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Prepare your sales! How to make a success of your Google Ads, Shopping and Performance Max campaigns?

Posted on by Adenlab Adenlab

Your summer and winter sales are great opportunities to increase your sales volumes and reach your annual sales targets.

Anticipate and prepare your Google Ads campaigns to make them effective and profitable during these busy times of year. You can always call on a specialized agency, a Google Ads Certified agency, to support you.

The sales last 6 weeks, but as you know, the first week is decisive.

Research trends: "SOLDE" in France

Sales” queries start to rise 2 weeks before the start of the sales. The volume of products bookmarked on e-commerce sites starts to rise considerably 5 weeks before the start of the sales.

Increase your online visibility

Start increasing the visibility of your Shopping and Adwords campaigns 2-3 weeks before the sales. Take advantage of a less aggressive competitive strategy and low cpc.

Our predictive solutions make it easy and efficient to analyze our customers’ competition, increase product visibility across their entire catalog, and develop campaign performance and ROI thanks to our algorithms and automations.

Find out more…

Adapt your budget and increase the share of voice for your key campaigns

Thanks to our Machine Learning algorithm, we run simulations to identify the budget that will maximize the overall ROI of your Google Shopping campaigns.

Budget and Product Performance Simulator

Optimize the keywords and ads in your campaigns

  1. Develop your lists of keywords related to previous sales.
  2. Cover your entire catalog
  3. Maximize the impact of your ads. Rework and personalize your Text ads
  4. Check your ad extensions and customize them.

Adenlab ‘s solutions and our agency’s proprietary software create campaigns, keywords, ads and extensions easily and automatically.

They allow you to personalize your ads according to the elements (metadata) in your catalog.

Adverts can be updated automatically according to price, number of products remaining or category promotion.

Develop your Audiences

Your audiences are the key to your success, and an essential performance lever.

Create audience pools with users who search for your products in advance, and retarget these lists during the sales period.

Check that your audience lists are present in all campaigns.

Adjust bids for your audience lists and customize your ads.

Optimize your Shopping inventory

Optimize your Merchant Center flow well in advance. Here are a few tips

Prepare your Shopping Feed for the sales season with sale prices and promotion dates.

It’s advisable to prepare and update the Shopping feed at least 7 days before the sale to avoid rejected items.

During sales, update your feed as often as possible if you make price changes to your products during the day.

Google Merchant Center: How to leverage your data, from google shopping reports to shopping feeds

Increase your presence on Mobile

Gone are the days when you reduced your visibility on mobile because conversion rates were too low. Not ensuring your presence on mobile would be a mistake!

With 34 million mobile users connecting to the Internet every day on their smartphones, we’ve well and truly entered the mobile era. At the end of 2018, France had 3 million more mobile users than in 2017
We’re no longer talking about “Mobile-first” but “Mobile-only”…
This domination of mobile is only getting stronger.

Source: Webloyalty infographic (https://webloyalty-panel.com)

Make sure you have a strong mobile presence!
It’s essential to increase the presence of your Search and Shopping campaigns on this device.

Keep an eye on your competitors' promotions

React to the competition for each product.

With Price Watch solutions, you can find out your exact price position in relation to a competitor, brand or category.

You’ll also be able to see which products are poorly positioned with just one click.

Ecommerce price watch

Adenlab

You can create personalized alerts to track your competitors’ price changes. For example, you could be alerted by email as soon as Product X on Amazon becomes 10% cheaper than you.

And we can automate your visibility on Google Shopping based on competitor price data (in our Lab: Price positioning and Shopping campaigns).

Contact us

Our Shopping and Performances Max campaign experts are available to answer all your questions; you can also reach us directly on 01 83 81 90 60 or by e-mail: contact@adenlab.com

Google Ads – Analytics: under-utilized data

Posted on by Adenlab Adenlab


Every year, we are surrounded by more and more data.

This is an undeniable asset for companies: the analysis of this data enables them to optimize their marketing strategy.

Communicating with the right target, at the right time, with the right product: that’s the goal of every company today!

However, data is not always put to the best possible use. Companies exploit it, but the analysis remains too superficial to be fully effective.

In this guide, we’ll focus on 2 essential digital marketing tools: Google Ads & Google Analytics.

These high-performance tools enable companies to collect a vast amount of data, but the evidence is clear: this data is under-exploited.

First, we’ll explain what data you’re likely to collect with these two tools.

Secondly, we’ll give you tips on how to optimize the use of the data you get from Google Ads and Google Analytics.

What data does Google Ads collect?

If you own a website, especially an e-commerce site, you’re probably familiar with Google Ads.

With just a few clicks, this tool enables you to create advertising campaigns that appear in the SERPs: the results pages of the Google search engine.

Here, we’re talking about SEA, not SEO: the sites aren’t listed naturally, but through a bidding system.

In order to appear in a good position in the Google Ads inserts that are displayed each time a web surfer makes a query, ads must meet a number of criteria:

CPC, also known as cost-per-click: the higher a site’s CPC compared to its competitors, the greater its chances of appearing in good position.
Ad quality: certain rules laid down by Google must be respected by advertisers
Landing page quality: in particular, the landing page must be consistent with the subject of the ad.

For e-commerce sites, tracking Google Ads campaigns is essential.

Thanks to this tool, you’ll always know what each keyword, each ad and each campaign is bringing in and costing you.

Google Ads campaigns are optimized on a daily basis, to improve conversions and meet targets.

That’s why it’s essential to analyze the data obtained through the Google Ads tracking and management tool.

Here are some data that may be important for an e-commerce site looking to improve its conversions:

The click-through rate (also known as CTR)
The number of times the ad is displayed
The keywords used by web users who have purchased from the e-commerce site after clicking on a sponsored ad
The location of web users and their profile who have clicked on the ad

All this data can be analyzed. The most important is undoubtedly the CTR.

If, after analysis, you realize that the CTR of your campaigns is low, it’s because you need to optimize them: your ads display well in the SERPs, but web users click on them relatively little.

In such a situation, you’ll probably have to rethink your strategy: modifying the ad with a catchier or less advertising text may be a solution to consider.

What data does Google Analytics collect?

Google Ads isn’t the only tool for collecting data.

Google Analytics is just as essential.

However, it doesn’t work in the same way as Google Ads:

Google Ads lets you analyze the data obtained from your sponsored ads
Google Analytics lets you analyze the performance of your website through statistics

Note that these two tools can be combined, which is very useful for e-commerce sites.

But more on that later. First, let’s take a look at the data that can be obtained using Google Analytics alone!

Here is a non-exhaustive list of data you can collect and analyze with Google Analytics in addition to the number of visits and page views over a given period:

Data related to the website audience:

Demographics (age, gender, etc.)
Geography (language, country)
Site behavior (new or repeat visitors, frequency of visits)
Technology used (operating system, browser, mobile)

Data related to the acquisition of the website audience:

Traffic sources, referring sites…
Google Ads
Social networks

Data relating to the behaviour of Internet users on the website:

Most viewed pages
Viewing time
Bounce rate
Destination page
Exit page
Site speed
Site search
Data linked to conversions…. provided that objectives have been defined beforehand!

For an e-commerce site, this section must be parameterized: this will enable you to carry out a more complete analysis.

So, if you find that certain pages of your website have a very high bounce rate, it’s because the strategy in place isn’t the most optimal.

You’ll probably have to think about modifying the content of the page to make it more attractive or more in line with what web users are looking for.

Similarly, demographic data will help you to better understand the visitors you are attracting to your website.

If you realize that a target spends a lot of time on a category on your e-commerce site, you can take this into account when setting up Google Ads.

Analyze project performance by combining Google Ads and Analytics

If you use Google Ads and Google Analytics separately, it’s a good idea to combine the two tools.

In this way, you’ll be able to analyze the performance of your campaigns and e-commerce site in a much more detailed and comprehensive way.

In particular, you can retrieve cost-per-click data from Google Ads, as well as conversion data from Google Analytics.

By merging these two types of data, you’ll obtain unprecedented information that will enable you to make strategic decisions in the future.

So, for each conversion, you’ll know which product was clicked on and which was sold. In this way, you’ll be able to compare the gain from selling a product on your website with its cost.

All the data you obtain from combining Google Ads and Analytics will give you a better understanding of your website’s traffic and conversions.

This information is extremely useful for improving your e-commerce site and your Adwords ads: with the right data at your disposal, you can make strategic and optimal decisions!

But how do you combine these two tools? Find out how:

  1. Start by logging in to your Google Ads account

  2. Click on Settings, then choose “Associated accounts” from the menu.

  3. Display the details by clicking on “Google Analytics”. You should then see a list of all the Analytics properties you can choose to associate.

  4. Choose one of the properties. Click on “Configure association”.

If the selected property has only one view, its name appears. Then click on “Import site statistics”.

This is the step that gives Google Ads access to your Analytics data.

If the selected property has multiple views, the methodology is a little different. You can choose between 2 parameters. The one we recommend is the import of site statistics.

But you can also choose the second method, “Associate”. In the latter case, you can associate as many views as you like.

  1. Validate the information and repeat the operation for each property you wish to associate between Analytics and Google Ads.

Once set up, you’ll be able to import Google Analytics goals and transactions, view all Analytics data in Google Ads reports, and import Analytics remarketing audiences.

Of course, you can also view Google Ads data in your Analytics reports.

Personalized attribution models: a winning strategy?

You can go even further in analyzing the data provided by Google Analytics and Google Ads. This involves setting up personalized attribution models.

Are you unfamiliar with the concept? Here’s some information to help you make sense of it:

The personalized attribution model is a set of rules that the statistics tool (Google Analytics) automatically applies to assign conversions to the various channels, i.e. traffic sources on your website.

The attribution model allows you to monitor your website in a much more detailed way, which is particularly interesting for e-commerce sites.

Indeed, when a sale takes place on your website, you don’t just want to know from which source it came.

In fact, you also want to know which were the decisive clicks that enabled the Internet user to buy on your website: it’s not necessarily the same click!

Note that if you don’t set up a custom attribution model, the default model will only give you information on the last click.

And yet, it’s not necessarily the most important one, the one that was decisive in the purchasing process.

