Which Google Ad Types are Right for You?

Welcome to our video about the Google Ad types which are right for your business.

Google Ads offers a huge range of advertising options to meet your business needs. Most people don’t need all of them, but it’s good to know how they would work for your business. Different ad types will work best at different stages in your purchase funnel. Your budget constraints may also restrict your marketing strategy.

Do You Know What a Purchase Funnel is?

First, do you know what a purchase funnel is? Purchase funnels describe the experience customers have when discovering and eventually purchasing from your brand. A basic example would occur in this order: awareness, interest, consideration, intent, evaluation, and purchase. The time spent at each stage will be hugely affected by the type of product you have. Expensive products would have long consideration and evaluation stages. B2B purchase funnels will also be slightly different as you need to convince more people, and this tends to be a contractual commitment.

Different ad types will work best at different stages in the purchase funnel. You can use your advertising to move customers through the funnel and eventually have them purchase.

Search Campaigns

You see search campaigns whenever you perform a Google Search. This is a strong strategy for the lower funnel stages. When a user sees your search ad, they are in the market for your product. This is because you input specific keywords that you want your ads to show for. These are easy to setup and they offer high return on investment if you show for the most appropriate keywords.

Display Campaigns

Display is a great way to visually engage users, because of Google’s vast display network you can show your ads on millions of websites. Display would work best for brand awareness, which is top of the funnel, and remarketing, which would reengage those in the consideration and evaluation stages.  For brand awareness you can target Google audiences for people that would be interested in your product, and costs are low for impressions. But you could also use display ads for remarketing. This is where you can create audience lists of people who have visited your site, this could be split by convertors and non-convertors. You can then show them banners to remind them of the abandoned product or just the brand in general.

Video Campaigns

Video is another visual way to engage with potential customers. Like Display, this is best for Brand Awareness and Remarketing. However, there is a drive conversions campaign subtype which could be used to generate sales. Much like display, the cost per view is low for video ads. These would be ideal budget friendly ways to engage potential customers at the top of your funnel. Using them for this purpose wouldn’t generate conversions so you would need to consider other success metrics for your top of funnel strategy.

Shopping Campaigns

If you are an eCommerce brand you absolutely need to be using Google Shopping campaigns. These should be your primary focus followed by other campaigns to support this. Shopping campaigns are another campaign type which show when a user is specifically in market for your product. You would need to setup a Google Merchant Centre for your site and connect this to Google Ads. Then you will be able to run shopping ads in a huge variety of ways. From individual product campaigns for granular targeting, to a smart campaign for all products.

App Campaigns

If it’s not obvious these are only relevant if you have an app for your brand. App campaigns allow you to run ads for two specific subtypes: installs and engagement. So, you would need to determine the most important action for your users. Your app campaign would be eligible to show on Search, Display, Google Play and YouTube. If you have an app, this is the perfect campaign type for you. If you have a website and an app, then this would probably be a complimentary ad type to support your overall marketing strategy.

Local Campaigns

If you are a business which operates locally then this is for you. Local campaigns are designed to streamline the process of users discovering and visiting your physical business location. These are a type of smart campaign, so you only have to provide Google with a small amount of information. Google’s machine learning then targets the people most likely to visit you. Your ads will be eligible to appear across all of Google’s properties. So if your physical store is more important to you than online activity, you should start with these ads.

Smart Campaigns

These campaigns are completely controlled by Google. You input a small amount of information and then they use machine learning to figure out the best people to show your ads to. Smart campaigns are now present in one form or another across all ad types. From dynamic search ads to smart shopping campaigns and local campaigns. Machine learning is constantly being implemented into the platform. Which in theory is improving your ad performance.

Budget Constraints

Now we’ve covered all the different Google Ad types, you’ve probably figured out that a lot of them may work for you. However, which ad types you use is probably constrained by your budget. We’ve tried to provide pointers for when the different types work best. The best suggestion we can give you, is to start with the one which is going to produce your most important KPI. Then, as your budget grows, you can implement supporting ad types. If you try to do everything by spreading budgets thin, you won’t see the results you’re hoping for.