How I Use Different Google Ads Campaigns

Google Ads currently has 6 different campaigns types that you can use and selecting the wrong type of campaign at the wrong time can severely limit the effectiveness of results that you get with Google Ads. 

So right know I want to breakdown the main campaigns that I use in Google Ads and when I use each of these types of campaigns. 

If you are setting up a new Google Ads account for your business I would start with a:

Search Campaign: if you are a service based business

Or a Search & Shopping campaign: if you are an ecommerce business

For eCommerce I know that many people will just go straight to a stand alone shopping campaign BUT don’t under estimate the power of search campaigns for your products especially as the extra headlines and descriptions in the ad copies for search campaigns allow you to give extra focus on any unique selling points that you have over your competitors - especially if you have a higher priced product. 

The reason for why I recommend starting with these 2 campaign types is because they are going to give you the most information in regards to:

•  The best user search terms that generate conversions
•  The best performing audiences & demographics 
•  And for Search campaigns you can even split test different ad copies at the same time so you can gauge which are the best performing headlines and descriptions in your ad copies to generate the best CTR & conversion rates. 

With Performance Max campaigns, the reason for why I don’t start with this type of campaign is because these are a “Smart Campaign” meaning that you:

•  Don’t get as much data and information for you to review
•  And they rely more on Google’s automated learning & targeting rather than your own optimisations

Now the Google algorithm is smart and it will figure the best keywords and products to target for your business BUT the issue is that this can take some time and a lot of money. 

Which is something that a lot of businesses just don’t have!

So that is why I recommend starting with a search & shopping campaign so that you can add in some initial exclusions to limit the products and services that Google will target with your Performance Max campaign plus you are starting this campaign with the learnings from your Google Search campaign so you already have some data on:

•  The best performing ad copies for your campaign 
•  The best products & services to focus on

The next type of campaigns that I use are Display Campaigns. I will start my display campaigns 60-90 days after my initial search and shopping campaigns and the reason for this is because Display campaigns are a push campaign, meaning that:

Rather than your ads being triggered because someone has completed a Google Search, with Display campaigns your ads appear on websites and apps within Google’s Display network. 

With Google Display campaigns you can target people by selecting different audiences & detailed demographics rather than selecting different keywords to target.

The reason for why I wait 60-90 before I start a display campaign is because I firstly want to see the best performing audiences from my search & shopping campaigns, but I also want to give Google enough data to start populating similar audiences.

The final campaign that I use is Video Campaigns, which run your ads on YouTube. 

One thing that I need to stress straight away is that the success of these campaigns is heavily reliant on the quality of your video ads. So for success with Youtube campaigns as a base line you need to have engaging ad content. 

They function similar to display campaigns in that rather than targeting by keywords you are targeting by Audiences and interest signals. 

If you are ready to test some Youtube campaigns I would also recommend:

•  Using these campaigns to target email sign ups. So for example if you are running an ecommerce store don’t just focus on product sales but also running ads targeting newsletter or community sign ups, so that you can then complete the purchase offline through your email & database marketing. 
•  Using Google Ads video campaign to targeting the audiences of competitors or influencers in your business niche. Meaning that if you have a competitor with a strong YouTube channel community target your video ads to specifically be shown on their videos. And you can also do the same for influencers - rather than paying for expensive brand deals you can target their audience directly by running ads on their YT channel. 

So with Google Ads campaigns the biggest thing is to make sure that you have a strategy for how you will use each type of campaign.