant efforts with the risk of losing free organic traffic to any competitor who achieves a better ranking.

Google Ads advertising options consist of search engine marketing campaigns that guarantee better visibility for your business always in the first result page if your business ads quality is high enough to beat competitors for certain keywords.

Better visibility in the search results will contribute to increasing clicks for your business ad and also increasing number of desired conversions (purchases – subscriptions) if the landing page experience matches the searcher intent.

Besides search engine campaigns, Google ads provide other advertising solutions through Google Display Network (GDN) on different platforms including YouTube and partnering websites chosen to display your business image ads related to their content and the website visitors (your potential customers).

The choice is yours to decide whether to target your customers through free organic search results, social media advertising and marketing campaigns or Google ads solutions and we will discuss in the following sections of this article if advertising through Google platforms is suitable for your business currently or in the future and how to prepare, launch and manage your Google Ads campaigns.     

Deciding channels for your business advertising campaigns should be aligned with if this channel is suitable for the campaign goals, targeted audience, and your business advertising budget.

Google Ads provide many competitive advantages for businesses which publish their ads on Google platforms including:

• Detailed targeting options for your audience based on their demographics & keywords
• Controllable budget for your business campaigns with maximum bidding limit
• Manual and automated bidding options to choose for your bidding strategy
• Diversified platforms (Search sites – YouTube – Partner Websites – Mobile Apps) to show your business ads
• Reaching the desired exposure through Google advertising platforms
• Tracking and optimizing performance with performance reports and analytics
• Modifying or pausing your current campaigns based on the performance reports
• Responsive search ads to choose from the best for searcher intent
• Multiple Pricing options (Cost per click – cost per thousand impressions – cost per viewable thousand impressions – cost per acquisition) to choose a suitable one for your campaign budget and goals
• Creating quality ads will decrease the budget consumed in your campaigns as your ad rank depend on ad quality plus maximum bidding amount.
• Higher ROI for successful advertising campaigns

If the previous competitive advantages are what you are searching for your business campaigns, then Google ads are the valid choice for your business next advertising campaign.

Despite being an effective advertising solution but Google ads campaigns is not suitable for all business advertising campaigns as you should conduct cost and benefits analysis before starting your Google Ads campaign.

Small and local businesses will have a limited marketing and advertising budget that should be allocated to suitable advertising channels that will achieve a positive return on investments.

Before starting any advertising campaign, you should perform an analysis about the value of each desired conversion of your campaign and the cost of each conversion to decide whether to go further or to choose other marketing options.

Using Google analytics report, you’ll be able to calculate how many visits (clicks) it takes to complete the desired conversion on your chosen landing page for the campaign and with using Google Keyword Planner, you’ll have an approximate value for how much you competitors bid for your chosen keywords.

Most of Google Ads campaigns publisher use The cost per click (pay per click) pricing model and that’s why Google ads are also known as PPC ads as you’re only charged when someone clicks your ad to reach your landing page or contact your business using one of the ad extensions available.

If the maximum bidding amount for a certain keyword is 3.50 $ and it takes about 7 clicks to complete one conversion, then the cost of one conversion is 24.50 $ and that will help to decide whether to start a PPC campaign or not based on the value of the desired conversion and the acquisition of a new customer.

Google network consists of The search network (Google search – Google shopping – Google maps – Google play – partner search sites) and The display network (YouTube – Blogger – Gmail – Partner websites) which provides many options to display your business ads based on the campaign types chosen to achieve desired goals.

We will discuss the different types of campaigns and their suitable ad format to clarify the best choice for your campaign goals which includes:

Search Campaign

The search campaign ads are displayed on the first results of the search result page for users who use related keywords for your ad content searching for answers for their questions or acquisition of a product or a service.

This type of campaign is suitable for a publisher who use (text ads with or without contacting extensions / Shopping ads / App promotional adds / call-only ads) for their campaign to reach the desired audience who are active on Google search engine, Google maps, Google shopping, Google play and search sites partner with Google.

Display Campaign

When your business is aiming to increase brand awareness for a targeted audience, then you should choose this type of campaign to display your ads on Google Display network including YouTube and partner websites with content matching your desired audience interests and demographics.

The suitable ad formats for a display campaign are image ads, multiple responsive ads, video ads, app promotional ads and rich media ads that involve the animations and motion graphics.

Search with display option campaign

If your targeted audience is active on the search and display network platform, then you may take the advantage of the adding display option in your search campaign to display with the customized format to run smoothly on both search and display placements.   

Shopping Campaign

Retailers who desire to promote their e-commerce business products on Google shopping in selected countries, and display partner website should start a shopping campaign with the ad format containing the product image, information, and pricing or a short promotional video on YouTube for your product.

