My Digital Insight

When we are doing keyword planning, it is important to understand the psychology of search. We want to learn about how people express what they are looking for. People search for answers to their questions in different ways. They seek information in different ways and feel differently about the problems they need to be solved. According to the Google Ads course, Isaac summarized six main ways that people communicate with search engines.  Answer To The Question One of the most popular ways that people talk to the search engine is finding an answer to the current question.  It is also called a problem-based search. For example, if I want to find something that could support my back when I hold my baby, I would search "baby carrier with back support". I know my problem is back pain, and I know a baby carrier could help me relieve my back pain. Therefore, I need to find an answer by searching for my problem. The Question Itself A lot of people like to enter a question ...

Once we did all the keyword research, it's time to start keyword planning. Understand the buyer funnel is a very important process for keyword planning. The way a potential customer searches the internet can help us understand where they are in the buyer funnel. According to the Google Ads course, there are four stages of the buyer journey: awareness, interest, shop, and buy. Awareness There are two things in the awareness stage: one is being aware of the problem that you want to solve, and the other is being aware of a potential solution to that problem. The awareness is much more cognitive in nature, so it is hard to get someone to buy from your brand in this stage. Most people will enter a short term that describes their current problem. For example, when my baby is crying all the time, I start to look for anything that can stop baby cry. I will search "stop baby cry".  Awareness has the lowest click-through rate, and the bidding per click is also low. It is...

Keyword research is the first step for creating keyword lists. You can brainstorm some good ideas, but it is just too limited. The Google Ads course introduced four useful keyword search tools to get keyword ideas quickly.  Google Autocomplete Google autocomplete is usually the first place to find keyword ideas because everyone is searching on Google.  I go to the Google search page and enter "birthday gift", then there are drop-down relevant keywords ideas. I could see many good keyword ideas for a "birthday gift" like "birthday gifts for him", "birthday gifts for best friend", and etc. In the drop-down, it usually shows the top search terms on Google.   Google Suggestions Another way to find some good keyword ideas is from Google suggestions. Just type your search term on Google and enter the search result page. Then scroll down to the bottom, you can see the "searches related to birthday gift" which is my search term.   ...

Keywords are very important for any Google Ads campaign. According to the course, keywords are the "items" up for auction. They could be a description of your product, key feature of your product, or anything related to your product or service.  It's important to get your keywords right. Every single ad group has keywords, and every keyword that we select to our account represents an item that we want to bid on. Of course, we want to get some impressions when someone searches for something similar to the keywords. The keywords we add to our ad groups instruct Google as to which queries should trigger our ads. Google tends to refer to queries as search terms. Queries and search terms are exchangeable. Basically, queries and search terms are what the user enters into the Google search box. That's not necessarily your keyword. For example, if you are selling baby crib, your keywords could be " convertible baby crib", "4 in 1 baby crib", "li...

How to write a good ad copy is always a big question for every brand. For all those campaign settings, they are more likely rational things, but when it comes to ad creation, it becomes a more emotional context. How to write an ad that not only grabs users' attention but also take them to the final moves? Google Text Ads Basics The text ad includes two headlines. Each headline shows up at the top, and each headline has a maximum of 30 characters. Then, there have a display URL and two paths with 15 characters per path. The display URL doesn't have to be the website or landing page that a user is going to. Use some relevant keywords or search terms in the path will increase your quality score. Next, we have two descriptions with 90 characters for each. We can write some relevant information about the product or services. Try to keep it as simple as we can because most people don't read the description as much as headlines. There also have some compliance ...

Once we have done the campaign level settings, it's time to start thinking about ad groups. It's important to keep in mind your overall campaign structure ideas when you are structuring ad groups. A really good way to generate ad group ideas is to follow the navigational structure of the website. There are three great ways to structure your ad group introduced by the course: theme, match type, and top performers. Themes The first thing you need to think about is the theme of your campaign and your brand. The theme could be product categories, subcategories, locations, brands, colors of your product, services, event, and etc. Each of these categories represents a theme because there are a bunch of different keywords that are similar under the top-level category. You could do some competitor research by searching specific or certain keywords on Google and explore how your competitors are potentially breaking out their ad groups.  The most important thing to think about...