Let's talk about the different clicks for a better understanding:

The first click: as the name suggests, this is the first click that brings a visitor to your website. This could be a click on a sponsored ad, in natural results, from a Facebook page, from a link in a blog, etc.

Intermediate clicks: these are clicks made by the visitor to your site, after the first one, which were not decisive for a purchase. So, if the first click comes from a sponsored ad, the second click may well come from natural results, and the third from your e-commerce site’s Facebook page.

Let’s talk more about the last click.

As explained above, this is the default click used by Google Analytics.

Let’s take an example: a visitor arrives on your website from a sponsored ad.

He doesn’t buy anything, but comes back to the site the next day from the natural results by typing your company’s name into the search engine to buy the product he’s interested in and that he’d spotted the day before.

In Google Analytics, this sale will be attributed to the “Google/Organic” channel: true, but not in full!

Don’t forget the importance of first and intermediate clicks.

Ideally, in Google Analytics, you should be able to trace the various stages that lead to a conversion: they’re all important!

And that’s exactly what the personalized attractiveness template allows you to do.

We therefore advise you to assign a custom attribution model, preferably the one that best suits your e-commerce site.

In fact, there is no single model, but many. For example, you can define a model that attributes all your conversions to the first interaction with your website.

Towards ever-better use of data?

To fine-tune your marketing strategy, it’s essential to use data.

The most effective technique is still to use the tools available to you and exploit them to the full.

So it’s important to take the time not only to set up Google Ads and Google Analytics, but also to combine them.

In the end, you won’t necessarily get more data, but data that makes more sense.

And it’s precisely this meaningful information that will enable you to fine-tune your marketing strategy, improve your ROI and achieve your business objectives.

E-commerce sites: don’t neglect the analysis and personalization of Google Ads and Google Analytics data! These are invaluable tools for the long-term success of your business.

How has Google adapted its results to the increasingly mobile habits of shoppers?

Posted on by Adenlab Adenlab

As I began this article, I thought it would be interesting to review the evolution of Google’s SERP (search engine results) and talk about the major changes of recent years.

In the end, however, I thought it more appropriate to review the information and show how Google is adapting its search engine to the growth in mobile traffic and the behavior of Internet users when searching for “products”.

All these developments naturally have an impact on campaign management, advertisers and their performance …

Part 1: Adapting SERPs to mobile behavior and traffic

With 34 million mobile users connecting to the Internet every day on their smartphones, we’ve well and truly entered the mobile era.

At the end of 2018, France had 3 million more mobile users than in 2017.

We no longer speak of “Mobile-first” but of “Mobile-only”…
This domination of mobile is only getting stronger.

With this information, it’s easy to understand Google’s need to adapt and harmonize its search engine results for both mobile and desktop users.

1. Displaying Adwords ads :

For several years now, Google has been testing and changing the way paid ads are displayed.

During 2013, a major change took place in the display: paid ads, until now identified by an orange-pink colored background, were no longer! The colored background disappears, and only a yellow tag with the word “Ads” appears next to the ad.

The timeline below illustrates the evolution of Google’s operations over the last few years.

Source : Search Engine Land

The display changes, visible above, have had an impact on user behavior and on the performance of sponsored links.

In fact, a recent study showed that over 55% of Internet users who consult Google don’t distinguish between sponsored and free links. Ofcom study summary
I’ll let you make your own conclusion 🙂

Which display for 2019?

Since 2016-2017, Google has been displaying its ads with the label “ads” or “annonce” in green.

It seems that something new is coming to the display ads this year.

Some tests are underway in the UK with a black display.
This information was published on the Search Engine Land blog.

It may only be a test run, but we’re expecting change.

2. Remove side ads

Back in February 2016, Google removed Adwords ads from the right-hand column of the SERP.

This removal was accompanied by the introduction of a fourth ad link in the “VIP square” at the top of the page.
Two exceptions:

Google Shopping ads gain visibility on the right-hand column
The Knowledge Graph

So from the 11 ads initially visible on a page (3 ads at the top of the page and 8 ads on the right-hand side of the results), we now have 7 ads visible in the results (4 ads at the top of the page and 3 ads at the bottom of the page).

Example of display on query “Seychelles stay” (to dream a little ;))

Google Ads text ads

This change of display is in line with the harmonization of the engine’s results on Desktop and Mobile, since cell phones were not displaying the right-hand columns in their results.

On the Desktop, Shopping campaign ads benefited from this space to display more products.

The same applies to the Knowledge Graph, which is also displayed in the right-hand column.

3. Expanded Text Ads (ETA)

The ETA format was an important change, allowing longer ads to be shown on all devices (computers, mobiles, tablets):

Historically, “classic” ads were structured as follows:

An ad title of 25 characters maximum
A first description of 35 characters maximum
A second description of 35 characters maximum
A displayed Url of 35 characters maximum

What’s new?

Second title line added (30 characters each)
Description lines merged (80 characters)
Customizable URL displayed (2 customizable fields of 15 characters each)

That’s a total of 170 characters; however, it’s the pixel size that counts for the display and length of the ad: a capital “M” is not the same size as a lowercase “m”, so your title may be “cut off” if the ad size is too large.

At the time, Google announced the results and benefits of this ad format:

A title that takes up more space to better showcase your products and services
Up to 50% more space for your ads (computer and mobile)
Up to 20% more CTR

Once again, the reasons given by Google for this major change: mobile.

Indeed, more than half of all searches are now carried out from a mobile device. The objective was to harmonize ad formats and display in search results.

Mobile Mobile Mobile… that’s one obvious conclusion I can draw from the changes we’ve made. For e-tailers, these changes have an impact not only on AdWords campaign performance, but also on budget allocation.

As a reminder, spending by advertisers on Google is still on the rise, and search (sponsored links, paid referencing) is the No. 1 item in the digital mix, accounting for 45% of online advertising spend (21st Observatoire de l’e-pub).

Search marketing is still dominated by Google, which accounts for almost 93% of search engine queries in France.

35% of purchases were made on Mobile in 2018 (+22% on 2017)

The second part is devoted to the major changes Google is proposing to the Shopping experience.

Part 2: Evolution of the Shopping Experience on Google

In 2014, Google had announced a change in its algorithm with what was called “Mobilegeddon” in favor of mobile/responsive sites in natural search (SEO) results;

A move designed to encourage e-tailers to speed up their transformation to more “mobile” sites, in the face of ever-increasing mobile traffic.

If we go back to Cisco’s forecasts on mobile traffic, it became essential for e-tailers (and Google) to adapt to the new uses we make of our “phones”…

Cisco’s forecasts were clear: worldwide mobile traffic will increase by a factor of 9.2 (between 2015 and 2020), at a rate of 56% per year.

In fact, to force the march towards mobile, in 2014 Google launched the “mobile-friendly” label; the label is displayed in mobile search results, signaling to the surfer that the link’s web page met the criteria established by Google.

In the same move (May 2015), and a little more radically, it’s Google’s algorithm that favors “mobile” sites in natural results.

It’s the “Mobilegeddon”: the name given to the algorithm update in favor of “mobile friendly” sites. This update would have enhanced the natural results of 4.7% of “mobile” sites.

For many e-tailers, it has been difficult to assess the impact of mobile traffic on sales, as the volume of direct transactions remains lower.

It’s even harder to understand (or accept) when this traffic is paid for.

For a large number of sites, the situation remained the same: growing mobile traffic, but too few conversions…

As a result, Google has come up with new advertising formats that are supposed to be better adapted to the product searches and shopping moments of Internet/mobile users.

1. Shopping ad format on mobile: before/after

Here’s an overview of the evolution of Shopping ads on mobile. The results are clear: more space for Shopping ads with larger images. These changes are having an impact on advertisers’ budgets and traffic.

Clicks on Shopping (Mobile) ads increased by 193% Q1 2016 in the US (Q1 Digital Marketing Report by Merkleinc).

To build on this momentum, in May 2016, Google announced that Shopping ads would also be displayed in the engine’s “Images” results.

Since then, click volume has jumped significantly on the desktop: +13%.

evolution Google Shopping ads

2. Showcase format for Shopping Campaigns

The simple fact is that 40% of shoppers’ Google searches are generic, vague searches.

Example: A search such as “sports shoes”, “evening dress”, “bedroom furniture”.

This type of imprecise search generates a lot of traffic (and acquisition costs). If I were an e-merchant, I wouldn’t want to pay too much for this type of prospect, who I imagine is still a long way from making a purchase.

On the other hand, I want to make sure that Internet users looking for a specific product can consult my offers.

During the “generic” search, you and I want to consult a wide range of products to find ideas or direct me towards a product that meets my needs.

Example: The dress I’d like to give my wife for her birthday, I think I’ll shop around on several sites to make my choice.

Today’s Shopping ads are much better at answering specific queries, and are less interesting for undecided web users.

In this example, there are several stages in the search for and use of the “Showcase”:

  1. I search for “mirror” on Google
  2. Google displays several “Showcases” per advertiser
  3. I click on the advertiser, here Home Decor.
  4. All Home Decor “mirrors” are displayed.

The “Showcase” format seems to meet my need to browse and choose from online store catalogs.

And for e-tailers, paying for clicks from more qualified prospects.

3. Mobile price extension

Last but not least … July 2016, Google introduces the price extension.
The aim of this extension for mobile text ads: to attract ever more qualified leads, by adding information about the price ranges of your products and services.

With this type of extension, we can “imagine” that Google has taken inspiration from e-tailers’ Shopping campaigns, which overall have higher conversion rates than text ads.

It’s also a way of discouraging buyers who don’t want to buy your products or services at the prices you charge.

For more information about Google Ads strategies and campaigns, please contact us!

Google Ads: improve your quality score in 4 easy steps

Posted on by Adenlab Adenlab

Want to optimize the performance of your Google Ads campaigns? Increase your sales without increasing your expenses? To do so, you need to improve your Quality Score. Discover our four-point checklist to boost your performance.

What is the Google Ads Quality Score?

First of all, for the uninitiated, Quality Score is Google’s evaluation of your SEA campaigns. This score looks at the quality of the user experience, from reading your ads to clicking through to your site’s landing pages. You can also find Google’s definition of Google Ads Quality Score here.