App promotion campaign

Promoting your business app is now easier through Google ads app campaigns as the campaign ads to direct viewers to your app download link with a descriptive or visual ad format the can be displayed on the search and display network platforms.

Many campaigns fail to achieve desired results while consuming the whole amount of devoted budget for the campaign or most of because not choosing suitable pricing model and bidding strategy.

Each pricing model should be chosen based on campaign goals from available pricing model including:

CPC (cost per Click): you’re only charged when someone clicks your business which is a suitable technique for campaigns that aims to drive traffic to your business websites or increase engagement with the ad extensions.

CPM (Cost per thousand impressions): your business ads displayed in Google display placements will be charged when reaching 1000 view and this model is suitable for campaigns with brand awareness as the main goal.

VCPM (Cost per Viewable thousand impressions): Publishers who want to guarantee better visibility for their ads on valuable viewable placements in the display network will choose this pricing technique to increase awareness for this business.

CPA (Cost per Acquisition): If the campaign goal is to increase desire conversions (purchases – subscriptions – trails), this pricing model is the best for your campaign as you’re only charged when someone clicks your ad and complete the desired action.

CPV (Cost per View): business campaigns that is about promoting a video of your business with the aim of increasing brand awareness for specified duration of the video from 3 to 30 seconds to guarantee that your video has not been skipped and only charged with this pricing model when that happens.

Once you have decided how you want to be charged for Google ads campaign then you should decide which bidding strategy you should apply either manual or automated bidding. 

Manual bidding: requires more effort as you should be devoted to set bids for the ad group level, specific keyword, and ad placements and modify it based on your budget and the campaign performance.

Automatic bidding: Google ads will handle your ads bidding in every auction once you have specified the daily spending for targeted keywords to save more time for publishers who aren’t available to manage their bids manually.

Your campaign type, budget, your experience in launching Google ads campaigns are an important factor in deciding which bidding strategy you’ll apply.   

After deciding to launch a Google ads campaign, you will start your campaign be defining the campaign type that is aligned with your goals then, you will create your campaign by completing the following steps to achieve the desired outcomes.

Before creating the ad content there are some setup steps that should be performed to optimize your campaign including:

• Campaign Name: Should be specified to make your Google ads account more organized
• Campaign Type: Either search, display, search with display option, shopping or app promotion campaign suitable for your business goals
• Networks: Choose networks suitable for your campaign type and targeted audience
• Demographics: Choose the targeted audience demographics to be visible to potential customers (location – devices used – languages –  interests and topics targeted)
• Budget: Define the daily budget for your campaign and either your bidding manually or using automated bidding for targeted keywords
• Schedule: Define the start and end date for your campaign and also optional to define a specific period of the day for your ad delivery or leaving that to Google ads as it displays your ad when there is a higher possibility for clicks and conversions
• Ad Groups: Create ad groups to contain similar ads and targeted keywords within each ad group and also create separate ad groups for each product or service promoted
• Google Ads Manager: Seek help from the Google ads manager if you want to track performance for more than one Google ads account

After finishing the campaign setting, you will start to create your targeted keywords group (up to 20 keywords) that are related to your targeted audience interest, ad content and landing page content.

Your keywords list should match the portfolio of keywords used by the potential customers and their search intent and you can optimize your ad visibility to a targeted audience using on the following match types for keywords used:

• Broad match: display your ads based on keywords and their synonyms and misspellings
• Broad match modifier: display your ads based on the broad match, but excludes synonyms when you add plus sign (+) before specific keyword
• Phrase match: display your ads based on exact phrases and close variations when adding quotes (“ ”) around your key phrase
• Exact match: display your ads based on exact keywords when you add brackets ([ ]) around the chosen keyword
• Negative match: doesn’t display your ads based for chosen keywords when you add a minus sign (-) before specific keywords

Your search campaigns now will only trigger detailed defined segment of the audience to decrease costly views and clicks from viewers who will not complete desired conversions and optimize your campaign budget to run longer and appear for the only interested audience in your business offerings.

More detailed targeting equals higher success percentage and conversions for your campaign.

The targeting options available in Google Ads are location targeting, device targeting, languages targeting, keywords targeting and for the display campaigns, there is topic targeting to related content of your campaign and chosen audience in addition to the ability to select specific websites to display your ads.

There are multiple ad formats suitable for each campaign type and the impact of the ad format applied is an important factor in your ad quality which affects your ad placements within the competition.