According to Google research, mobile already has more searches daily and more clicks on ads than desktop. But, it doesn't mean you must run your campaign on mobile. Desktop campaigns still work better than mobile campaigns in many businesses. The conversion rate is higher on the desktop because the sites are well optimized and giving users a better user experience.  If you want to run a mobile campaign, you should ask yourself four important questions: 1. Is your site mobile optimized? If your site is not mobile-friendly, you really SHOULD NOT advertise on mobile. It will potentially hurt your brand reliability because the users feel bad about their mobile experience. And, you are also going to be penalized by Google and have a very high cost for click. Before you advertise on mobile, test your website on the site evaluation tool such as MobileTestMe . Paste your website URL and to see whether it displays well on different devices. 2. Where are your customers when they s...

When will my ad show in order to get a higher conversion? It is a very common question to ask ourselves when we begin to schedule our campaign. In general, you could choose to run your ads throughout the entire day or throughout certain hours.  Image From Google By default, Google sets these ads to run 24/7. For a new campaign, it is a good default because you do want to learn how ads are performing at different hours of the day. In order to generate more data, it is better to schedule your ads to run 24/7. Then, you could go to the Google Ads dashboard to pull out the ad schedule report. The report will show the detail data about how your ad performs at different times. You could break out in segment hour of the day, day of the week, and the week of the month. By analyzing the data, you can make some bid adjustments based on the report. In most cases, it's worthwhile to bid on good traffic throughout the day at least. In order to make a rational bid adjustment, you n...

Location Extension If brick and mortar awareness is important, then location extension is good for local businesses such as fast food, fashion store, bakery and etc. If you have one location or multiple locations, you could get those multiple locations showing up in your ads . Even if you're trying to generate online sales, having an actual physical location will make people aware that you have a store nearby, so it also offers the users in-store shopping experiences and can drive in-store sales potentially. Parts of your location extensions will include business hours, Google reviews, directions, whether or not you are open or closed, and peak time. Unfortunately, you don't have control over what elements are shown. However, if you don't add a location extension, Google is going to automate that extension by showing a linked address associated with a business account. You can use filters at the campaign level based on your targeting location. You could select...

Structure Snippet Extension Structure snippet extensions are very similar to callout extensions but structured with a parent category. For example, Stitchfix's ad extensions are structured with a parent category "Styles", and it lists some main subcategories under styles.  Using this extension will give potential visitors more context and information about your product. Google actually does favor this extension over the callout extension because it is more organized and structured. It is better to use the structure snippet extension for practical product and services information. Save the callout extensions for benefits and promotions. App Extension If you are advertising apps and trying to get app downloads, the app extension is a good choice. You can use the app extension to send clicks directly to the app in the App store.  For example, when I search "book hotels" on Google, it shows me the Expedia ad which has an app extension. It has a call t...

When you create your Google Ads campaigns, you have the opportunity to really enhance your ads with all different sorts of ad extensions such as site link, callout, call, app, location, price, and etc.  Why should you use ad extensions? There are three primary benefits of using ad extensions: Get more space on SERP (Search Engine Result Page) Your ads will get more space on the search engine result page. It means that the size of your ad is actually bigger than other ads. The more space you get, the higher the CTR will be because of the visual impact is more powerful. Offer users more options This is a big thing. By giving people more options, you are letting people know more about your company and your product & service. Those extensions tell people more information and make them easy to click the one they want.   Increase quality score The quality score is made up of CTR, relevance, and landing page experience. If you have ad extensions such as site...

When you get into the bidding section, Google will recommend you to focus on clicks. It will never be a good bidding strategy for most businesses. Why is it so bad? Clicks are not a key metric that we should focus on, and it is not important to what is the good of advertising. We should focus on the metrics that impact our profits such as conversion rate or conversion values.  When Google offers you this Maximize Clicks bidding strategy, it means that Google is going to try to get the maximum amount of clicks for your daily budget. Spend is capped at the campaign daily budget. If it's the very beginning of a campaign, and your client really wants a lot of data to see certain behavioral objectives without worrying about the cost per clicks. It might be helpful.  It is very important to understand how much you want to pay for a click, and it is very important to take control of your campaign by yourself instead of letting Google control it.