The Quality Score can range from 1 to 10, with 1 being the lowest and 10 the highest. You can view it on your Google Ads dashboard.

Quality Score

Essentially, the Quality score (or Google Ads quality level) is an indication of how your ads and landing pages benefit consumers. To understand how it’s determined, there are three main factors that influence the score:

  • **CTR (Click-Through Rate): how likely is it that someone will click on your ad when Google displays it?
  • Ad relevance: does the ad meet the needs expressed in the targeted keywords? Does it make sense for the ad to appear when someone searches for a particular keyword?
  • The quality of the landing page: does the information on the landing page correspond to what the ad is proposing, and vice versa?

These three points give you a good indication of the steps you need to take to optimize your campaigns, i.e. :

  1. Optimizing CTR
  2. Improve the relevance of your ads
  3. Offer your visitors a quality experience on your landing pages
  4. … and we’ll give you one last tip for optimizing your ads

How can you optimize the CTR of your Google Ads to improve your Quality Score?

CTR estimates the probability that someone will click on your ad when it appears for one of your chosen keywords. It assumes that the search term corresponds exactly to the targeted keyword. This probability is expressed as a status:

  • Above average
  • Medium
  • Below average

The first two cases mean that there’s no significant problem with the expected CTR, even if it’s obvious that an above-average CTR will have a better chance of converting.

However, a below-average CTR is clearly problematic. In this case, it’s essential to modify the ad text associated with this keyword as quickly as possible (in particular, by repeating the keyword more often).

Let’s take the example of a men’s shoe salesman targeting a customer looking for sneakers. His ad group might contain the following keywords: white sneakers, city sneakers, leather sneakers, suede sneakers…

A poorly written ad would say:

Marcel’s shoes
Visit our online store to discover a wide variety of shoes and benefit from a 50% discount!

Note that this ad doesn’t contain any of the relevant keywords, which means that the surfer who typed the queries detailed in the ad group is unlikely to click on them.

Here’s what a more attractive ad might look like:

Les souliers de Marcel – City and sport sneakers
Leather, fabric or suede sneakers: discover our range of white or colored sneakers, in a wide variety of materials.
Promotion on white sneakers: get 50% off our leather, fabric or suede sneakers.

This example shows how useful it is to create two or more ads per ad group. You can then incorporate more than one targeted keyword in each ad to improve your CTR.

Please note: in addition to working on your ad text, you can also refine your keywords to improve your expected CTR. Consider removing keywords that people aren’t really looking for, or add a wider variety of keywords to your ad groups by performing a keyword diagnostic. For example, for online stores, semantic analysis to identify the highest volumes of queries by product type is highly recommended.

How can you improve the relevance of your Google Ads to increase your quality score?

The second essential point for improving your Google Ads Quality score is to consider the relevance of your ads. The objective here is to know to what extent the message of your ads corresponds to the keywords they target.

Again, there are three possible statuses for ad relevance: “Above average”, “Average” or “Below average”.

Using the keyword groups targeted by Les Souliers de Marcel Boutique (white sneakers, dress sneakers, leather sneakers, suede sneakers…), an ad with a status of “Below Average” might say:

Marcel’s shoes
Visit our boutiques located in the heart of Paris, to sport the capital’s finest looks.

This ad isn’t relevant enough, because it doesn’t include any of the keywords on which the store bids, and their content doesn’t deal with sneakers. To improve the relevance of this ad, simply reformulate it by adding these keywords.

Les souliers de Marcel – The most beautiful sneakers in Paris
Visit our Paris boutiques to discover our sneaker models in leather, suede or fabric. White or colored, the choice is yours!

How can I improve the user experience on my landing pages to increase my Quality Score?

When you’re trying to improve the Quality Score of your Google Ads campaigns, you need to analyze the relevance of your landing pages in relation to the expectations of users who have typed in the keywords you’re targeting.

Here are some useful questions to ask yourself:

  • How useful is my landing page to someone who clicks on the ad?
  • Is my landing page well organized?
  • Does its editorial content relate to the targeted search terms (keywords)?
  • Is my landing page clear?
  • Do the products I offer match my target keywords?

Returning to the Souliers de Marcel example, we can examine one of the enhanced ads above:

Les souliers de Marcel – White sneakers
Discover our selection of white sneakers for men, in leather or fabric.

Suppose someone searches for “White sneakers”, looks at your ad and clicks on it… only to be redirected to a landing page featuring colored sneakers.

The page doesn’t match this person’s search term, which means it’s of no use to them.

Or, suppose someone clicks on your ad that matches their search term, but they’re bombarded with pop-ups or the page takes too long to load.

These factors are likely to affect their user experience and cause them to leave your landing page.

With this in mind, make sure your landing page is well organized and contains everything the visitor needs. We recommend including useful information, related links, a clear view of the shopping cart and contact information.

Our final tip for improving your quality score: group your keywords by semantic field.

When you set up your campaigns and integrate your ads and keywords, you create ad groups in which they will be placed. To do this, it’s best to use several logical ad groups (sorted by semantic field) rather than grouping all your keywords together in a single ad group.

Example of ad groups targeting device models

The methodology we recommend is as follows: group your keywords into similar categories, then create relevant ads for each category.
For example:

Ad group: sneakers

  • Fabric sneakers
  • Leather sneakers
  • Suede sneakers

Ad group: Richelieu

  • Men’s Richelieu
  • Black Richelieu
  • Richelieu with buckles

Ad group: Moccasins

  • Leather loafers
  • Blue loafers
  • Men’s moccasins

In short, improving your Quality score in your Google Ads campaigns helps you maximize the performance of your advertising budget. By optimizing your ads according to the three criteria that influence the quality score: expected click-through rate (CTR), ad relevance and landing page experience, you’ll achieve better results and control your spending.

*CTR is a ratio indicating how often people who see your ad actually click on it. CTR can be used to evaluate the performance of your campaigns (choice of keywords and relevance of your ads).

Fourth quarter: how to develop and exploit your audiences?

Posted on by Adenlab Adenlab


Businesses are growing, and visits to e-commerce sites explode in the fourth quarter. During these last three months of the year, good remarketing techniques and targeting are essential for visibility.

What to do? Why do we pay more attention in the fourth quarter ? What are the factors to take into account to make the difference?

See also: Guarantee the success of your sponsored campaigns with targeting, remarketing and your audiences

Boost your sales in the 4th quarter

Stronger shopper demand at the end of the year

The fourth quarter corresponds to the months from September to December. During this period, Internet users are doing more product research, and your audience and traffic will increase.

That’s why your targeting needs to be extremely well thought-out, and your digital communication needs to be effective.

With the arrival of the cold and bad weather, and especially the festive season, consumers are spending more time in front of their screens (computers and mobiles).

The seasons motivate us to change our wardrobe or make changes at home. Find family gifts or prepare orders for sales or Black Friday;
It’s the perfect time to be visible and present to meet demand.

November and December are the most important gift-buying months of the year, and the search for gifts begins as early as the beginning of October.

Mintel 2018

Important dates at the end of the year

From September to December, there are several major events to boost sales: Halloween, New Year’s Eve, Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
This is a time when consumer spending is at its peak. It’s essential to create communication campaigns and target your audiences.

If we talk about Black Friday alone, we should remember:

  1. growing French interest in the event
  2. Black Friday didn’t slow Christmas growth in December 2018
  3. Mobile accounted for 69% of the traffic for clothing websites during Black Friday and Cyber Monday

Evolution of Black Friday and sales from 2017 to 2018

To keep up with the competition, one of our tips is also to review your keyword targeting and the themes you want to cover.

Consumers conduct new searches and are more likely to buy your products.

Why not combine your audience parameters with keywords such as “Christmas gift ideas”, “black friday promotions” or “50% cyber monday”.

See also: Guarantee the success of your sponsored campaigns with targeting, remarketing and your audiences

The power of remarketing

During these end-of-year months, you need to implement a remarketing strategy.
You need to re-engage Internet users who perform a certain number of actions on your site.

Without the act of buying, the prospects who came to your site must not forget your existence. and be visible as soon as your prospect is ready to buy.

Your online store needs to establish itself as the expert in your industry. With Facebook Ads and Google Ads, you can easily target these pre-qualified audiences, who mustn’t forget you.

Be responsive to ensure the customer experience

The biggest orders arrive during Black Friday and the month of December. As demand increases, e-tailers need to be ready. Black Friday isn’t just about sales on the day.

The effect of this event lasts over time: we’re no longer talking about a day, but rather a week of promotion. All these factors need to be taken into account if you are to have enough stock on hand for the boxes 😉

Purchases can also be extremely well thought-out. Some consumers spot before and then buy during promotions. We need to take advantage of this practice with remarketing on Google and Facebook.

They need to see the product, but also feel that it’s an exceptional offer that won’t be repeated. The fear of not taking advantage of the discount motivates them to buy.

See also: Create a Dynamic campaign with products from your catalog on Facebook.

Conclusion

During the fourth quarter, e-tailers have great sales opportunities. To be successful, it’s essential to have well-configured remarketing campaigns and target audiences.

Our team is available to discuss and support you at these strategic moments of the year. We’ll be happy to discuss your SEA strategies, and you’ll benefit from the expertise of a Google Partner Premier-certified SEA agency, specialized in e-commerce campaigns.

Average CTR on Google: it’s possible to increase your click-through rate by a factor of 3!

Posted on by Adenlab Adenlab

What is the average click-through rate (CTR) of a Google Ads ad? When people ask this question, it’s often because they want to evaluate the click-through rate of their own ads.

CTR = Clic through rate => click-through rate

Unfortunately, too many advertisers are content to achieve an average click-through rate and leave it at that.

Here’s an article to help you maximize your click-through rate and triple your performance on the average Google CTR.

What is a good click-through rate (CTR) on Google?

This obviously depends a great deal on your industry, the competition and your objectives. However, you should know that marketers who settle for 2-5% CTR are not up to the job.

We can’t see our competitors’ data, so we don’t know if their CTRs are similar to ours.

What we do know, however, is that whether or not our CTRs are “good” depends largely on the position of our ad. Ads in higher positions naturally have higher CTRs than those in lower positions.

