Google Ads can significantly enhance your online visibility. It offers various ad formats and campaign types to help you achieve different advertising objectives. Let’s look at the campaign types in Google Ads, their purposes, and best practices to optimize your online marketing efforts.
Google Ads Campaign Types
Google Ads offers various campaign types to suit your specific advertising goals. Let’s roll up our sleeves and take a closer look at the different campaign types that can drive your Google Ads success.
- Search Campaigns: Search Ads are the most common type of ads. They appear in search engine results when users type relevant queries. These are ideal for businesses aiming to generate leads or drive sales. These campaigns focus on text ads and keyword targeting. A tutoring service, for example, might use a search campaign to reach students searching for “online math tutoring.”
- Performance Max Campaigns: Performance Max campaigns are a powerful campaign type. This campaign format allows advertisers to use all of Google’s advertising networks, such as Google’s Search, Display, YouTube, Discover, Gmail, and Maps, to target new traffic to a website or retarget previous visitors using custom audience segments.
- Display Campaigns: Display Ads are banner-style advertisements displayed on Google’s extensive network of over two million websites and apps. For example, if you’re a travel agency, your display ad with enticing imagery might appear on a blog about travel tips. This type of ad is ideal for businesses seeking to raise brand awareness, maintain product or service consideration, and retarget users who have previously interacted with their website.
- Shopping Campaigns: Shopping Ads appear above the organic search results and display an image of the product, its price, and the merchant. This campaign type is effective for eCommerce businesses aiming to drive sales. A footwear store could use Shopping campaigns to showcase its Air Jordan collection to users searching for “Air Jordan Men’s Shoes.”
- Video Campaigns: Video campaigns drive brand awareness, influence consideration, or increase conversions through YouTube and other video partners. A movie studio might use a Video campaign to promote the trailer for their upcoming film.
- App Campaigns: App campaigns find users most likely to install your app and who will likely complete specific in-app actions. A mobile game developer could use App campaigns to encourage installs from avid mobile gamers.
- Smart Campaigns: Smart campaigns are the easiest to create, allowing you to run your ads across Google Search, Google Maps, Gmail, and YouTube.
- Discovery Campaigns: This campaign type allows you to create ads that incorporate headlines, logos, images, and carousels as a mix for you to deliver ads to audiences across YouTube, Gmail’s social tab, Gmail’s promotion tab, and Google’s feeds.
Best Practices
- Keyword Research: Understanding your target audience’s search habits is fundamental. Use tools like Google Keyword Planner to discover keyword opportunities relevant to your products or services.
- Ad Relevance: Your ads must be highly relevant to your targeted keywords. Google’s Quality Score diagnostic gauges ad relevance. The more relevant your ad is, the better your Quality Score will be, which leads to a lower cost per click.
- Landing Page Optimization: Ensure your landing page aligns with your ad content. If your ad promotes a sale on winter clothes, but users are directed to a page with summer apparel, your campaign will likely underperform. Also, ensure your landing page loads consistently and fast across mobile and desktop devices. Google’s Quality Score diagnostic gauges the landing page experience.
- Ad Extensions: Ad extensions provide additional information or links in your ad. They can significantly improve click-through rates by making your ad more compelling and providing more reasons for viewers to click.
- Track and Optimize: Use Google Ads and Google Analytics to monitor your campaigns’ performance. Analyze the data to identify areas of improvement and optimize your campaigns accordingly.
- Test Different Ad Variations: Don’t stick to one ad copy. Create ad variability, experiment with headlines, test various descriptions and calls-to-action to determine what resonates most with your audience.
- Negative keywords: Adding negative keywords is a best practice to filter out potential visitors who may not be interested in your product or service, refine your audience, and ensure your ads reach the right people. Consider reading Costly Mistakes in Google Ads and How to Avoid Them to learn more about common mistakes to look out for when running campaigns in Google Ads.
Google Ads can be a powerful marketing tool when used correctly. Commit to understanding the campaign types, applying best practices, and continuing your learning journey. Continuous learning, campaign testing, monitoring, and ongoing optimizations can help create the best situation for your campaigns to succeed.