In the ever-evolving landscape of digital marketing, it’s crucial for small businesses to stay ahead of the curve. Picture this: you search for a product or service online, and behold, right at the top of the search results stands a paid ad, enticing you with a well-crafted message. These are digital ads in action, allowing you to skip the line in the organic queue and place your content at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs)—even above the coveted featured snippet. Today, we’ll introduce you to the world of digital ad campaigns, specifically focusing on Google Ads. Get ready to discover the potential of “search ads” and revolutionize your marketing game.
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The Basics of Digital Ad Campaigns
The Basics, Part 1: Types of Digital Ads
Let’s start by demystifying the realm of digital ads because there are several types of ads:
- Search ads, as described in the introduction, are the ads you see at the top of SERPs.
- Display ads include visual elements (called “creative”) and can be found on websites that are part of the Google network—called the Google Display Network.
- Social media ads, though not the focus of today’s conversation, are a powerful way to reach a highly targeted audience.
- Video ads, like pre-roll spots on YouTube, have the power to engage readers in all the same ways as video marketing.
It’s important to note that digital ads work best when they complement an inbound, organic strategy. By leveraging the strengths of both organic and paid, businesses can maximize their marketing efforts and achieve better results in terms of brand visibility, lead generation, and overall campaign success.
The Basics, Part 2: Why go with Digital Advertising?
Let’s delve deeper into why digital advertising should be an integral part of your marketing strategy. Take a moment to imagine the possibilities:
1. You set your own budget!
Through digital ads, you have the power to dictate your budget on a per-day basis. To do so, simply determine your monthly budget and divide it by the number of days you wish to run ads.
Daily Budget = Monthly Budget / Number of Days You Want to Run Ads
This is a flexible, cost-effective approach to advertising that puts you in the driver’s seat of your marketing campaigns.
Also note, when you set a daily budget, you’re simply telling Google how much money you’re willing to pay for people to click your ad. You only pay when someone clicks on your ad—not when your ad serves up in a SERP.
2. Run ads only when and where you want!
Imagine this scenario: as the objective of your campaign, you want to drive more phone calls to your sales team, but your team only works from 8am to 5pm Central time, Monday through Friday. With digital advertising, you can schedule your ads accordingly, ensuring they are seen by your target audience when your team is available to respond. Furthermore, if your services are limited to a specific geographic area, you can determine where in the world your ads will populate. This level of control allows you to make strategic decisions about ad placement, maximizing your reach and potential engagement.
There are over 8 billion queries on Google every day! Search ads are a great opportunity for
advertisers to reach their audiences.
3. Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)!
When it comes to digital advertising, the potential return on investment is truly remarkable. Data shows that, on average, every dollar spent on digital advertising yields a return of just under $3. However, some industries and platforms yield higher returns, and others lower—this is not a one-size-fits-all scenario. While digital advertising can be highly effective for many businesses, it’s essential to consider the specific characteristics of your sector and business model. In particular, if your organization operates strictly in the B2B space you may find that Google Ads struggles to populate ads exclusively to your personas. Therefore, it’s important to thoroughly evaluate if digital ads align with your objectives.
Setting Your Digital Ad Campaigns Up for Success
Step 1: Get Started
Now that we’ve covered the basics, it’s time to take action. To set your digital ad campaigns up for success…
Understand Your Personas, Audience(s), and Goals
This foundational step will guide every decision you make moving forward. Next, set clear goals and objectives for your campaigns, ensuring they align with your overall business objectives. Following the SMART Goals (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely) framework is an advisable approach. Google Ads are great for eCommerce, absolutely, but they’re also capable of driving traffic to your website, generating leads, prompting phone calls, raising awareness etc., so decide what metric makes most sense for your business.
Optimize Keywords for Your Personas
One common mistake in creating digital ads I’ve seen—in fact, it’s a mistake I’ve made myself—is when we sit in front of our ads software, we get caught up in the way we walk about our services. We know our services and our organization’s capabilities so well, that when we need to describe them to Google and Google Ads to put our targeted keywords in place, we do so the same way we describe them to ourselves or to our co-workers. Remember to take a step back and ask yourself what questions your personas are asking and how they might describe their problem. In doing so, your ads can be placed on the SERPs that are more relevant to your ideal customers.
Keep Your Ads Optimized
Google Ads will help you through their ad scoring system—though, be warned, some of their recommendations for optimization will be to increase your budget or take some other action that will be unlikely to actually improve your ad performance.
Be creative in your copy! You will have limited space to entice the reader into a clicking the ad, but use correct grammar and sentence casing. You are a professional, after all, so don’t look amateurish. Finally, don’t underestimate the power of compelling visuals!
Step 2: Measure and Analyze Ad Performance
To make informed marketing decisions, you must monitor and analyze your ad performance. This critical step involves familiarizing yourself with key metrics and leveraging analytics tools. By gaining insight into your ad’s performance, you can optimize campaigns, adjust strategies, and generate better results.
Resist the urge to be too hands-on with your campaigns. Sometimes, it needs to “not work” for a little bit before it starts working, so give your campaigns time to “not work” before you decide to make wholesale changes to it. Which leads me to…
Keep your cool! Embrace the experimental nature of digital ad campaigns.
Knowing what does not work is just as powerful as knowing what does.
Step 3: Audit, Analyze, Adapt
Think of your digital ad campaigns as grand experiments. What works? What doesn’t? Take the time to audit and analyze your campaigns: celebrating the wins and identifying areas for improvement.
Maybe you ran your ads 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but you only got clicks during the work week. Simply adjust your schedule to only advertise Monday through Friday. Then, the budget you had set aside for Saturday and Sunday can be reallocated into the work week, increasing your potential reach.
Experiment with ad copy and creative elements, leveraging the powerful tools and features provided by platforms like Google Ads. Adaptation is the key to unlocking the full potential of your digital ad campaigns.
Find Success in Your Digital Advertising
Congratulations maverick, you are now equipped with the knowledge to unlock the power of digital ad campaigns. By leveraging the potential of search ads, display ads, social media ads, and video ads, you can reach new heights in your marketing endeavors. Remember to set clear goals, understand your audience, and continuously analyze and adapt your campaigns based on data-driven insights. At Sharp Wilkinson, we’re here to guide you along this exhilarating journey. So, take the leap, embrace digital advertising as a supplement to your inbound/content marketing strategy, and soar to new heights of success.
Unlock your digital advertising potential. Contact Sharp Wilkinson today and let’s embark on a journey to transform your business.