The chart above reflects average CTRs per ad position on Google, based on an analysis of nearly 100,000 advertiser accounts representing $3 billion in annualized spend. This gives a pretty good idea of the big picture when it comes to the CTRs that real advertisers are actually experiencing.

So the ad in second place has an average click-through rate of 4%. You might think that’s good, but it’s just an average. So if that’s what you’re seeing in your account, you’ve got plenty of room for improvement.

Averages are fine, but there’s still a lot of variability between advertisers, as you can see in the graph below. Remember, these are not keywords – each blue dot indicates an advertiser account.

In this chart, you can see the expected or average CTR curve in orange, while the green and purple curves show what you need to aim for if you want to achieve CTRs two to three times higher than average.

These data show us that there are indeed a few accounts that stand out from the crowd and far outstrip their competitors. What does it take to be one of these exceptional advertisers?

The bottom 50% of advertisers achieve average or lower CTRs. If you want to be among the top 15% in the highly competitive Google Ads landscape, you need to achieve an average CTR on your account that’s twice the average (we call these “awesome” advertisers). If you achieve a CTR three times the average, you become a super-awesome advertiser, which is the case for about 1 in 20 advertisers.

You can quickly check whether your own CTR is above or below the average for your sector.

But why not aim for the stars? If you want to be in the top 1%, you need to achieve an average CTR six times the norm – we call these advertisers “Unicorns”. They’re rare, but I promise you that Google Ads unicorns do exist. They’re not inherently better than you; they just work harder and optimize their campaigns better.

So how do these unicorns do it? First, we need to understand…

The importance of quality scores and how Google Ads works

Understanding how AdWords auctions work is essential if you want to optimize and improve your performance.

Google ads are live auctions. Google must determine the ranking position of each ad, as well as the cost of each click, in real time for each ad in the auction.

Google uses ad ranking to determine your position in the auction and your CPC. The latter is calculated by multiplying the maximum cost-per-click bid (the maximum you’re willing to pay for a click) by your Quality Score (Google’s assessment of the quality of your ads).

Note: Google has recently updated Ad Rank to include the expected performance of ad extensions, but the basic principle remains the same.

In this example, you can see exactly how Quality Score can affect your performance in this live auction.

The main advertiser, who obtained the first position, had a maximum bid that was $2 lower than that of his competitor, but his Quality Score and therefore his ranking were much higher, enabling him to obtain a better position and a lower CPC :

Google does this because it doesn’t get paid if no one clicks on its ads, and therefore prioritizes the ads most likely to succeed.

The average Quality Score is around 5.1 out of 10.

If you have an above-average Quality Score, you can get up to 50% off your cost per click. Conversely, if you have a below-average Quality Score, you can pay up to 400% more.

But CPC is only one measure among many. What about the actual cost per conversion? Here, we’ve also seen an inverse relationship, across billions of dollars of ad spend, whereby as your Quality Score increases, your cost per conversion decreases, because your clicks are so much cheaper.

How is Quality Score calculated? In general, the higher your CTR, the higher your Quality Score. However, as you can see from the chart below, there’s a lot of variance, thanks to ad positioning.

As we saw earlier, ads at the top of the page are predisposed to getting more clicks than those further down.

The blue line at the bottom, for example, refers to keywords in positions 1.0 to 1.5. Quality Score is not calculated solely on the basis of your CTR, but on the basis of your over- or under-performance in relation to the expected CTR.

In the following graph, you can clearly see how important your CTRs are in calculating your Quality Score.

It’s all relative.

Your Quality Score, which is the key to getting prominent ad placements and low CPCs and CPAs, isn’t entirely based on your CTR. Rather, your ads and keywords must be above the expected average. This is the key to a high Quality Score.

What about these unicorns?
We’ve seen so far that an above-average CTR will help you achieve your goals, but to be better, you need more.

When we see “unicorn” accounts in the AdWords Performance Grader, they share some common characteristics:

– Every keyword in their account has a high Quality Score.
– They make effective use of negative keywords to reduce unnecessary expenditure.
– Their high impression share shows that Google loves to show their ads.
– They have very high, impressive double-digit CTRs that are several times higher than the average.
– They target very specific, long-range keyword phrases.
– Their account activity is high – they continue to optimize and improve all the time.

If you can focus on ad and keyword combinations that have these above-average CTRs, the rewards are enormous: higher impression shares, higher ad positions, lower costs per click and lower conversions.

The unicorn hunt

By now you know what Google Ads unicorns look like, and you should have a good idea of why they’re so desirable. Let’s take a look at each of these features so you can replicate this success on your own account.

Unicorn keyword strategy

The top 1% of all Google Ads accounts tend to focus on keywords with strong commercial intent. This is not surprising, as people tend to click more when they are already motivated and intend to buy. For example, “best Internet marketing software” or “stainless steel dishwasher” are keyword phrases that demonstrate buying intent.

Branded keywords are another fantastic opportunity for advertisers, but we’re not just talking about your own brand. Target partner brands, competitor brands or other brands that your target market might be looking for when they’re in buying mode.

A third type of keyword that performs well are local keywords, where the searcher’s intention is to find your business – or your competitor’s (for example, “San Diego personal trainer”). These words tend to get high click-through rates, as local searchers often have strong commercial intent.

Avoid informative keywords wherever possible. These are often formulated as questions, such as “What is a dishwasher?” or “Where is Paris?”. These searchers tend to look for Wikipedia-type information and have no intention of buying, which can result in a lower CTR or unnecessary spend.

Warning about dynamic keyword insertion
If you want to achieve unicorn status, don’t overuse dynamic keyword insertion, or DKI. This is a strategy that consists of using a certain syntax in your ads to enable Google to automatically substitute the keyword that triggered the ad in the ad’s text or title.

Dynamic keyword insertion is beneficial, but only up to a point, as illustrated below:

Here we have two curves: the red curve corresponds to ads with DKI and the blue to those without. The red curve shows that ads with DKI are relatively more abundant in the top 15%. However, as you move into the top 5% of ads, down to the unicorn ads, you’ll notice that the red curve drops below the blue curve.

Dynamic keyword insertion ads seem to be hitting a wall. This tells us that they should certainly be part of your toolbox, as they tend to produce slightly higher initial returns, but don’t put too much faith in them.

Ad extensions – are they the miracle solution?

Google seems to release new ad extensions almost every week, but what impact does using ad extensions have on ad Quality Score and will it help you become a unicorn?

This graph shows that impact, and it’s not a game-changer. We can see that accounts that used sitelinks on their ads did slightly better than those that didn’t, which is no surprise.

Extensions can increase CTR, but they won’t fix boring text. It’s a modest increase, but it won’t double or triple your CTR rates.

Most ads suck. Create emotional ads.

Additional tip: Optimizing mobile ads

Our research has shown that calls from mobile ads convert 3 times more than clicks to a website. When testing mobile ads, you should base your conclusions on call rates, not CTR or conversion rates.

I’ll say it again: focus on call rates and do everything you can to get people to click on the “click to call” button.

What to remember about CTR optimization?

Deleting the bottom third of your account could be a good idea: your low CTR, low impression share and poor performing keywords. The idea here is to maximize the budget you’re currently spending on useless ads.

As you can see here, the average cost per click can be significantly lower in a number of areas of the Google Display Network than in Google Search.

Similarly, conversion rates for display ads are comparable to those for search ads, especially when using remarketing. In some sectors, such as automotive and travel, conversion rates for display ads can be even higher.

Many search results pages look like this, with boring ads that all look the same. That’s exactly why position can make such a difference, because the only differentiating factor is where an ad appears on the page.

This is a huge opportunity for you.

When you see a bunch of boring, dry, similar ads appearing for a query, you have a chance to stand out and be different. I like to call this the “Google ad jackpot”. The alternative is to find something that stands out from the crowd, that uses emotional triggers.

Create emotionally-charged ads with Swiss army knife brainstorming.

Respected marketer Perry Marshall has devised a structured brainstorming method for creating compelling advertising copy, called the “Swiss Army Knife”. You take different entities such as your customer, something your customer loves, something your customer hates, your customer’s best friend, your customer’s enemy and so on. You then determine how your brand connects or relates to each entity and build from there.

It’s a simple, structured brainstorming process that can help you generate more compelling and emotional ad copy to test, by blending these concepts, like this:

This is a perfect example of a unicorn ad, with a click-through rate of over 30%, that stands out from all the boring divorce lawyer ads.

Your ad copy needs to resonate on an emotional level, and it needs to be different to stand out. You need to test the important elements of your advertising message – things like your guarantee, your unique selling proposition and your offer.

Understanding relative abundance

Unicorns wouldn’t be so special if they were abundant. In fact, only one ad in 100 is a unicorn. The chances of finding it the first time are slim to none; on average, you have to try 100 different ads to find your unicorn.

The more ads you create and test, the more likely you are to come across one that beats the average by 2, 3 or even 6 times!

You don’t test as many ads as you think.
You may be thinking, “I already have THOUSANDS of ads on my account! The last thing I want to do is write more ads!”

That may be true, but I can almost guarantee that you’re not testing as many ads as you think. Certainly not all of them were created using the vision and process described above.

Let me tell you a secret: the bar, especially for SMBs, is incredibly low. The average Google Ads account for a small business has just 18 ads. You may not be able to reach 100 ads this month or even this year, but if you work at it and test even 40 or 50, you’re already doing much better than the majority of your competitors.

5% of ads account for 85% of impressions

Here’s more good news: you can get rid of your poorly performing ads, and there are plenty of them.

Across all accounts, we found that the top 5% of ads in an advertiser’s account accounted for 85% of their impressions.

You don’t need to test 100 ads for each ad group in your account.

Instead, choose your top two or three ad groups and concentrate your efforts there. Test them thoroughly, ideally reaching 100 ads to test in each of these top-performing groups.

Of course, you can start by having us audit your Google Ads campaigns. This is an essential first step in determining the health of your Google Ads account and identifying opportunities for optimization.
Want to know more?
Contact us – Adenlab, your Google Ads Agency

Google Ads and Facebook Ads: How to ensure the success of your campaigns with Audience Settings and Remarketing

Posted on by Adenlab Adenlab


When developing your business and e-commerce, you want to reach the widest possible audience to ensure your company’s growth and profitability. But to convert and build loyalty, you need to be able to address the right people with the right message , and not just the general public.

