The world of digital marketing is ever expanding, and with all the rapid changes that happen in the industry, it’s hard to keep up with all the features available. There are a million different strategies, techniques and tools that can be used to try and improve campaign performance. Whether you’re a digital marketing newbie or an old-time pro, these are the top 5 features in Google Ads that every digital marketer should be utilizing.
#1. Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSAs)
People who are familiar with your brand and have previously interacted with your website are much more likely to take action when they see your brand’s name again. So, it’s important to be able to find those users again and serve them a highly personalized ad. We do this by placing them on a remarketing list. When someone visits your website, their search engine will use a tracking cookie to follow them around the internet, and when that unique cookie triggers one of your keywords, it will show them one of your ads again.
Here at Vladimir Jones, we have seen notable improvements in campaign performance for one of our clients after implementing RLSAs. Over the course of the summer, we saw a 68% decrease in cost per conversion and a 35% improvement in click through rate. Setting up a remarketing list is easy, and no search campaign is complete until one has been created.
#2. Smart Bidding Strategies
Tired of wasting your digital advertising budget on clicks that don’t convert? We are too. That’s why it’s a good idea to try out some of Google’s Smart Bidding Strategies. Smart bidding strategies harness the power of Google’s algorithm and use machine learning to decide the best way to spend your campaign’s budget. By using a multitude of different behavioral, location, demographic and browser signals, Google will automatically decide whether to bid up or bid down on certain clicks depending on the likelihood of conversion. It’s a great way to trim away some of the fat from your campaigns and better optimize your budgets.
There is a whole list of different smart bidding strategies currently available, such as: Target CPA, Target ROAS, Maximize Clicks, Maximize Conversions, Target Outranking Share, and Enhanced CPC. Each of them has its advantages, and certain ones might be more useful than others depending on your campaign goals.
For example, if you run an e-commerce site and your goal is to sell products while maintaining a certain profit margin, try using Target CPA or Target ROAS. Google’s algorithm will work to find those users who are likely to convert and try to get them for the lowest cost possible.
#3. Affinity and In-Market Audiences
If you’re trying to reach users who are part of a niche market, affinity and in-market audiences are exactly what you are looking for. Are you trying to reach people who recently graduated college, have a dog and are weekend do-it-yourselfers? Well, Google can help you get your message in front of them at the right time.
Affinity audiences are groups of users that Google understands to be interested in certain topics based on their search history. These affinities can include different interests like cooking, sci-fi movies, traveling, or even bargain shopping. In-market audiences are groups of users who have been researching certain products or services and are in the market to purchase. Examples can include people looking for an oil change, dating services, or five-star hotels. By using a combination of different affinity and in-market audiences, you can ensure that your ad is only being shown to people who are actively searching for your product or service when they are ready to purchase. This can help drastically improve your campaign’s performance.
#4. Ad Customizers
What the heck is an Ad Customizer? They are an awesome hidden feature in Google Ads that can be used on text ads to help make your ads more relevant and personalized to the user. This is important because in today’s digital marketing landscape, users are demanding more highly personalized content.
Currently, the predominant ad customizers in Google are keyword insertion, countdown, and IF function.
- The keyword insertion customizer is great for providing users with more relevant and personalized ads. Using keyword insertion, you can dynamically insert the keyword(s) that triggered your ad directly into the ad’s text, making it more relevant to the user’s search query.
- Using the countdown function can help create a sense of urgency by adding a timer to your ad. This is a great feature to use for time-sensitive campaigns like flash sales or event ticket sales.
- The IF function can change your ad’s text based on certain criteria. For example, you can change an ad’s text to say things like “Call for more information!” if the user is on a mobile device.
#5. Scripts
Scripts for Google Ads is one of the more advanced features in the platform and might require a little bit of coding knowledge, but the power of scripts is limitless. With scripts you can perform a multitude of actions, all done automatically. At Vladimir Jones, we use scripts to do things like check for broken links, monitor keyword quality scores, turn off or on certain campaigns or ad groups, or send alerts to our digital strategists when a campaign has hit its daily budget. The list of possibilities just goes on and on. If there’s a certain function you wish you could do automatically, there’s probably a script somewhere out there. Or if you have the technical know-how, you can write one yourself.
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Vladimir Jones is Colorado’s original independent, integrated advertising agency, with offices in Denver and Colorado Springs. We believe in brilliant brands and love making the world love them as much as we do.