A Beginner’s Guide to Google Ads
Using Google Ads is a MUST when it comes to growing a business. According to SEOTribunal.com, there are 5.6 billion searches per day on Google. This means that there are an abundant number of opportunities for businesses to get in front of users. With the help of Google Ads, advertisers can promote products and services using relevant keywords users are searching for. This can lead to an increase in sales, conversions, or leads. Before you start creating your very own Google campaigns, let’s start with a couple of basic questions. What is Google Ads? How do they work? What is Google Ads? Google Ads is a paid online advertising platform developed by Google. When users search online for a keyword, the results of their query will be shown on a search engine results page (SERP). The results can include unpaid and paid advertisements that are targeting that keyword. For example, here are the results for the keyword “Gym clothes.” You can find all the advertisements at the top of the SERP. These ads also include an “Ad” bolded text right next to the business’s URL link. This is important because the majority of the search traffic goes to the top results on the SERP. Using the graphic from Chitika, you can see the drastic drop in Google traffic as the search result position (the order the ads appear) increases. To utilize Google Ads efficiently, let’s move on to our next question. How do Google Ads work? Google Ads utilizes the pay-per-click (PPC) model. That means advertisers can target a specific keyword by bidding. The more popular the keyword, the higher the bid since advertisers are competing with each other for that keyword. There are currently 11 different types of bidding that advertisers can use based on their goals. Target CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) Target ROAS (Return On Ad Spend) Maximize Conversions Maximize Conversion Value Enhanced Cost Per Click (ECPC) Maximize Clicks Manual CPC Bidding CPM Bidding (Cost Per Thousand Impressions) vCPM Bidding (Cost Per Viewable Thousand Impressions) CPV Bidding (Cost Per View) Target Impression Share Bidding Now that you know the basics, are you ready to start creating Google Ads today?
Google Ads Audience: A General Overview
Audiences in Google ads have been constantly updating and changing, either their name or their placement. These are the most updated general overview of the audiences. Types of Audiences Detailed Demographics: Allows you to reach a specific set of potential customers who are likely to be within a particular age range, gender, parental status, or household income. Affinity: Reach users based on what they’re passionate about and their habits and interests (similar to a buyer’s persona). In-Market: Users are researching products and are actively considering buying a service or product like yours. Life Events: Engage with users around important life milestones, like graduating from college, moving homes, or getting married, etc. Similar Segments: Similar segments is a targeting feature that uses your data segments to help you expand your reach to new potential customers who have characteristics similar to your existing customers or people who have visited your website or used your app. Minimum of 100 visitors in the seed list (your data segments) is required. Note: For Similar audience, this is a list created from a remarketing list or customer match list with at least 1,000 cookies and has enough similarity in search behavior to create a corresponding similar audience. Customer combination segments: Custom combination segments let you create advanced segments out of your existing data segments. You can create a combined segment by combining your data segments in an AND, OR, or NOT relationship. Custom combination segments can be created by combining any of the following segment types: Website visitors; App users; Customer segment; Video users. Custom audience segments: This is a combination of custom intent and custom affinity. Custom segments help you reach your ideal audience by entering relevant keywords, URLs and apps. Combined audience segments: allows you to intersect different segment attributes, such as intersect the affinity with the in-market segment and target the ad for your SUV to outdoor enthusiasts who are also looking to buy a car. Without combined segments, you would also show your ad to people who are outdoor enthusiasts and not in-market for a car or people who are in-market for a car and don’t like the outdoors. You can combine any criteria with Combined segments, for example, home ownership detailed demographic, life events, your data segments. Website Visitors: A list of those who have previously visited your site. Specific criteria, like visitors of a certain page, can be used. Customer lists: A customer list is created by uploading a CSV customer data file in Google Ads frontend or through the Google Ads API (AdWords API) and is used to target audiences. Placements of Audiences Search: Detailed Demographics; Affinity; In-market; Your data segments: Similar segments; Customer combination segments; Website visitors; Customer lists; Combined audience segments Display: Detailed Demographics; Affinity; In-market; Life Events; Your data segments: Similar segments; Customer combination segments; Website visitors; Customer lists; Combined audience segments; Custom audience segments Video: Detailed Demographics; Affinity; Combined audience segments; Your data segments: Similar segments; Customer combination segments; Website visitors; Customer lists; Custom audience segments; Life Events; In-market Discovery: Detailed Demographics; Affinity; Your data segments: Similar segments; Customer combination segments; Website visitors; Customer lists; Custom audience segments; Life Events; In-market Shopping: Detailed Demographics; Affinity; In-market; Your data segments: Similar segments; Customer combination segments; Website visitors; Customer lists
The importance of custom columns with value based bidding
Value based bidding is a really interesting evolution of Google Ads. Optimizing multiple events at the same time is something that you’ve always been able to do with Google (Uhhh, Facebook. When will you let us do this, too?). In fact, bidding to tROAS and max conv value also isn’t that new — what’s new is Google pushing this concept hard. Does it work? Ehhh, not quite yet in our experience! But we’re confident we (and Google) will figure it out soon. But beyond VBB, what else do you need to do to make sure your campaigns don’t take a step backwards in your migration? In short, VBB is just a method of bidding to support your goals. To monitor if you are hitting these goals, it’s really important to make custom columns. For example, say your VBB strategy is to assign ‘raw leads’ $X, ‘MQLs’ $2x and ‘Opportunities’ $10x. Your overall marketing goal is still likely a cost/Opp metric. That is, your actual goals are likely more focused than all the various VBB strategies you are tracking. I’m not saying this is ‘correct’, but I am saying that’s likely the word you’ve gotten from up above. Since now your ‘conversions’ column in Google Ads is tracking 3 different events, you’ll need to find a way to segment out just ‘opportunities’ in order to monitor your TRUE goal. This is apurpose of ‘custom columns’ Setting up a custom column is pretty easy to do. Hit “columns” from the campaign view —> ‘modify columns’ and scroll down to ‘custom column’ To make a new column, hit the ‘add’ button to bring this up There are all sorts of things you can do here to provide additional reporting! You can now use formulas such as the examples shown to the right. Remember your calculator in high school? This is kind of like that — don’t forget parentheses where needed Most commonly, however, Four15Digital is just using custom columns for basic metric monitoring. Please keep in mind that ‘conversions’ will be referencing your account settings. So, if you want to see how many conversions you got for an event that is set as ‘secondary’, you’d need to use ‘all conversions’ in your formula rather than ‘conversions’. Also, on that note, make sure ‘all conversions’ is showing what you want. Does it include view through conversions? Check this section out to confirm if yes or no. Have fun with custom columns and VBB! It’s a nice evolution of the platform and, more importantly, how we think about Google ads and machine learning.
How to Improve Your Keyword Quality Score
First thing’s first: What is Quality Score, and why does it matter? At the keyword level in Google Ads, we are able to see a column for ‘Quality Score’ which displays a score of 1-10. According to Google: Quality Score is a diagnostic tool meant to give you a sense of how well your ad quality compares to other advertisers. Quality Score is one of a few different components of Google’s formula for Ad Rank. We know a higher Quality Score means a higher Ad Rank, which leads to more Impressions, higher Top of Page Rates, and lower Cost per Clicks, among other things that boost ad performance. Here’s a guide to help you interpret your keyword quality score: Note: You may see a “-” in place of a number for your Quality Score. In such cases, your keyword does not have a Quality Score. A “-” does not equate to a “0”. It just means there has not been enough searches for your keyword for Google to give it a Quality Score. How does Google rate the quality of your search ads? Quality Score is measured by 3 different components: Expected Click-Through Rate (CTR) Landing Page Experience Ad Relevance Let’s take a deeper look at what each of these metrics mean. Expected CTR measures how likely people are to click on your ad when shown. This score is based on the past clickthrough performance of your ads. (Google excludes the effects of ad position, and other factors that affect the visibility of your ad, such as extensions.) Landing Page Experience estimates the quality of the user’s experience once they reach your