In the article below, we’ll review the principles of targeting and persona, essential for formulating your strategy for acquiring new customers and prospects. We’ll focus on the different audience optimization levers we can implement on your Google and Facebook campaigns.

Contents

Personas
Creativity and the seductive message
The customer journey
Exploiting audiences and retargeting
The different types of Audiences and their interests

Audience targeting levers are extremely important in managing campaigns on search engines, the Display advertising network and social networks.

Unlike physical stores, which have a conversion rate of 55%, e-merchant sites convert between 1% and 3% of visitors. So it’s essential to attract visitors with a clear interest in your products and services.

Persona: the key to understanding your customers

To optimize your approach and ensure successful communication, it’s essential to establish one or more customer profiles. These are known as personas. This has many advantages: 1 Understand their problems and present the ideal solution 2 Identify your audience to target your Google campaigns and Facebook ads 3 Identify their habits to be present in the right place at the right time The persona study allows you to put yourself in your audience’s shoes and find the right words.

How do you create a persona?

To identify the real problems and habits of your audience, you need to think deeply. Put yourself in the shoes of your ideal customer.

List their demographic and behavioural data, consumer habits, daily problems…
One possible approach is to create a typical day: from dawn to dusk, what does your ideal customer do?

There are several sites that allow you to create personas using just a few pieces of data: SurveyMonkey, UseForge, Up Close and Persona or Personapp.

Example: Here’s my simplified persona

Example: Here’s my simplified persona

The process of setting up a persona is not necessarily a simple one, and can take time (brainstorming, teamwork, etc.).

On the other hand, once you’ve done it or redone it, it opens up new possibilities, new ideas for improving your offers and, of course, your acquisition campaigns.

It’s a very rich exercise that I recommend doing as a team.

See also: Building your audience on Facebook : foolproof techniques to implement

Creativity: Address your prospects with an attractive message

Convey the right message on the right medium, and maintain the high quality of your advertising.

Now that you know your customers better and want to guarantee a return on investment from your campaigns, you need to convey the right message on the right medium, and keep the quality of your advertising (image, video, content, text) at a high level.

In fact, targeting and persona work won’t be enough if the quality of the ads and advertising creatives isn’t up to scratch.

Nielsen Catalina Research study: 47% of ROI is attributed to the quality of advertising creative

Nielsen Catalina Research study

The quality of the images and the message is still a major factor in attracting new customers. What resonance will the ad have after it has been seen?
The Nielson study is clear: 47% of ROI is attributed to the quality of the creative.

With the right design, we can ensure optimal distribution on the various channels: search engines, Display, social networks ….

See also: how to find the right themes to captivate your audience?

The customer journey and the purchasing decision

Towards an ever more complex customer journey

Consumer behavior has evolved in recent years, and has become increasingly complex.

10 years ago, a customer’s path to purchase was still relatively straightforward, but today there are many more interaction points before a purchase or conversion on your site.

You need to be seen in the right place, at the right time, with the right message.

This means delivering your ads across multiple formats and channels, and paying particular attention to performance, budget allocation and sales/conversion attribution analysis.

**See also: Dynamic campaigns and catalog distribution on Facebook

Customer journey “Before” :

Shopping on an e-commerce site

Today’s customer journey:

Today, the purchasing process is more complex

In fact, the evolution of cell phones and the number of screens per household are multiplying the points of contact with your customers.

“With nearly 5 billion mobile users worldwide, 6 screens per household
in France, and more than half of all searches carried out on Google in France and worldwide from a smartphone, the points of contact between consumers and brands have multiplied.”
Roland Duffau, Google

To better understand this evolution, Google and Facebook, as well as agencies like Adenlab, have invested heavily in Machine Learning (AI) technologies.

These learning algorithms enable marketers to make the most of the signals of intent left by Internet users as they navigate the web.

How to leverage audiences and retargeting (or remarketing) with Google Ads campaigns?

The different types of audiences offered by Google enable you to reach individuals along their decision-making paths.

Whether for traffic prediction, virtual assistants, fraud detection… Machine Learning is at the heart of Google Ads or Facebook Ads tools.

The use of Machine Learning algorithms today makes it possible to simplify complex tasks and focus on business objectives, define qualified audiences, and then let the algorithms determine who to engage as relevant prospects.

Below, we’ll illustrate the different types of audiences offered by Google, which enable us to reach individuals along their decision-making paths.

Use an audience-based approach in your Google Ads accounts

In recent years, one of the major challenges for Google Ads has been to break down the silos between ad formats and audiences:

In the past, when we wanted to target an audience with high purchase intent, we preferred the Google Shopping format (and sometimes the text format).

Today, with the right Audience settings, when we target “buyers”, we use Google Shopping, Text Ads, but above all what’s changing is that we also use the Display Network and YouTube!

In terms of targeting, Google Ads technology has clearly evolved, making it possible to use many more formats and distribution channels to achieve your growth and ROI objectives.

What are the main types of Audiences and how can they be used in your targeting strategy?

We leave “traces” everywhere on the web (and anonymously). Every day, we emit signals that are stored (thanks to cookies), analyzed and interpreted;
This makes it possible to understand and categorize behavior and people into different audiences.

Read more: Google Analytics secrets: Integrating specialized e-commerce audience lists

These audience categories can be used to manage campaigns on Google Ads or Facebook Ads. They enable us to target and prioritize a certain type of person according to our campaign objectives.

Ex: If our goal is to gain more visibility for my brand, I’ll target a demographic audience and an affinity audience.

Illustration of audience typologies in relation to your conversion funnel

Audience demographics

Generally used to target (or exclude) a large audience, they can be used to promote your company by segmenting users according to age, gender, income, profession or family composition (married or not, children…).

Example in Google Ads of a demographic audience selection: here Parental status

Here’s an example in Google Ads of demographic audience selection, by parental status.

See also: Audience exclusion, or how not to wear out your prospects?

Affinity Audiences and Personalized Affinity Audiences

These audiences will enable us to target an audience that is close to your buyers and has been identified as having a real interest in your products and services; in fact, it’s their lifestyle, habits and interests that are analyzed.

Custom affinity audiences will allow you to combine additional parameters in Google Ads, such as keywords to target, Urls and site content, the types of places your prospects frequent, and the applications they’re likely to use.

Example of audience selection by buying behavior

Example of a center of interest

Life event

These audiences allow us to target people who are going through occasional events in their lives, such as weddings, births, but also moves…

Its audiences have multiple needs.
If we take the example of a birth, I can assure you that Google searches for “strollers”, “cribs”, “do I make a good father” will be regular searches. Definitely worth implementing!

Market audiences

With market audiences, you target people who are actively looking for your products and seriously considering buying them.

This is an audience you must activate in your campaigns, as it’s generally more ROI-intensive and even closer to the profile of your current customers and buyers.

Similar audiences

As the name suggests, similar audiences target people whose behavior is very similar to that of your existing customers;

These audience lists are updated in real time! And your ads will be shown to people who have something in common with your ideal customers and prospects.

Selection of audiences similar/similar to your regular site traffic

Retargeting (or remarketing) audiences

Re-targeting “known” audiences who have come to your site is often a winning strategy, and doesn’t require too much budgetary effort.

In fact, the people who have come to your site already have a relatively strong intention to buy, and above all, they know you.

However, not every visitor to your site has the same value: you need to segment and distinguish between visitors who have left without doing anything, and those who have abandoned their purchasing process and are therefore much more likely to convert on your site.

Audience Customer Match

To target and exclude this audience, you first need to import your e-mail database into Google Ads.

This audience will also be very useful for creating similar audiences.

Conclusion

These audience typologies are much the same for Facebook ads. As a result, a wide range of approaches can be devised to develop your sales:

  1. Target by interests
  2. Your competitor’s fans or your fans’ friends
  3. Age groups, professions, Facebook activities, geographical locations…
  4. Family status (children, couple, married): useful for advertising events such as Mother’s Day, Father’s Day or Valentine’s Day.

However, before taking the plunge, we recommend an observation phase on Google Ads and Google Analytics.

Over a relatively short period of time (depending on the traffic of your campaigns) you can identify the audiences that best meet your objectives. This observation phase will enable you to refine your segmentations and subsequently optimize your visibility and budget allocation.

Don’t hesitate to consult us for your acquisition strategies and the implementation of audience strategies on Google and Facebook.
Our SEA Agency, certified Google Partner Premier and Facebook Ads, applies different methods and uses various automation tools to develop the accounts of E-Commerce customers.

We specialize in high-volume projects and work on catalogs with a large number of references.

Google Ads: Evolutions and changes that you absolutely must implement in your Google Ads campaigns!

Posted on by Adenlab Adenlab

To get 2020 off to a flying start, we’ve selected 8 Google Ads evolutions from this year, 2019, that are having and will continue to have an impact on the year ahead.

In addition to presenting these updates, Natalya Donnat – Adenlab’s Director of Operations, comments on each of them and gives you her opinion and the results obtained with these various new features.
The article is comprehensive and rich in information that you can use for your own E-commerce or lead acquisition campaigns.
Of course, we’re available for face-to-face discussions. So don’t hesitate to contact us and ask for more information on how we can help you manage your Google Ads campaigns and reach your goals in 2020!

New audiences for Google Ads search campaigns

Two new audience segments for more effective targeting

The first update we’d like to introduce to you is the new audience types offered by Google Ads;
Indeed, for our teams and our customers, audience targeting offers significant opportunities for growth and profitability, as well as numerous advantages. We’ve made it a priority in our SEA campaign management.

It was in October that Google announced the official launch of new affinity audience segments in Points of Interest and seasonal event segments in “In-Market Audiences”.

  • Affinity Audiences (user interests and habits)

The Affinity audience segment is a group of consumers who have expressed an interest in a particular subject. To determine whether someone qualifies for this affinity audience, Google takes into account factors such as search history, frequently visited web pages…

In its October announcement, Google used the example of a company selling camping equipment. If this were your company, your goal would be to reach your prospects by retargeting keywords such as “camping tent”. With the affinity audience, you’ll be able to target this keyword while simultaneously associating an affinity audience like “Running enthusiasts.”

