Summary of “Google Ads Search Certification”

Grow Your Business with Google Ads

With thousands of marketing tools, one question might occur in your mind: why Google Ads? There are various answers to different people, but all of them are looking for benefits. The benefits of Google Ads are built on these principles: relevance, control, and results.

• Relevance-Connect with the right customers with the right information.
• Control-Can customize the budget plan
• Results-measure the performance of the campaign

Google Ads have various campaign types to help different businesses to promote themselves.

Campaign types	Function
Display	Create brand awareness when potential customers are searching relevant information.
Shopping	Promote the information of the product or the inventory.
Search	Encourage potential customers to purchase when they are searching in Google.
Video	Approach target customer by visual format.
App	Increase engagement, app installs and even in-app actions.
Specialised campaign types (Local, Hotel, Discovery)	Reach target users across the YouTube Home Feed, Gmail and Google’s Discover Feed.

Explore the value of Google Search

What is the most helpful function of Google Ads for business? It is no doubt that the answer would be searching. When a user is looking at the relevant information in Google, Google Ads push the relevant product or company to the potential customers.

In order to have a better marketing performance to approach the target customer, Google Ads users can optimize the Google Search campaign. In the beginning, the user needs to consider four aspects: the location of the ads, the budget of the campaign, the content of the ads, and the keyword of the ads. In Google Ads, the user can control the following components: Campaign, Networks, Devices, Location and Language, and Bidding and Budget. Users can get the right customer by customizing these components. To improve the effectiveness of the Google Search campaign, Ad extensions, Start and end date, and Ad scheduling are other tools in regard to the content and time of the ad.

After the user customizes the overview of the Google Search campaign, he/she also needs to manage the searches that will prompt the ads. The following steps would be helpful before managing the searches:

• Think like the customer
• Think about the business goals
• Get Google to do it

Next, the user should reach the broad with suitable match types. The fundamental match types include Broad match and Broad match modifier. The function of these two match types is to approach the wide target group. If the user wants to narrow the target group, Phrase match and Exact match can be the option.

The match types are applied based on the keywords and Dynamic Search Ads can complement the keyword strategy for the user. Dynamic Search Ads can help the user increase the reach of search campaigns. Dynamic Search Ads can help the user to Reach and coverage and increase efficiency and time savings. Dynamic Search Ads are more transparent and controllable than other tools.

Understand the Google Ads auction

After creating the text ad, Google Ads auction can help the user identify how the ad will be performed. Google Ads auction uses an auction system to rank the ads that appear on the search results page and to determine the cost for each ad click. The ads will provide relevant customers that increase the efficiency of the ad. The Ad Rank will determine the ad position by the quality of the ad. The high-level ad will appear first. Expected click-through rate, Ad landing page experience, and Ad Relevance the quality of the ad. Higher-quality ads typically lead to lower costs, better ad positions, and more advertising success.

Since the Ad Rank will affect the performance of the ad, the user should improve the Ad Rank of his/her ad. Quality Score is an estimate of the quality of your ads, keywords and landing pages. Higher-quality ads can lead to lower prices and better ad positions. Here are the methods to improve the Quality Score:

• Expected click-through rate (eCTR) predicts whether the keyword is likely to lead to an ad click
• Improve the Ad Relevance
• Increase the landing page experience

Deliver the right message with text ads

Text ad on Search is the simplest online ad that provided by Google Ads. To effectively reach potential customers, text ads should be informative, relevant and engaging. A text ad includes a headline, a URL and a description. Each description field has up to 120 characters to describe the product or company. The following pointe indicate the tips to create a good Google Ads

• Implement 3 or 5 ads per ad group
• Optimize the ad rotation for the clicks or conversation
• Use at least three extensions for each campaign or ad group

Responsive search ads let you create ads that adapt to show more relevant messages to your customers. The more headlines and descriptions that enter, the more Google Ads can test and serve ad variations that match users’ search terms – which can improve the ad performance. Responsive search ads are beneficial on Flexibility, Relevance, Reach, and Performance.

Make ads relevant with search ad extensions

The relevant information provides by Google can increase customers ‘engagement, provide customers a better Ad, and offer more valuable lead to customers. Ad extensions enrich text ads by showing extra information about the advertiser’s business. There are three extensions that every business owner should be using to enhance their text ad: sitelinks, callout extensions, and structured snippets.

1. Location extensions-show the business address, phone number and a map marker.
2. Affiliate location extensions-allow product manufacturers to drive visits to retail partners that sell their products.
3. Call extensions-these extend ads with a phone number, allowing mobile users to directly call the business.
4. App extensions-this format gives the business an option of driving traffic to your website or the app store from a single text ad.
5. Price extensions-showcase the services and range of products alongside their respective prices.
6. Promotion extensions- allow business to quickly and prominently display information about your promotions without having to update every single ad.
7. Message extensions-enables clients to easily connect with a growing segment of users who prefer to text.