landing page. It takes into account factors such as how well your landing page content matches a person’s search term, and how easy it is for people to navigate your page. Ad Relevance measures how closely your ad matches the user’s search, in other words, how closely your keyword matches the message in your ads. A below average score may mean that your ads are too general or specific to answer the user’s query, or that this keyword isn’t relevant to your business. At the keyword level in Google Ads, you can view columns for Expected CTR, Landing Page Exp., and Ad Relevance. For each of these metrics, your keyword will have a rank of either Average, Above Average, or Below Average. The combination of the rankings of these 3 metrics will determine your Quality Score. If your Quality Score is below a 6 for a keyword that you absolutely want to show for, consider the following tips for improving your Quality Score. Tips for Improving Landing Page Experience: Include your keyword on your landing page, ideally more than once. This is what Google will look for when determining whether your landing page content matches the user’s search. Use the most relevant option of landing pages across your site for users searching your keyword. For example, let’s say you have a web page for Apparel, and a webpage within that category for T-Shirts. If your keyword is “t-shirt”, your ad’s URL should direct to the T-Shirts landing page rather than the broader Apparel page.. Make sure your landing page is mobile-friendly. Test the site speed for your landing page and make sure the page loads quickly. This is increasingly important to Google. Make sure all buttons on your landing page work properly. Tips for Improving Ad Relevance: Make sure your ad copy uses your keyword(s) in the headlines and descriptions. Check the Search Terms report in Google Ads to see what terms users are searching that trigger your ad. If relevant, add those search terms as keywords, and use those keywords in your ad copy. Separate keywords from one ad group to multiple different ad groups if the keywords are different enough. For example, instead of one “sweater” ad group for the following keywords, have 1 separate ad group for each keyword: “sweaters”, “hoodies”, “crewnecks”. As we defined earlier, Expected CTR is calculated based on the past clickthrough performance of your ads. So, your Expected CTR will improve only when your actual CTR improves. As you may already know, Clickthrough Rate is directly related to your ad creative. Tips for Improving your CTR: Rewrite your ad copy to be more exciting, compelling, and relevant. Include an offer such as “up to 10% off” or highlight a benefit such as “free shipping” in your ad copy. Test different Calls To Action in your ad copy. There are things we digital advertisers cannot control when it comes to our ads’ Cost per Click, but there are many things that we can control. If your CPCs are higher than normal only in certain ad groups, take a look at the Quality Scores of the keywords in those ad groups. If you are able to apply any of the tips above, that could be an easy way to lower those CPCs!
Unlock Hidden Audiences for Your Facebook Ads Campaign
Many Facebook advertisers are targeting the exact same interests because they don’t know how to find more options. By default, Facebook retrieves between 15 to 20 interests, so if you choose from those first suggestions, you’ll face heavy competition and high CPMs. So today, we will show you how to find hidden audiences that you can use for targeting your campaign using the Facebook Marketing API. Step 1: Create a Facebook App The first thing you should do is go to the Apps section on Facebook for Developers. Then click on the “Create App” button to get started. 1.- https://developers.facebook.com/apps/create/ Step 2: Request an access token Next, go to the following page: https://developers.facebook.com/tools/explorer and request a token that you will need to authenticate yourself when using the Marketing API. To request the token, first select the Application you’ve created in step 1. Next, click on the Get Token dropdown and select the option Get App Token. Then you will be able to see a line with numbers and letters (That is your token, and you will need it for the next step.) Step 3. Active Your Token Copy the link below and replace the word TOKEN with the actual token you have already created. https://graph.facebook.com/search?type=adinterest&q=[%22KEYWORD%22]&limit=1000000&locale=en_US&access_token=TOKEN Example: Then, replace the word “KEYWORD” for the actual keyword you want to look for audiences on the platform. Example: Step 4. Look for fresh audiences Paste the link that you made on your browser and vuala. You will be able to find some hidden audiences related to your keyword. You can change the KEYWORD from the link on your browser as many times as you need. We hope this method helps you find new audiences that allow you to decrease costs & improve the results of your campaign.