In the example below, the “Running enthusiasts” audience segment represents

In other words, affinity audiences for text ads enable you to refine your targeting, make your ads more effective, deliver a more compelling message, and increase your click-through and conversion rates.

Audiences by “User interests and habits
  • Seasonal Buying Audiences (in Market Audiences)

In-market audiences” allow you to limit the reach of your ads to users who are actively looking for a product or service like yours.
In fact, the new seasonal shopping audiences (= Christmas shopping, Back-to-school shopping, Black Friday shopping, Mother’s Day shopping), will allow you to target consumers who are actively looking for a product or service for a specific occasion (= Christmas shopping, Back-to-school shopping, Black Friday shopping, Mother’s Day shopping).

Market audiences and seasonal purchasing segments

“Indeed, this is good news for our customers, whose objectives are often focused on growth and profitability.
The affinity and in-market audiences have enabled us to target the right person at the right time, and the creation of these new segments to be all the more refined in our adjustments and optimize budgets and expenditure.
Some results obtained: We used affinity and in-market audiences for an advertiser in the Cosmetics sector. Audiences were applied to the Search network and Youtube. Using the “Black friday” segment, the advertiser recorded a 28% improvement in conversions and a 42% reduction in acquisition costs.”
Natalya Donnat – Adenlab Operations Manager

We’ve written several articles on the subject of audience strategies. You can, however, read or re-read “How to guarantee the success of your campaigns with Audience parameters and Remarketing“.

How to apply Google Ads intelligent bidding strategies?

Expanding audiences on the display network

A simple new tool for expanding your most promising audiences

With audience enlargement, the objective is clear: reach more buyers with the same budget!
“an audience enlargement tool makes it possible to reach more users in order to generate more conversions for the same average cost per acquisition (CPA).“

Like Facebook’s “lookalike” audiences,Google’s audience expansion tool lets you expand your display campaigns by reaching new prospects who behave in the same way as the users you’re already targeting, i.e. increasing impressions, clicks and conversions without affecting your budget.

New audience enlargement parameters for display campaigns

“Audience Expansion is ideal for advertisers who make a minimum of 30 conversions per month, who want to increase their conversion volume while keeping the same acquisition cost, and who have no budget restrictions or restrictions on appearing on different sites.
We recommend testing this feature for a minimum of 3 weeks, as the tool is based on historical data and recorded matchings, and we have seen a real increase in conversions with a constant Acquisition Cost after 4 weeks of testing.”
Natalya Donnat – Adenlab Operations Manager

"average position" of ads: a metric removed

For more accurate metrics and analysis

It was in February that a big change in google reporting was introduced with the removal of “average position” from Google Ads metrics.
This metric has long been tracked and optimized by traffic managers, advertisers and agencies and which has been removed from our metrics on September 30, 2019.
Google has decided to remove the metric in favor of a newer, more accurate metric that was rolled out at the end of 2018:

  • Absolute Top impression rate, i.e. in 1st position.
  • the “Top” impression rate, which corresponds to the 3 ads at the top of the page.

Since smart bidding solutions are becoming increasingly important, manual bidding strategies are becoming less and less useful.

Google Ads invites advertisers to consult :

  • the ” Search Absolute top impression share“, which reflects impressions associated with the Top Absolute location
  • Search Top IS“, a similar indicator but for Top positions, not Absolute positions

“The average position indicator was very important for many of our customers, who wanted to monitor their positioning on the search network. However, this indicator did not reflect real visibility coverage. We may be in 1st position, but only 10% of the time. We worked with our customers to learn how to use this new indicator. Our customers’ campaigns have gained in accuracy and performance.”
Natalya Donnat – Adenlab Operations Manager

Lead form ad extension

To facilitate the generation of inbound contacts (leads) via your mobile traffic

Since mobile traffic has overtaken desktop traffic, web users are becoming less patient and more demanding about the quality of your pages and website. Speed and simplicity are the keys to converting new customers and prospects on mobile.

In a bid to help advertisers convert more leads on mobile, Google recently launched a brand new ad extension:
thelead form extension
For the moment, the extension is still in Beta in France and active only on Mobiles.

With this extension, you’ll be able to collect all the contact details you need from your prospect without it leaving Google’s search engine (search results). The aim is to eliminate as much friction as possible for your prospect.
What’s more, if a user is logged into their Google account when they see your ad, they can access the form (by clicking on it) already pre-filled with their details.
On the other hand, they don’t need to go to your site: good or bad idea, it’s up to you to test!

Objective: to make your mobile conversion rates take off.
Lead form extensions seem like a great new option, but these ad extensions do have some limitations:

  • Lead form extensions will only appear in search campaigns.
  • Lead form extensions will only appear on mobile devices and tablets.
  • You cannot create lead form extensions at account or ad group level. Each lead form extension can only be applied at campaign level.
  • Certain sensitive industries (such as healthcare) will not be able to collect personal information using form extensions. Visit the restrictions page for this extension
  • The use of the personal information you collect using form extensions must comply with the privacy policy provided by your company, with Google’s data collection policies and, of course, with the regulations of your users’ country.

Adenlab Lead Form Extension

“We have tested this new extension on several B2B customers. The advantage of the extension is that we can choose for ourselves the level of detail via the form that we want to have: Surname, first name, e-mail address, telephone number, address, etc.
Initial observations: Very little data has been recorded since the launch. We’ve sensed a certain reluctance on the part of Internet users to leave contact details via the form. We’re going to continue the test and will let you know our findings very shortly”.
Natalya Donnat – Adenlab Operations Manager

Conversions" taken into account at campaign level rather than account level

To refine and optimize your Google Ads campaign objectives

And yes, “Conversions” can now be taken into account at campaign level, not just at account level.

You may think that this is of little interest or that it doesn’t add much to your management, but beware, it’s a major change for your performance and the optimization of your objectives.
Let’s go back to the principle of tracking conversions in your google ads accounts;
And I’m going to take the example of a B2B E-commerce site whose conversion objective is twofold:

  • conversion 1: obtaining leads via a form
  • conversion 2: sell products directly on your site

These are 2 very important types of conversions for the site, yet totally different to manage in terms of optimization and campaign management.
Before this new feature, and the arrival in force of Google’s smart bidding algorithms, it wasn’t really possible to effectively distinguish between these 2 conversions in the account. And I do mean in the account.

Indeed, for these smart (automatic) bidding strategies, there was no way of determining which specific conversion objective was the most useful for a particular campaign.
In fact, and to return to the example of the B2B site, if you build a campaign whose objective is to generate leads via a form, and your prospect finally converts by buying a product, this action would be counted as a conversion even if this wasn’t the campaign’s objective (since the conversion objective should have been the validation of a form).

From now on, with conversions at campaign level, you can specify to Google that the only conversion objective that counts for this campaign is the validation of a form, and that the other objectives set up in your account have no importance for this campaign.

Bumper video creation tool - 6-second video

To improve the effectiveness and impact of your video and Youtube campaigns

The tool was unveiled at the Google Marketing Live conference. It allows anyone with a video under 90 seconds to create a series of ready-to-use 6-second Youtube video ads. Given the cost of editing a video, this is a pretty powerful tool.
The real problem is the production of the 90-second video, which for many advertisers on Google is neither a reality nor an exploited means of communication due to its cost.
However, this lever seems to have proved its effectiveness (at least for Lipton 😉 You can find thecase study carried out by Lipton Ice Tea, Google and Marketing Scan:** 13% more sales thanks to Bumper Ads**.

Given the amount of time spent by Internet users on YouTube, we advise you to position yourself on this platform. Don’t hesitate to reread our article on Youtube: An advertising channel for Ecommerces?

Example of Renaud Scenic’s Video Bumber:

Videos in Responsive Display Ads

Make your Display ads even more attractive

A reminder about Google’s responsive display ads: this feature allows you to prepare your images and ads so that they can adapt and be displayed automatically on the multiple formats and inserts available on Google’s network of partner sites.
I.e. image ads in formats such as :

Different formats for Google Display Network images and ads

Google’s algorithms combine the images and automatically optimize them according to the content of the web page and the size of the user’s screen.

However, until March, content for these formats could only be images and gifs. Since then, advertisers have also been able to use video content in their responsive display ads.

Video integration in Display Responsive format

Here are three reasons to use this feature:

  • Get more impressions: Google prefers responsive display ads to standard banners.
  • More clicks: Responsive display ads – especially those with video content – are more attractive than standard banner ads.
  • More accessible and simpler: Unlike standard banners – which require time, resources and expertise to constantly optimize – responsive banners are semi-automated.

Find out more on Google’s official Responsive Display Ads page.

Gallery Ads

A visual format to be tested on Google search engine results (SERP)

This is the brand-new mobile advertising format unveiled at Google Marketing Live and currently available in beta version to selected advertisers.

Here is the example given by Google at the time of the official announcement:

advertise Gallery Ads
Example of a Gallery Ads ad

As you can see, an Illustrated Ad appears at the top of the search results (SERP) with a carousel of eight images that can be scanned. There’s a clickable title and a display URL, and below each image is a brief description.
What’s more, you can submit three titles for your ad, giving you the opportunity to test different ad combinations to optimize your click-through rate.

Google’s initial tests have shown that illustrated ads generate 25% more engagement (measured by clicks and swipes) than standard Text ads.

“For our part, at Adenlab, we’ve been able to implement it on several customers. The tests are quite convincing, with an improvement in the click-through rate of +18% and an improvement in the conversion rate of +12% on average. Image quality plays a vital role, and we recommend testing this type of ad with high-quality images.”
Natalya Donnat – Adenlab Operations Manager

Find out more about Google’s official information on Gallery Ads.

Conclusion

In recent years, Google Ads has undergone many changes and evolutions. Testing and choosing the right options is the key to developing your campaigns and your Google Ads account. At Adenlab – SEA Agency, we know that it’s necessary to work on these new features and share our experience with our customers. Don’t hesitate to contact us if you need :

  • Restructure your Google Ads account
  • Boost your performance and sales
  • Internationalize your campaigns
  • …

See you soon!

Google Ads: advertisements to attract new customers and grow your business

Posted on by Adenlab Adenlab

What types of advertising does Google Ads offer? Which formats are best suited to sales or lead acquisition?