When creating your ad content, there are important factors to focus on in order to optimize click-through rate for your campaigns including:

• The Ad Headline should include your targeted keyword (up to 30 characters)
• Optimize headlines for mobile viewers and remove extra words that will be wrapped with a (-)
• Make the URL readable and give a glimpse about the landing page content
• Write a description that highlights your product or service competitive advantages
• Create an inspiring creative visual content for the display campaigns
• Add a call-to-action (CTA) related to your campaign goals
• Add site links to related optimized landing pages
• Add ad extensions to increase clicks and conversions (Site links extension – Location extension – Call extension – Message extension – Promotion extension – Price extension – App extension)
• Prepare alternative ad copy to use according to your campaign performance

The next after creating appealing content for your ads that motivates clients to click your ad and contact your business, the next step is to optimize your landing page experience to increase desired conversions.

Your business ad is clicked and you have been charged for that but the website visitor didn’t complete the desired action and left the landing page immediately…imagine why?!

Poor landing page experience will decrease the number of completed conversion and the visibility of your ad as only ads with related landing page content will be displayed for targeted keywords even your maximum bidding amount was the highest among competitors.

The following tips will help to improve your landing page experience to achieve high Ad rank, higher CTR rate and also more completed conversions:

• Create related content for your landing page to the content ad
• Focus on the page content on the product or service promoted features
• Provide related alternative products to what your landing page is offering
• Make it easier to find contact information and conversion buttons
• Don’t use pop-up ads or any disturbing content on your landing page
• Optimize the landing page to be mobile-friendly and the whole website as well
• Decrease the landing page loading speed to avoid higher bounce rate

After following the previous tips and devoting more time for optimizing the landing pages for your Google ads campaigns, you’ll notice a positive change in the performance of your campaigns with a higher number of completed conversions after you were charged for the ads’ clicks.

Fortunately, Google ads visibility is not only about bidding higher amounts for your targeted keywords as your Ad rank (the value that determines your ad placement for chosen search and display platforms with target keywords) is based on your ad quality score multiplied with your maximum bidding amount.

Your ad quality score plays a vital role in your ad rank and budget spent but what are the factors affecting you're as quality score?

Four factors are affecting your business ads quality score which are:

• Ad format: optimized ad format for chosen campaign type with contacting ad extension are valuable for your ad quality score
• Ad relevancy: the more relevant your ad content for search queries, the higher your ad quality score
• Landing page experience: positive landing page experience will increase your ad quality score as only the ads with valuable useful content for users are displayed
• Expected CTR: the prediction of how many times your ad will be clicked if displayed for targeted keywords based on previous experiences for the targeted audience

As mention your Ad Rank = Quality Score (from 1 to 10) * Maximum bidding amount

Focusing on creating quality ads that appeal to the targeted customer will help in decreasing the spent amount of campaign budget and receiving more clicks and views with the same budget.

If you choose to define the bidding amount for each keyword of your list manually, you should use Bid simulator,  keyword planner, and first page bid estimates tools to decide your maximum bidding amount for each keyword and adjust your bids regularly based on the campaign performance using the help of the keywords tap reports in your Google ads account.

Google ads provide reports and metrics that track all details related to your campaign performance to provide a full picture of your campaign results and indicator to defines weakness points in your campaign.

 The available reports and metrics are:

• Search terms report: lists all search terms used when your ads were displayed and if attracts the desired audience it should be added to your keywords list
• User location report: shows the physical location for the customer who viewed and engaged with your business adds
• Landing page experience report: estimate your landing page experience as it’s an important factor regarding your ad quality score
• Paid and Organic report: A detailed comparison between your website free organic traffic and paid traffic and keywords used to reach the website to add it to your ad groups keywords list
• Attribution report: tracking the paths of completed conversions to define specific ads and keywords responsible for those clicks

Linking your Google Analytics account to your Google ads account will enable you to use the metrics and reports available in Google Analytics to track and analyze your campaigns’ performance more efficiently and manage your campaign more professionally.

You’ll be able to track each ad number of impressions, clicks, CTR, completed conversions and the cost of each client acquisition in addition to detailed reports about the audience engaged with your ads which are useful for future remarketing campaigns.

Whether your campaign performance is up to expectations or failed to achieve desired results, there will be a room for improvement as you can easily change your chosen keywords, pause your campaign till finishing the modification, improve the landing page experience while the campaign is running and launching a remarketing campaign to target potential customers who interacted with your ads before but didn’t complete any of the desired actions.

Your business is charged for clicks of your ad and views but many of people will not complete of any desired completed conversions due to many possible reasons but they have an existing interest of your products or service.

Remarketing campaigns are the solution to target and attract customers who have interacted with your ads before and encourage them to engage with your ads again and complete your chosen conversions (purchases – subscriptions – app downloads).