Things to consider with Google Ads Geo Targeting
Geo targeting is something a novice Google ads user probably thinks they understand well, but there is a bit more than meets the eye! Things to consider with Google Ads Geo Targeting The settings for positive geo targeting are different from those for negative targeting. There are two types of geo targeting, “physical location” and “location of interest’. These 2 types of geo targeting also have 2 different value trackers that can be used if you are doing reporting work through a BI tool. These two types of geo targeting span both positive and negative targeting. These two types sometimes go by different names. Physical location = user location = presence Location of interest = matched location = interest No targeting method is perfect. If you are using radius targeting (or any type of targeting for that matter) don’t expect everything to work out perfectly. Find other ways to exclude out of market traffic. It would not be surprising to see 10-15% of your traffic coming from outside of the areas you target. Google says “Location targeting is based on a variety of signals, including users’ settings, devices, and behavior on our platform, and is Google’s best effort to serve ads to users who meet your location settings. Because these signals vary, 100% accuracy is not guaranteed in every situation.” Location Settings On the positive side of targeting, there are 3 options/settings for geo targeting. The ‘recommended’ option is going to result in a lot of traffic outside of your targeted geo (what you put in the UI) based on the definition. “Presence” will target people that are currently in the targeted locations while “interest” will target people with search interest in that location (such a modified search query, or someone who was recently in the area). On the negative side of targeting, there are two options only – “presence” (meaning actually in the geo at the time of search) or “presence or interest’, which is the same definition as the positive side. Below is how Four15 Digital sets up our geo 90% of the time. You’ll notice we don’t use the ‘recommended’ positive setting because it’d result in more out-of-market spend. But even with the below settings, there is still a chance for getting a lot of traffic outside of our actual targeted geo. This can be reduced by using more negative geos. Geo Reporting It’s a bit tricky to figure out if ‘interest’ geo traffic is worth buying or not. For example, if you have a commuter who often travels from New Jersey to New York, they will see your ads while in New Jersey, but your campaign is set up only to target New York. You could make New Jersey a negative state. But should you? It really depends on having proper conversion tracking where you can track the proper events. So, perhaps you get a lot of leads from NJ, but no sales. To decide if you should exclude NJ, make sure you’ve got the info on sales to help make your decision. Also, make sure you’re using the right geo report — because there are 2 of those too 🙂 The first option is “targeted location”. This will report the data to you based on your selections. In other words, it’ll really only tell you if you made a mistake. It won’t tell you where users actually are. To see where users actually are, flip over to “matched locations”. Here, you can see a whole bunch of extra countries pop up! Sometimes spend here can be quite notable depending on your vertical or other settings. There are also different levels of targeting granularity. Here is a full list from Google: Bottom line, there is a lot to consider! And Google’s own language is not consistent across the various reports, making things even more confusing. Your campaigns will likely have a variety of positive and negative targets when you’re fully optimized, so pay attention to the various reports and find different opportunities for optimization. Most importantly, though, make sure your tracking and goals are correct, otherwise these granular reports are going to just cause more confusion!
How To Keep Google’s Smart Bidding From Learning Based On Incorrect/Missing Conversion Data
We’ve all experienced a sudden drop or explosion in “conversion” volume at one time or another. Most often, these anomalies are caused by something other than actual changes in the actions people are taking after clicking on our ads – tracking tags being dropped from a site, accidental changes to conversion settings or what is being ‘included’ as a conversion, etc. If you are using one of Google’s Smart Bidding strategies (in most cases, you should be!) when this happens, you’ll want to intervene so that the machine doesn’t confuse itself by learning from incorrect or missing conversion data and start to make ‘dumb’ bidding decisions. You don’t want Google thinking that all of a sudden all those high-quality clicks it has driven to your site are no longer converting and therefore changing how and who it makes bid adjustments towards even though those clicks, in reality, did actually complete a conversion. Enter: data exclusions! Found under ‘Tools & Settings’ > Shared Library > Bid Strategies > Advanced Controls, data exclusions prevent any unintended changes in conversion volume from affecting your Smart Bidding by ignoring all data from the date range you specify. Because these exclusions apply to clicks which occurred during your date range, you’ll want to exclude dates before the miscounted conversions would have happened based on the typical conversion delay between a click and a real, accurately counted conversion. Ask yourself “how long ago would most of the clicks have occurred which should have converted during the timeframe we were miscounting?” Conveniently, Google will provide a suggestion specific to your account based on your typical conversion delay: Another thing to keep in mind is that these exclusions will not affect your reporting or performance numbers, only the data that Smart Bidding uses to learn from. What has been under or over-counted will remain missing/reflected in your UI reports and affect all of your conversion metrics, ie: Conv. Rate, Cost/Conv., Conv. Value/Cost, etc. Lastly, if you are eventually able to successfully upload corrected conversions for the excluded time period, you have the ability to remove the exclusion at a later date. You actually used to be required to make these requests manually through a Google rep as detailed by Four15 Digital’s founder in this blog post, but thankfully you now have the ability to handle a tracking mishap yourself with data exclusions. Hopefully you won’t ever have the need for a data exclusion because your tracking tags and site consistently operate exactly how they are supposed to, but if you don’t live in La-La Land and something goes awry at some point, hopefully this blog will come in handy to help keep your Smart Bidding on point!
