2020 was an unprecedented year and forced many brands to shift their advertising efforts to the digital realm. Competing in this overly saturated digital market can feel overwhelming and ineffective, but when approached properly can be extremely successful for your brand.
The largest and most prominent player in the digital advertising world is Google Ads. It is a platform that offers users many different ad types including graphic display YouTube, in-app mobile, and text-based search and an extensive listing of targeting options as well. When utilized correctly, Google Ads can be a powerful tool for businesses looking to serve up messaging to hot leads.
Before you kick off your first Google Ads campaign, you’ll want to ensure you tackle the following four things. These are just A FEW of the many ways to make Google effective for your brand.
- Establish Your Account Goals
Create a plan in the upfront. Before investing any money into a campaign, ensure that you have outlined the goals you are looking to hit with Google Ads. Is your main priority to keep your brand top of mind, or are you hoping for consumers to make a purchase? Once you have the goals defined, make sure to stay true to them upon campaign build. Google utilizes a few different types of conversion tracking options and selecting the best one for your campaign will be critical to your success.
For example, if you’re end goal is to drive more traffic to a specific product page on your website, the best conversion tracking for your campaign would be “page view”. The “page view” conversion identifies to Google that the main goal of your ad is to drive traffic to a particular page. Tracking consumer behavior with a conversion type like “page view” on Google Ads provides you with insight as to how your ads are performing in direct relation with your account goals.
- Determine Your Audience
Understanding your audience and identifying who they are is majorly important when it comes to Google Ads. The platform provides you with many ways of targeting including gender, demographics, geography, income levels, and much more. You can even select a certain age bracket to market your message to. You will want to make sure you have a strong understanding of who your target audience is to ensure that you are reaching the right people with your messaging. Otherwise, your Google Ads venture could be costly and ineffective.
Once you have identified who it is that you wish to reach with your ads, you will want to develop a secondary form of targeting called remarketing. Remarketing allows you to reach those consumers that have previously engaged with one of your existing ads. It is a great way of keeping your brand top of mind for a consumer, as it is served up randomly throughout their online experience at varying frequencies.
- Create Effective Landing Pages
While the content in your Google Ads is very important in grabbing the attention of a consumer (this is true for Search and Display!), the content on your landing page is what will keep their attention. Landing pages should provide benefit to a consumer upon click-through. This can include additional product or service details, or a special offer only available to those that visit the page. Make sure to include a form on the landing page as well, so that you can capture your lead’s contact information before they leave the page.
It is extremely important for your ads to directly correlate with the content on your landing pages. The customer journey from ad to landing page should feel seamless, and provide consumers what they were looking for when they clicked your ad. Google places a great deal of importance on serving up ads that bring consumers to relevant landing pages, and will actually discredit those that are not.
- Optimize Often
Google Ads are not the “set it and forget it” solution. They need constant optimization and fine-tuning to ensure that you are reaching the right people, with the right message at the right time.
At the minimum, you will want to monitor the click-through rate of your ads, as well as the number of impressions they are receiving. These high-level metrics will help to educate you as to how many people your ads are serving to, as well as how enticing your ad messaging is. If you see that your click-through rate is relatively low, this could indicate that your messaging is not resonating with your audience, or that perhaps your targeting is incorrect.
Do your ads offer a specific call to action? Creative can play a huge role in the success of your campaign. If your click-through rate is low, take a closer look at your creative. Does your call-to-action stand out in your messaging? Have you considered offering a different CTA (call-to-action?) The more attractive the offer, the more likely your audience will become engaged.
Beyond those basic metrics, you will want to keep an eye on the landing page bounce rate and the average time on site. These metrics will be helpful in identifying whether or not the content on your landing page is working. If you see that those who click through to your landing page are bouncing at a high rate, this could indicate that users do not find benefit from visiting your page, or that your ad messaging is misleading.
With more brands joining the digital playing field than ever before, it is important for the success of your brand to have a strong digital presence as well, to stay competitive and top of mind for consumers. When utilized correctly, Google Ads can do a great job of filling the digital void that your omnichannel marketing strategy may have.