After linking your Google Analytics account with your Google ads account, you’ll have access for Google ads date reports in the analytics platform within Acquisition Section which include valuable reports about your campaign performance:

• Campaigns report
• Bid adjustments report
• Keywords report
• Search queries report
• Display targeting
• Shopping campaigns
• Treemaps report

All the previous report besides the behavior flow report within the behavior section will help to tack your potential customers’ interaction with your campaigns and to extract specific segments to target with remarketing campaigns.

We have explained Google ads benefits and how to launch a successful campaign to increase your business return on investment for advertising costs and with the information provided, it’s now clear to you if Google ads solutions are suitable for your business or not.

If the answer is yes, then start preparing your campaign today after studying and analyzing all related details to your campaign but if you’re afraid to waste your business allocated budget, we are available to provide professional help in marketing solutions in general with strong experience in search engine marketing solutions.

Contact Sendian Creations today to launch your business Google Ads campaign

[kc_custom_heading text="Google Ads vs. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)" font_container="tag:h2|font_size:30px|text_align:left|color:%23000000" use_theme_fonts="yes"][kc_single_image image="25105" img_size="large"][kc_empty_space height="20px"][kc_custom_heading text="Google ads benefits for your business " font_container="tag:h2|font_size:30px|text_align:left|color:%23000000" use_theme_fonts="yes"][kc_empty_space height="20px"][kc_custom_heading text="Is Google Ads effective for small businesses? " font_container="tag:h2|font_size:30px|text_align:left|color:%23000000" use_theme_fonts="yes"][kc_single_image image="25109" img_size="large"][kc_empty_space height="20px"][kc_custom_heading text="Choosing a suitable campaign type & ad format" font_container="tag:h2|font_size:30px|text_align:left|color:%23000000" use_theme_fonts="yes"][kc_single_image image="25111" img_size="large"][kc_empty_space height="20px"][kc_custom_heading text="Applying a suitable pricing model for your goals" font_container="tag:h2|font_size:30px|text_align:left|color:%23000000" use_theme_fonts="yes"][kc_single_image image="25119" img_size="large"][kc_empty_space height="20px"][kc_custom_heading text="Creating & launching your campaign step by step " font_container="tag:h2|font_size:30px|text_align:left" use_theme_fonts="yes"][kc_single_image image="25122" img_size="large"][kc_empty_space height="20px"][kc_custom_heading text="The campaign setup " font_container="tag:h3|font_size:20px|text_align:left" google_fonts="font_family:Allerta%3Aregular|font_style:400%20regular%3A400%3Anormal"][kc_empty_space height="20px"][kc_custom_heading text="Keywords Research " font_container="tag:h3|font_size:20px|text_align:left" google_fonts="font_family:Allerta%3Aregular|font_style:400%20regular%3A400%3Anormal"][kc_empty_space height="20px"][kc_custom_heading text="Defining targeted segments " font_container="tag:h3|font_size:20px|text_align:left" google_fonts="font_family:Allerta%3Aregular|font_style:400%20regular%3A400%3Anormal"][kc_empty_space height="20px"][kc_custom_heading text="Creating the Ad content" font_container="tag:h3|font_size:20px|text_align:left" google_fonts="font_family:Allerta%3Aregular|font_style:400%20regular%3A400%3Anormal"][kc_empty_space height="20px"][kc_custom_heading text="Improving the landing page experience" font_container="tag:h3|font_size:20px|text_align:left" google_fonts="font_family:Allerta%3Aregular|font_style:400%20regular%3A400%3Anormal"][kc_empty_space height="20px"][kc_custom_heading text="Optimizing your budget spending throughout the campaign" font_container="tag:h3|font_size:20px|text_align:left" google_fonts="font_family:Allerta%3Aregular|font_style:400%20regular%3A400%3Anormal"][kc_empty_space height="20px"][kc_custom_heading text="Evaluating the Campaign performance " font_container="tag:h3|font_size:20px|text_align:left" google_fonts="font_family:Allerta%3Aregular|font_style:400%20regular%3A400%3Anormal"][kc_empty_space height="20px"][kc_custom_heading text="Performing changes in running campaigns " font_container="tag:h3|font_size:20px|text_align:left" google_fonts="font_family:Allerta%3Aregular|font_style:400%20regular%3A400%3Anormal"][kc_empty_space height="20px"][kc_custom_heading text="Launching remarketing campaigns" font_container="tag:h3|font_size:20px|text_align:left" google_fonts="font_family:Allerta%3Aregular|font_style:400%20regular%3A400%3Anormal"][kc_empty_space height="20px"][kc_custom_heading text="Conclusion" font_container="tag:h2|font_size:30px|text_align:left|color:%23000000" use_theme_fonts="yes"][kc_empty_space height="20px"]