4 steps to create a profitable display campaign Google Ads is a complex platform to use, even if Big-G has done a great job on the new version of the platform to facilitate usability even by small companies that cannot afford a marketing department or the cost of an agency. With this pill, we present you which elements are essential to creating a display campaign. And with adaptive display ads (ie those ads that rely on optimizing directly to the platform’s artificial intelligence algorithms) you increase your ad coverage, save time and increase performance.
1. Identify the goal
Every campaign you create must have only one specific goal. In this way, the algorithms can adapt your campaign so that it can better achieve its purpose and it will also be easier for you to monitor the results. Choosing the goal is not always easy, often those who make an advertising investment have the desire to obtain more possible results (more customers, more sales, more traffic, …) in a single move: identify the main result you want to get. If you have more than one goal, work on different campaigns, with specific messages and creativity. If you want to create a standard display campaign these are the goals you can set/choose:
- Sales: incentivize online sales, with apps, by phone or in-store
- Leads: generate leads and other conversions that encourage users to take action
- Website traffic: inducing the right users to visit your site
- Product and brand consideration: encouraging users to discover the products or services you offer
- Brand awareness and reach: reaching a wide audience and creating awareness
- App promotion
2. Declare the relevant public
Thanks to the targeting tools, Google collects the information necessary to intercept the users who may actually be interested in your offer, your product or service. The more information you provide to the platform, the better you can cross them with user profiles.
The parameters you can set for the target are:
- Location: identifies in which geographical areas you want your ads to be shown
- Language: select the language of the clients you want to contact
- Affinity: what are their interests and their habits
- InMarket: what users are actively searching for or planning
- Demographic data: gender, age, the parental status of users
- Keywords: manually entered by you or intercepted on other people’s sites.
3. Set the budget
Google assistance recommends setting a budget of at least € 35 per day to get a significant number of impressions (less money per day means less visibility). It also advises not to change the settings once entered for at least 10 days, in order to have a clear view of the trend for the entire chosen period.
If you have a limited budget, Google suggests opting for Display Smart Campaigns, where you rely on Google algorithms for most of the settings (even the targeting one).
Both for standard display campaigns and for smart display campaigns you can decide to pay only for the conversions that you really got: that is, you only pay when customers make conversions on your website or on your app. The conversion payment option is available only if you use a target CPA (cost per action).
4. Measure and Optimize
If you have set up a standard display campaign, Google Ads allows you to measure and monitor different parameters depending on the results you want to achieve. In the case of smart display campaigns instead, as we have said, the optimization is entrusted to Google algorithms. The metrics you find in your campaign overview are:
- Click
- Impressions: indicates how often your ads are shown on a search results page or on a Google Network site
- CPC: (Cost Per Click) Indicates the cost you pay for each click made on your ads
- CTR: Indicates how often the people who see your ad click on it
- Conversion rate: is the average number of conversions or interactions with the announcement
- Cost: cost of all announcements made in the reference period.
You can also monitor the campaign performance by time slot or by geo-location.
Based on the trend of these metrics you can decide to review the parameters of the campaign (eg adding or removing constraints to the target parameters or increasing the budget).
Conclusions
In this short pill we have seen the five main steps to create a display campaign on Google Ads. Once the objectives and information necessary for the campaign have been uploaded to the platform, Google will then optimize your advertising. This thanks to the integration of Machine Learning algorithms with which Google has enhanced the functionality of its advertising platform. Thanks to these algorithms Google Ads allows you to reach the target in a more targeted way and to increase the possibility of clicks and conversions for your campaign.
This and much more will be the subject of the next Pills of Digital Advertising. And if you want to learn more about the features of Google Ads, we suggest you read the official Google Ads guide, always updated and complete.
See you at the next pill!
