As I sit here, I light my vanilla bean candle. The scent is wafting through the air. I crack my iced cold Brewster’s Raspberry Ale and reminisce on the simpler times when I could go out to a restaurant or gym and enjoy time with my friends. However, today my desk, my candle, and my beer will have to act as my catalyst for a good time as I write to you about Google Skillshop more specifically, Google Ads Certification. Sit back relax and please enjoy!
Growing your business with Google Ads
Google Ads is a digital ad solution that helps you reach your target audience and transform them into valuable customers. Google Ads allows for broad range of auditing designed to help you reach customers in moments that matter. It does the heavy lifting for you. In this section I will explain to you about the advanced business goals. This includes, Drive Sales which is online or in-app, in person or over the phone. Getting leads boosting conversation by encouraging people to take action. Increase website visits getting the right people to the website at the right time. Influence consideration which encourages people to explore your products and seminars. Building armours which is reaching a broad audience with maximum exposer. Finally, promote your app this increases installs and incentives within your app. You always want to reach the right people at the right time and deliver the right message. With 3.5 billion google searches every day you want to take advantage of this. Increase your awareness, promote your product and drive your sales.
Explore the value of Google Search
In this section you will learn what a search campaign is. At this moment potential prospects are searching for products or services that your company can help them with. Creating a Google Search Campaign can aid your client when they need you the most. Whenever they want to know, buy or do anything google is the first step. Your ad can be shown alongside search results. You want your business to be there when someone is searching for related products. Getting these text ads in-front of potential customers starts with Google Search. Setting up a search campaign you should answer these simple questions. Where do you want your ad to be seen? How much money do you want to invest? What do you want to share in your ads? What keywords will motion your customers to search further? A good example of this is if you Google Molson Canadian. What comes up is Molson.ca, which is the company’s website. This tells you what the company is. Some employee information and what the company is doing. Moreover, the beerstore.ca comes up which is where people can go to buy the product. Finally, twitter pops up which allows you interact, ask questions and see upcoming events for Molson.
This layout is exemplary as it covers the grounds for Google Search.
Understand the Google Ads Auction
How can Google Ads help you achieve your business goals? It is simple, by bringing awareness, driving traffic, and increasing your sales. Google does this by preaching relevance, control and results. Display will increase brand awareness when users are browsing content they are interested in online. Shopping this will allow you to promote your products, share details about your inventory, boost online traffic and physical traffic. Search’s main function is to drive action to your site when users are looking for similar products or services. The video feature enables you to reach your target audience and bring your business story to life. You always want big reach and ample coverage. Be efficient and save time when possible. Be transparent and take control. For auctions you want an account, a campaign and an ad group. All you need to do to when the bid is offer $0.01 more than the next bidder. Once the bid is won you get an expiated click through rate which un-turn is potential for more money, landing page exposer, and ad relevance.
Deliver the right message with text ads
Text ads are just that. They are ads made up of text. It is a powerful way to get your business ideas out. A successful text ad will be relevant and engaging. It will also reach its valued customers with its search audience. Molson did a great job of this during the winter Olympics in Sochi Russia. They had this text ad shown below. It incorporates patriotism, togetherness, humour, and promotes their product. A pretty great text ad if you ask me.
Make ads relevant with search ad extensions
All available extensions in the ad extensions section are designed to be co-triggered. At any given time, up to four extensions can be shown for a particular query or device.
In fact, Google Ads shows one or more extensions with your client’s ad when it calculates that the extension (or combination of extensions) will improve campaign performance, and when the Ad Rank is high enough for it to appear. In this section you want to focus on intent, time, interest, device, and location.
Structured snippets allow you to describe features of a specific product or range of products or services offered by the business before users click on the ad. Sitelinks link the customer to your business. Always make sure these are professional as these sitelinks can be the difference between your business making the sale or not. Finally, in this section we learn about automated extension. This allows us to check the performance of an automated ad extension in the Google Ads interface by interacting with the hotspots on the image. All accounts receiving any traffic for these extensions will automatically receive reporting.
This will give you important information to help your business flourish.
Increase efficiency with automated bidding
Bidding is a key success factor for online marketing. Whatever bid strategy you pick directly influences how your campaigns perform and how visible your ads. Google Ads offers several bid strategies that are tailored to your marketing goals and different types of campaigns. Depending on your focus, you can determine which strategy is best for you. There are four direct benefits of automated bidding they include. Machine learning, time saved, auction time bidding, depth of signals used + cross analysis which are all equally important. Machine learning helps you set the appropriate bid for each and every auction. Time saved Cross-references audience data with context to establish intent and set the appropriate bid is a complex and time-consuming task. Alleviates pain by saving you time on the marketing resource. Auction time bidding uses the Google algorithm to determine the best bid. Finally, depth of signals and cross analysis is where Google dives deep into their algorithm to establish and focus on your intent. This is constant and is changing to offer you the best information day in and day out.
Reach valued customers with search audience
In this section we want to driver consideration. We want to establish our in-market audience which is who we have inferred are in the market to buy. Moreover, we can target our RLSA who are people engaged with your website or YouTube channel. This will in-turn purchase loyalty with your customers. Furthermore, customer match allows you to upload data into Google ads and recap customer segments across devices. Find loyal customers, exclude bad customers and expand to new prospects.
Finally, you always want to check on the three S’s. Signal- which includes intelligence and algorithms. Survey- which includes converting data and surveys. Lastly, scale- which means to go between mobile and desktop. Here you want to maintain a holistic pic.
Boost Performance with optimization score
If you boost your performance with your optimization score your business will run like a well-oiled machine. In this section we focus on instant results which are real time estimates of how your company and accounts are doing. We want to customize, meaning have a variety of optimization methods such as stat modelling which gives you the best recommendation based on your account. Finally, we want to make your business scalable. This means making your scores and recommendations available for campaigns, accounts and MMC’s. Apply the recommendations across multiple layers of your ad strategy for continued success.
Increase conversions with performance planner
In this section we will talk about forecasting, simulation, machine learning, validation, and market share. Forecasting is the prediction of what is going to happen. Much like Josh Classen does with the weather on CTV. Power your engine. Simulation is relevant ad auction with query level variables including seasonality, click through rate, compatibility, landing page and time of day. Machine learning which we learned about previously fine tunes the forecasts and this increases the accuracy for your company. Validation is the forwards and backward movements of accuracy there are 1, 7, 30, and 90-day periods which Google will let you know how you are doing in the current market. Make sure you create separate plans for each objective to ensure the best accuracy. It is suggested to check monthly. Seasonal trend may affect your company. When discussing market share it is imperative to understand that external factors can have a massive impact on your business. For example, look at what Covid-19 has done to our economy. Performance planner does the hard work for you.
Conclusion
I am now finished by beer and am about to blow out my lovely vanilla candle. In conclusion, it is evident that Google Ads Search is a great way not only to grow your business but also gain an understanding of the data analytics. I can honestly say this course has provided me with so much knowledge more than any other course I have taken. The information is practical, and I will certainly tell my bosses at Molson to use it. Right now, we are currently using SAP, but I fell this will allow us to expand and reach our target market in a faster and more efficient way. Moreover, when I start my own personal training company, I will use this to track and analyze everything I do. It ensures the company of the best results. I hope everyone stays safe. Although I only got 50% on the exam, I still feel I gained a plethora of knowledge.
Stay classy,
Matthias Friedel.
Twitter @MatthiasFriedel
References:
Matthias' Blog 