After you have done all the basic campaign settings, it's time to think about what is the bidding strategy for your ads. There are several bidding strategies that Google offers: Target search page location Target CPA (cost per acquisition) Target ROAS (return on ad spend) Target outranking share Maximize clicks Maximize conversions Manual CPC Enhanced CPC Which strategies are effective or recommended by Google Ads experts? According to the Udemy course, the instructor highly recommended the three most effective bidding strategies: Target CPA, Enhanced CPC, and Manual CPC. Target CPA: The objective of the target CPA is to get as many conversions as possible of your target cost per acquisition. The cost of the click doesn't matter. As long as you are getting clicks that convert at a profitable cost, business is going to grow.  When you choose this strategy, Google will predict which clicks will convert and how much it will cost that click to covert.  ...

Google allows us to set a daily budget instead of a monthly budget for our campaign. When we set a daily budget for our campaign, we are telling Google the maximum value we want to spend each day. For example, if I set $100 as my daily budget, and I run the campaign for a whole month, in the end, Google will charge me about $3000. ($100 * 30days) According to the Udemy course, we could spend on any given day up to double the daily budget. Using the above example, I could spend $200 on any given day, but I won't spend $200 every day because it will be over my monthly budget.  How to figure out your daily budget? It is really a hard question. It depends on your campaign goals. How much profit do you need to earn? What ROAS (return on ads spend) do you need to generate for the campaign in order to be profitable? The course recommends setting $10 as a minimum daily budget spread across one or two keywords.  After you set your daily budget, you will see the delivery metho...

If you want to reach people who speak other languages, you could use the language setting. It is default in English since this is an English Google Ad account. You could select multiple languages. For example, if I want to promote my Chinese blog in the United States, I definitely will target users who can speak and read Chinese.  If someone in the U.S. and his Google interface setting is Chinese, my ad will be eligible to show.  However, if a Chinese speaking person is searching on Google in Chinese, but his settings have defaulted to English, then my ad will not show if I only target Chinese speaking people.  Therefore, it is important to include English with other languages together in your setting.

There are different ways you could treat your targeted locations and also different ways to treat your excluded locations. How you treat location settings differently are matters because it will significantly impact your ad show and who sees your ad. There are five addition location options under basic location settings. It is very important to know what each of these options means in order to run your campaign effectively. Target Option One: People in, or show interest in, your targeted locations When you choose this option, it means people from any locations can see your ad no matter what your targeted locations are.  For example, your keyword is "rent apartment", and your target location is "New York". Someone from Seattle or China or Japan searches for "New York apartment" on Google, your ad will show up.  In addition, "show interest" is up to Google to decide. The data could be collected from many sources. Someone may type ...

For the local businesses, if you only service certain areas, it is better to consider location settings when you plan a Google Ads campaign. It does not only save your budget but also reaches the right customers effectively. For E-commerce companies, sometimes it doesn't mean you have to target the whole country. Before you run your campaign, these things you have to think about: which areas will have a higher conversion rate will your shipping cost be less how're people shopping behaviors in a different location If you don't know which areas you should target on, you might need to find answers from: Historical data : you could check your sales performance report, CRM, Google trends, or ask your co-workers.  Major cities : it would be more expensive, but they also have the most volume. The higher cost per click is not necessarily a bad thing. High CPC means more people are advertising on this keyword in this place. They are willing to pay more because they know...

Before you write your ads, you need to set up your Google campaign appropriately. As I said before, there are two main networks you could choose. One is the search network, and the other one is the display network. When you are setting up your campaign, you could name your campaign by product name or product name plus location. Just make sure the name is specific, so you can organize your data and manage the campaign effectively.  Then, Google will let you select the network where you want to run your ads. By default, Google will select both the search network and display network.  The first thing you should do is deselect display network.  When you create your search ads in the text format, Google will be able to show those ads on the display network across all other websites. The problem is that is not search advertising. The goal of search advertising is to capitalize on the user's intent.  The second thing you should do is deselect Google s...