Today, Google offers a wide range of services, including hosting, cloud services, mapping and much more.

But the best-known and most profitable for Google is its Google Ads advertising system.

With over 90% of searches carried out on its search engine, Google reigns supreme in digital advertising, along with Facebook.

What’s more, for companies and e-tailers using Google Ads as an advertising lever, the return on investment is immediate, and 50% of people who click on an ad are more inclined to buy than others – those who click on the free, “natural” SEO links.

Google Ads enables companies of all sizes and budgets to create targeted advertisements for people who are actively searching for their service.

It’s a powerful lever for reaching more Internet users and a targeted clientele of consumers.

But how do you use this tool provided by the Internet giant? How can you ensure that your campaigns meet your business objectives and become a real advantage for your company or online store?

Increase sales and attract new customers

Google Ads key figures

Many companies choose to create Google ads to showcase their products and services. This approach is strategic for many businesses. This is because

awareness of companies increases by 80% thanks to Google Ads.
63,000 Google searches are carried out every second.
90% of online searches are carried out on Google.
Google has a 73% market share in digital advertising.
65% of companies have a Pay per click campaign
46% of clicks on search engines go to the first three paid ads.
35% of users buy a product within 5 days of searching on Google.

The benefits of Google Ads for your business

If you haven’t already, integrating Google ads into your acquisition strategy will bring you a number of benefits.

You’ll be instantly visible, adapting your ads to the searches and requests of Internet users, and arousing the interest of your future customers.

You’ll be able to personalize your ads according to your different prospects and, above all, track your sales targets.

Be immediately visible

Once you’ve created campaigns in your Google Ads account, you’ll have the opportunity to position yourself immediately in Google’s top search results.

Your budget will depend on the type of keyword you’ve selected, the number of products in your catalog and, more generally, the structure and objectives of your campaigns.

Positioning your site in Google’s top results is extremely important, given that 75% of Internet users are content to see only the top 5 sites on the first page of search results.

Generate consumer interest and attract new customers

Internet users want to find information quickly and easily.
Being in first position in the Google search engine can give your company a click-through rate of 34.36% for computers and a click-through rate of 31.35% on smartphones.

On high-demand searches, this can lead to very significant traffic. That’s why you need to target the terms that will bring you conversion and a high volume of business.

Quickly adapt and change your offers and ads

With Google Ads, you can update the content of your offer and review your ads instantly.

This is obviously a major advantage over search engine optimization, which can take some time to attract qualified traffic.

For example, if you want to integrate a new range into your e-commerce or a new presentation, you’ll have to wait a few months before conquering the keywords related to this novelty (in search engine optimisation).

With Google Ads, changes and evolutions are directly taken into account.

Improve the accuracy of your targeting

Google gives companies using Google Ads the ability to target users as effectively as possible, so that ads are only shown to people who might be interested in the products.

Customize the audience parameters to suit your target.
We also suggest setting up a retargeting strategy.

Tailor your strategy to your objectives

The search engine provides you with advertising formats adapted to your initial strategy and defined objectives.

For example, ads are designed specifically for product sales. To take this a step further, Google has created form extensions for lead acquisition.

This evolution is in line with new business needs. With the decision funnel, leads are more likely to become loyal customers.

To sum up:

  1. Paid positioning enables us to address web users who are in an active search phase: this traffic is therefore highly qualified (much more so, for example, than banner traffic).

  2. Advertisers can choose the keywords on which they wish to be present.

  3. The billing model is “per click” (CPC), so the advertiser only pays for the traffic that actually arrives on the site.

  4. The bidding system enables the advertiser to control the maximum CPC it is prepared to spend on each keyword (the more targeted a word, the more profitable it can be to offer a high bid, as the conversion will be good).

  5. Market tracking tools enable sales to be attributed to each word: we can therefore calculate the cost of acquisition for each keyword and adapt bids according to the results observed.

  6. The campaign can be monitored and modified almost in real time

  7. Versus Search Engine Optimization ➔ traffic generation is immediate.

What are the different types of campaign and when should they be activated?

Before creating a campaign, it is important to consider your company’s strategic priorities:

  • What is the target audience or persona?
  • What are the informative pages on your site?
  • Which pages will convert
  • What are the strategic products (loss leaders, high-margin products)?
  • What are your prospects looking for?
  • What will be the traction campaigns (generic)
  • Conversion campaigns (long tail)
  • Your sector and the challenges of your campaigns
  • Understand your prospects’ research methodologies
  • And how to adapt the campaign structure to your website and offers

Sales funnel – Conversion funnel (Source: marcobernard.ca)

The structure of a Google Ads account can be very different, depending on your company’s objectives and challenges.
For example, in some cases, generic campaigns are rarely deployed, as the aim is to maximize the return on campaigns and position ourselves at the bottom of the funnel: in this case, shopping campaigns are the most appropriate, as this format has the highest conversion rate (if we consider the “last click”).

On the other hand, if you want to track the entireconversion funnel, you’ll need to create several campaigns, each with its own objectives and performance. In fact, in a full funnel structure, the challenge will be to track the user journey and the contribution of each campaign to the final conversion(attribution)
As you can see, it’s vital to set objectives for each type of campaign?

If your goal is to create brand awareness, you’ll need to:

  • Gain visibility for your site
  • Generate cold leads
  • Increase your list of new customers
  • Generate qualified traffic to the site

If your goal is growth, you’ll need to :

  • Increase the number of sales on your site
  • Develop sales
  • Control and improve ROI (Return on Investment) indicators

Inbound conversion funnel

Search campaign: text ads and keyword research

Google Ads text campaigns enable you to reach consumers at different stages of their research and needs. You can position yourself on keywords and terms related to your products and services on search engines (Google and Bing).

The key to these campaigns lies in the structure of your account and your campaigns, and consequently in distinguishing between informative searches and searches for hot prospects. In fact, you won’t have the same strategy for these 2 types of search, nor the same return on investment.

Google Ads

The positioning of advertisers is never identical, and doesn’t depend solely on the price you’re willing to pay!

The basic principles :

  • Paid positioning enables us to address web users who are in an active search phase: this traffic is therefore highly qualified (much more so, for example, than banner traffic).

  • Advertisers can choose the keywords on which they wish to be present.

  • The billing model is “per click” (CPC), so the advertiser only pays for the traffic that actually arrives on the site.

  • The bidding system allows the advertiser to control the maximum CPC it is prepared to spend on each keyword (the more targeted a word, the more profitable it can be to offer a high bid (since the conversion will be good).

  • Market tracking tools enable sales to be attributed to each word: we can therefore calculate the cost of acquisition for each keyword and adapt bids according to the results observed.

  • The campaign can be monitored and modified almost in real time

  • Versus Search Engine Optimization ➔ traffic generation is immediate.

Dynamic Search Ads (DSA)

Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) are ads targeted to the content of your website.
The use of Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) allows you to appear on search terms related to the content of your website or a particular page
The advantage of DSA is that it allows you to capture traffic that is not currently being captured by existing campaigns within the account.

The advantages of DSA :

  • No keywords to “buy”; ads benefit from a dynamic title that automatically adapts to the user’s query – and a dynamic url that redirects to the most appropriate page on your website.
  • Ads feature a dynamic title that automatically adapts to the user’s query, and a dynamic URL that redirects to the most appropriate page on your website.

Remarketing campaign (text, banners, videos)

Remarketing enables you to show ads to people who have already visited your website or used your mobile application.
It gives you the opportunity to show ads to people who have already visited your site.
Depending on the actions carried out on your site (e.g. cart abandonment), you’ll be more or less aggressive (with your bids) in bringing these same people back to your site. This feature is extremely powerful, as it enables you to target the hottest prospects and bring them back to complete their conversion or purchase action.

Remarketing – Retargeting

Remarketing methods offered by Google :

  1. Standard Remarketing: serve ads to your former visitors when they visit Display Network websites and applications.
  2. Dynamic Remarketing: serve dynamic ads featuring the products and services your previous visitors have viewed on your site when they access web pages and applications on the Display Network.
  3. Remarketing for mobile applications: serve ads to mobile users who have previously used your mobile application or website when they browse other content.
  4. Video remarketing: serve ads to users who have interacted with your videos or YouTube channel when they access YouTube and browse Display Network videos, websites and applications.
  5. Remarketing lists for Search Network Ads (RLSA): serve ads to your former visitors as they search on Google for the products and services they need, after they’ve left your site.
Display ad campaign targeting themes and interests

Display ad campaigns targeted by themes and interests give your company the opportunity to appear on sites in the Google Display Network. Generally speaking, these are “upper funnel” campaigns, which allow you to work on visual advertisements, since they are images and banners, which will enable you to take advantage of other sites’ traffic to make yourself known.

The Display Network is a collection of Google websites (for example, Google Finance, Gmail, Blogger and YouTube), partner sites, mobile sites and applications that display Google Ads based on page content.

Example of Google Display Partner Sites

You can use attractive ad formats to reach a large number of customers with varied interests. With the Display Network, you can increase brand awareness, build customer loyalty, generate more customer interaction and choose more specifically where your ads are displayed, as well as the type of audience you want to target.

Features :

  • Several distribution methods: by keyword, by site, by category…

  • The business model: auctions and CPC payments

  • It’s possible to find out which sites you’re listed on and “blacklist” sites deemed irrelevant or unprofitable.

  • This traffic is less qualified than search traffic, as Internet users are not actively searching for information.

Google Shopping campaigns

Within Google advertising, you can choose Shopping campaigns. This is the most popular format for e-commerce. In fact, it’s currently the Google advertising format that generates the most conversions and sales.
Shopping campaigns for merchant sites using the Google Merchant Center enable them to display ads presenting their products (photos, product name, price) during searches on Google.com.

We recommend that you read or re-read our articles on the subject:
Google Shopping campaigns: A necessity for e-tailers?

Highlights :

  • Allows you to promote your products in a high-impact format (photo) when web users are actively looking for a product.
  • Increased visibility with dual display: classic text ad + product ad.
  • Easy to target and set up.

Weaknesses :

  • Requires a Google Merchant Center account, which is not available in all countries or for all merchant sites (e.g.: prices must be inclusive of VAT, whereas some B2B sites are exclusive of VAT).