If the user not familiar with the extension, Google Ads also provides the Automated ad extensions. Automated ad extensions similar to advertiser-provided ad extensions, automated ad extensions give consumers relevant information upfront, which can often translate into more qualified leads.

Increase Efficiency with Automated Bidding

Bidding is one the most essential point for a successful campaign, it will directly affect the campaign performance. Google Ads automated bidding can help the business to increase efficiency, save time, raise accuracy, and discover meaningful data. As a result, it is important to choose an appropriate bidding strategy. The following strategies are provided by Google Ads.

• Awareness-based bidding strategies
• Consideration-focused bidding strategies
• Conversion-focused bidding strategies
• Revenue-focused bidding strategies

Reach valued customers with Search Audiences

Google’s Audience Solutions is a set of strategies and products that help the business reach high-value customers, in the moments when they’re ready to buy the products offered by the business. Audience Solutions allow the business to create audience lists to layer on the ad groups, combining intent and insights to send the right message to the right customer with the right bid. By utilizing Audience Solutions, the business can create awareness, drive consideration, and increase purchases and loyalty with existing customers. The nest step is approaching potential customers with Google’s Search Audience Solutions. Different types of audiences have various concerns.

• Affinity Audiences- the users who have demonstrated a qualified interest in a given topic.
• Detailed Demographics- the organization can reach customers based on their activities on Google.com by using this function, such as Parental status, Parenting stage, and Homeownership…
• In-Market Audiences-the users who are in the mindset to buy. Google’s Audience Solutions help business to approach this group for higher value than regular customers.

The businesses suppose to understand their customers most and they are able to use these knowledges to approach the marketing goal. The methods below are useful to business to get better achievement.

• Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA)- allows the business to serve unique ad creatives and set the ad group bids differently, based on past interactions with the site or app.
• Customer Match- allows the business to leverage the online and offline customer data to reach the customers and deliver the right message wherever they are and on any device.
• Similar Audiences- help the business to expand the reach of your valuable audiences, across all platforms.

Boost performance with optimisation score

Optimisation score is the function that provide recommendations right in Google Ads, making it easy to increase campaign performance and reach the right people in moments that matter. Google Ads is utilizing optimisation score to make optimising search campaigns easier. Optimisation score runs from 0% to 100%. The higher score, the more the account is running to its full potential. Optimisation score runs an algorithm that looks across key aspects of the accounts, including statistics, settings and industry trends, to determine whether the campaigns are fully optimised. The purpose of optimisation score is to help the business to make the advertising more efficient, reach new audiences and spend smarter.

Increase conversions with Performance Planner

Planning is an important part to achieve the success of Google Ads. By planning your Google Ads budgets on a monthly basis in advance, it can help ensure that when people need products or information, the ads can meet them at the right time to help to maximize conversions and achieve the key performance indicators. Performance Planner is a new forecasting tool that uses machine learning to reveal the possibilities for the Google Ads campaigns. Here are the ways that Performance Planner forecast campaign performance.

• The forecasting of Performance Planner is based on the Google Search ad auctions.
• The forecast engine simulates relevant ad auctions with query-level variables.
• Performance Planner uses machine learning to fine-tune forecasts and achieve a higher level of accuracy.
• Performance Planner performs forward and backward measurements of accuracy for thousands of campaign samples

The method of operating Performance Planner including the following steps:

1. Create a new budget plan to drive incremental conversions.
2. Explore further optimizations and forecast how the business can grow with Google Ads.
3. Review and implement changes prescribed by the Performance Planner plan.
4. Use Performance Planner monthly for best results.

The reason for using Performance Planner every month is it optimize the budgets and bids so that the business can drive more conversions for the same investment.

Conclusion

After finishing this course, I believe is one of the most effective marketing tools in the Internet age. Google Ads differs from other social media marketing tools because of its powerful function. Google Ads almost covers all the factors of the marketing strategy, including segmentation, content design, and plan implementation. Meanwhile, the user has the ability to customize the budget based on his/her own needs. I think this marketing tool will beneficial to small businesses in regard to creating an effective marketing campaign. The local bakery can be a persuasive example. Normally, a small business does not have a large budget in marketing. Google Ads allows the owner to customize the budget plan based on the need. The owner also does not need to worry about he/she does not have professional marketing knowledge, Google Ads have the various automatic function to provide a recommendation. Google Ads can also optimize the ad locally based on calculation. In this case, a small business can create an effective marketing camping to approach its right customer.

Reference

Google. (2019). Google Ads Search Certification. Retrieved from https://skillshop.exceedlms.com/student/path/18163-google-ads-search-certification