Top 5 Most Important Tips for Paid Media Account Managers
Managing someone else’s money can be a challenging thing, especially when the amount of money is over $1 million a month! Over the years I’ve developed a few strategies, tricks, and mindset views I’d like to share with all paid media professionals. I hope you find these helpful in your day to day and feel free to let me know other tactics and/or strategies you’ve implemented in your day to day! 1 – Attention to Detail Mistakes happen, but limit them! You cannot be constantly making a minor mistake here and there, you’ll lose the trust and confidence of your client which could ultimately end the relationship. Take the extra 5-10 minutes and review things, spellcheck, review all settings at every level, QA the landing page, etc. These things don’t take a long to do, but pay off big time! Nothing is worse than launching an ad with the wrong landing page or targeting the wrong geo. I will follow-up with another blog topic about tips and tricks to QA like a pro! 2 – Build your team up As the account manager you lead the strategy, execution, road mapping, relationship building, and everything else that goes into maintaining a good client to agency relationship. If you’re fortunate enough to have a few team members backing you up, even more junior, utilize them! Giving them tasks to do or topics to cover on weekly updates will help build their confidence and take work off your plate! Now, this doesn’t mean you now only have to work 30 hours a week because they’re doing the other 10 for you, but allows you to use those 10, now free, hours for something bigger! Think more creatively on ad copy for Facebook, come up with a new landing page based on sound CRO practices, do a deep dive into a competitor and see where they may be beating your client. The more you build your team, the more time you have to think bigger, and the happier your clients will be! 3 – Automate as much as possible Nothing is worse than running the same report every day. At Four15 Digital we utilize Supermetrics to automate daily spend reports, recurring reports for weekly calls, etc. We’re able to combine Google, Facebook, Linkedin, etc. data into one nicely organized table/chart to share without our client without having to pull a single report! Imagine how much time this will save you! The ad platforms also have automated reporting and notifications you can build out to help save time re-building reports. Check them out and use them! 4 – Documentation and Organization Documenting things is very important. It allows you to reference back to budget approvals, requests, ad copy approvals, etc. You can’t just document things and throw them into some random folder, however. You need to stay organized! Create a Google Drive or folder per client to maintain important documents. Flag emails that are important to refer back to. Add email labels to quickly get to what client/topic you’re looking for. Again, just a few things I do to help stay organized. 5 – Over communicate I save this one for last because it’s one of the most important aspects of being an account manager within a paid media agency. No client is going to like a ‘surprise’. Whether it’s a minor performance thing, new campaign/keyword build, or even something you saw “in the wild”. Filling your client in on nearly everything you’re doing within an account will show 2 things. You’re spending quality time optimizing and thinking about the account. It will build trust and reliance on you. You may not always get an email or slack back about the negative terms you added but that’s okay. It shows you’re putting in the work and making improvements to their account constantly. They will appreciate this! I hope you found these high-level points helpful in your day to day, week to week, and so on! I’d love to hear some things you do as well!
Where do you find your best customers?
“Where do you find your best customers?” is a question your data should answer. Wicked Reports asked the question, answered it, told you why it was the best answer, and perhaps most importantly, what to do with the information? “Where do you find your best customers?” is a question your data should answer. Wicked Reports asked the question, answered it, told you why it was the best answer, and perhaps most importantly, what to do with the information. Most of the time, the campaigns, ad sets, keywords, and ads that show up on this report do not show a positive ROI in the first few weeks. That’s why Wicked keeps track of new lead ROI over time, updating daily as new revenue rolls in. When you start making more money from leads, the circles get bigger, and hopefully move more to the right of the chart. Have you ever stopped running a campaign that generated a lot of leads, but no revenue. If you are like most marketers, we are constantly evaluating campaign effectiveness, and if we cannot report revenue, we think it is not working, but this is not always true. Leads take time to buy. It’s proven. Our data on over $1.5 billion in tracked sales shows the average time is 42 days from a customer’s first click to their first purchase. I don’t know if you have the budget or stomach to spend on cold traffic lead generation. Because the horrible thing is you might wait a month and they still aren’t buying. With Wicked SMART attribution you can wait for the leads to start buying, and when they do, you can turn that campaign back on again. Check out the report below.
Google & Facebook’s Machine Learning Competition for Ad Budgets Featuring Mike Nelson – Part 2