Conclusion

The success of Google campaigns has been proven. Depending on your company’s objectives, choose the right ads for your online store and your products;

Before creating a campaign, it is important to:

  • Understand prospect and customer research methodologies
  • Adapt the structure of your campaigns to your website
  • Think about your real needs: awareness or sales

This will determine the structure of your Google Ads campaigns, which represents 60% of the optimization of your account.
In addition, the structure of your campaigns must be constantly evolving, because not only are your users’ behaviors changing, but so are you and your offer.

If you need more information and advice on your acquisition or tips on how to structure your SEA accounts and campaigns, our team ofSEA Experts is available to talk to you.

15 ways to audit your Google Ads account post-COVID

Posted on by Adenlab Adenlab
After many months of a period that seems to be struggling to come to an end, it’s time to start looking ahead to the “post-COVID” period. For many companies, activities have been put on pause or have slowed down considerably. This hasn’t been the case for Ecommerces, but if your company has slowed down its visibility or campaigns on Google, this article is for you.

While the peak of the pandemic seems to be behind us, it seems only natural to want to move forward, even if cautiously.
The consequence? A reactivation of marketing strategies that have been put on hold for weeks or even months, especially Google Ads campaigns. And to support you, whether you’re starting from scratch or launching new campaigns, here are the different ways you can easily audit and reactivate your account.

The task of restarting your campaigns in a totally different, post-COVID context can seem both daunting and a little nerve-wracking. Most likely, your priorities have changed. That’s why the steps outlined below will help you see things more clearly, and roll up your sleeves with a bit of cheering up.

Where did you leave your Google Ads account?

Chances are you’ll fall into one of the three scenarios below:

  1. You stopped everything during the COVID-19 epidemic. And now you’re back to get things moving again. In the end, you’re one of the lucky ones – you’ve done most of the work, and now you just need to work on the strategy.
  2. You’ve continued, but you’ve cut your budget. That’s good news too, because you’ve got a whole lot of recent data that will come in very handy when it comes to implementing your new strategy.
  3. Are you getting into Google Ads for the first time? Wonderful, you’ll be able to create your campaigns with a whole new perspective.

As you can see, whatever your situation, there are positives. Everyone has their own opportunities, so all you have to do is exploit them.

Request a free audit by Google Ads experts

How do you audit your Google Ads account in a post-COVID world?

Are you ready to wake up your Google Ads account and attract new prospects? A little patience… It’s important to start by taking a quick look at the aspects of your account that you should review before getting started.

Adjust your daily budgets

First thing to do: adjust your daily budgets. You may not want to spend what you did before COVID. Take some time to consider what your spending was before the pandemic, during it, and what your goals are today.

Perhaps you’ll need to adjust your day-to-day budgets if they’re still set on your 2019 or 2020 targets. How do you determine your new post-COVID budgets? There’s a formula, for example, that allows you to make estimates for 2021. All you then need to do is allocate this amount day by day, according to the breakdown best suited to your expectations. Use the following calculation:

Monthly budget or projected expenditure divided by 30.4 (average number of days in a month) = Overall daily budget

It’s up to you to decide how to allocate this sum to the campaigns that are most important to you.

Evaluate your metrics and set realistic goals

As you probably know, performance can vary considerably from one year to the next. That’s why it’s always a good idea to look back and assess where you were a few weeks or months ago.

This will help you set realistic goals for 2021. Of course, focus on the data that matters most to you. For example, it’s probably a good idea to start with CPA. Or if it’s brand awareness you’re working on, it’s impressions or click-through rates that should get your full attention. And don’t hesitate to consult benchmarks in your sector to get a clear idea of where you currently stand, and what your ambitions should be.

Make sure your bidding strategies are consistent with your objectives

It may seem obvious, but it’s one of the most important steps. You need to make sure that your campaigns are linked to a bidding strategy in line with your current objectives.

Case in point? You’re not going to use a conversion-based strategy like target CPA if you don’t have enough recent data for Google to optimize. The same goes for target CPCs that no longer correspond to current data.

So remember that bidding strategies such as Target CPA require a minimum of history. If you’re embarking on a post-COVID campaign with little data, you may be better off opting for a manual strategy, or preferring an automatic bidding strategy such as Maximize Clicks.

Allow time for the algorithm to adapt

You probably have a morning routine that resembles a gradual adaptation to a new day: brushing your teeth, coffee, toast, orange juice, news of the day, etc. Well, your Google Ads campaigns undergo a similar process when they emerge from an extended period of standby. This phase consists of learning the algorithm.

In a nutshell, Google’s algorithm always performs a personalized learning process to offer the best possible optimization for each account. It uses historical data, combines it with new modifications and then tests different methods of delivering your ads to deliver the best possible results.

If your account has been put on hold due to COVID 19, expect a learning period of around one to two weeks, especially if you are making changes to important elements such as bidding strategy. So you’ll have to be patient.

Check your geographic targeting

Here’s a tip: the way you set up your campaign’s geographic targeting will have an impact not only on your audience, but also on your spending. If, in the past, you targeted the whole of France, perhaps today you can start with certain cities that interest you more specifically. This means you’ll have to adapt an undoubtedly smaller budget to more precise targeting.

Put certain keywords on standby or add new ones

Don’t be afraid to put certain keywords on pause. In a post-COVID world, where every penny counts, it’s counter-productive to hold on to a keyword that doesn’t suit you at the moment.

Put underperforming keywords on the back burner and keep the most relevant ones, according to your current objectives. This will help you organize your campaigns and use only keywords you’re convinced will have an impact.

And, of course, you can think of new keywords. You can use Google’s Keyword Planner to help you along the way. Unlike Google Trends, the Google Keyword Planner provides a much more granular overview of keyword metrics by location. Think about it when you reactivate your account. It’s a great way to align your expectations, bids and budget.

This tool also gives you a snapshot of search volume based on specified locations and timeframes. Combine it with Google Trends to get the current state of search volume and average CPC for keywords in your sector.

Rethink your advertising content and landing pages

If your campaign has been inactive for a long time, your ad hasn’t changed either. So, if your PPC objectives are no longer the same as they were before COVID, it’s probably time to rethink your ad copy. Is it in line with your new objectives? Does it correspond to your new keywords or a new landing page?

Simply put, you don’t want to promote a discount that was only available in 2020, or a service you no longer offer. Similarly, you don’t want this ad to link to an old landing page.

Now’s the time to ask yourself the right questions about what you’re currently promoting, and which keywords you’re now interested in. What’s more, a new ad will offer Internet users a bit of renewal.

Put underperforming ads, ad groups or campaigns on standby

If you want to save money, you can also temporarily stop underperforming ads, ad groups and campaigns. In a post-COVID world, you probably want to make sure that your money is well invested. That means focusing on the essentials and putting the rest on hold.

Analyze keywords to exclude

Don’t forget to check the keywords to be excluded when you reactivate your account. Consult the Google Search Terms Report to find out which keywords to exclude and keep an up-to-date list. This will ensure that you continue to appear on relevant searches and don’t spend your money in vain.

Configure your ad delivery schedule

Perhaps today, your ads work better at a different time and day than before COVID. In fact, with telecommuting and changing lifestyles, certain parameters have been modified.

Don’t forget to set your ad delivery schedule to the most active hours to optimize your budget.

Update your ad extensions

Ad extensions are a great way to create your own ads, but also to ensure that you always display high-quality ads on search pages. Be careful, however, not to rely too heavily on the automatic aspect and leave them as they are. When auditing your account, be sure to ask yourself whether your ads are still relevant.

Check your conversion tracking

If you’ve been neglecting your Google Ads account, don’t hesitate to double-check your conversion tracking. Knowing that COVID has changed the game, you may have new actions to track, or a new site that still requires the implementation of Google Tag Manager tracking tags.

How about an example? You’ve added a chat feature to your site and would like to know how many people are using it. You can also access your site directly to ensure that all tags are working properly, on the right pages, using the Google Tag Assistant plug-in.

You can also take advantage of this to display a list of tracked conversions and resolve any issues relating to old or missing conversions, in order to detect incorrect conversion data.

Use Google Trends

Let’s say you’ve restored your account to its former glory, and it’s ready to go again. However, your performance isn’t up to par with last year. Perhaps it’s not your fault. Because in a post-COVID world, the interests of searchers are no longer the same. Patterns of popularity in Google searches are constantly changing. Consumers’ priorities and needs have changed considerably as a result of the pandemic.

Google Trends helps you find out how much interest there is in a given keyword or subject in a specific geographical area. Use it to see if your drop in performance is simply due to a drop in search volume.

Evaluate the competition with Bid Analysis

Whether your account has been suspended for some time or you’re currently using it, you can also make use of Google Ads’ Bid Analysis. This enables you to assess trends in your sector.

You’ll find the companies that appear most often on the same page of search results. This will tell you whether the competition has changed since COVID 19, or whether your old rival is still in the running.

Bid Analysis shows you not only who is on the SERP, but also where they are on the page; whether above or below you.

Review your modification history

This is the perfect time to take a look at your workflow before and during COVID. Check out Google’s Change History section to see what changes you last made to your account, and when. This will eventually encourage you to follow the same pattern.

It’s easy to forget the routine checks you used to make. This will not only help you get back into good habits, but also give you an insight into past trends in your account.

Audit and reactivate your Google Ads account with confidence

Whether you’ve put your account completely on hold, scaled back your activity or started from scratch, you stand to benefit from reactivating your Google Ads account after the peak of the pandemic. And to sum up, here are the steps we’ve identified over the course of this article:

  1. Adjust your daily budgets
  2. Evaluate your metrics and set realistic goals
  3. Make sure your bidding strategies are consistent with your objectives
  4. Allow time for the algorithm to adapt
  5. Check your geographic targeting
  6. Put certain keywords on standby or add new ones
  7. Rethink your advertising content and landing pages
  8. Put underperforming ads, ad groups or campaigns on standby
  9. Analyze the keywords to exclude
  10. Configure your ad delivery schedule
  11. Update your ad extensions
  12. Check your conversion tracking
  13. Use Google Trends
  14. Evaluate the competition with Bid Analysis
  15. Review your modification history

Ask us for a free, no-obligation audit of your accounts