By: Mark Weissinger
Marketing
November 10, 2022
Reading Time: 24 minutes
What is Google Ads?
Google Ads is one of the most powerful paid advertising platforms. It not only provides a large set of advertising tools, but also gives you access to users of the world’s largest search engines – Google and YouTube respectively – and a network of millions of sites to advertise on.
However, there are many types of Google Ads, and not every type is suitable for every scenario. Whether you’re planning to manage your Google Ads yourself or delegate it to an expert, it’s best to start by learning the necessary terminology and understanding the types of Google Ads campaigns available to you, as well as what you can realistically expect from them. This way, you will understand exactly what the platform can do for you.
Table of Contents
Google Ads Guide: 18 Types of Ad Campaigns You Can Run
Search Ads
1. Google Brand Search
Goal: Attract searchers who are actively looking for your brand by name. Audience Fit: High. (They are searching for you.) Estimated Cost Per Click: Low ($0.25 to $3). Recommended for: All businesses, regardless of size and industry, will make sales when there is search intent for your brand. Execute this campaign if you have the necessary resources.
Branded keywords feature the exact names of brands or products. For example, “Apple Phone” or “iPhone” are branded keywords for Apple.
You may not consider bidding on your own brand name, especially if your site organically appears at the top of search results, but doing so allows you to promote specific information (using Google ad extensions) and dictate the page you want to send visitors to. It also protects you from competitors who may bid on your name or other branded keywords.
Click costs for brand searches may generally be lower than any other search campaign since your URLs and ads will be highly relevant to users searching for you. At the same time, be cautious of your ad appearing for similar but irrelevant keywords.
For example, in the case of Apple advertising iPhones, keywords like “apple picking” or “apple juice” or even “how to update an iPhone” should be excluded and appropriate keyword targeting and negative keywords specified.
Since the ceiling for sales from brand search depends on how many people are actually searching for you, brand search campaigns can complement brand awareness campaigns. For instance, a pop-up store or a Facebook video may translate into more searches for your brand name.
Ease of Execution: This campaign can be challenging to execute if you are not familiar with search engine marketing. You may need agency or internal resources to manage it. However, brand search is not too expensive to manage, so prioritize it if you have the necessary resources.
2. Non-Branded General Search on Google
Goal: Attract qualified intent traffic, possibly new customers, by advertising to people who might buy your products but are not necessarily familiar with your brand. Audience Fit: Low to Medium. Estimated Cost Per Click: Medium to High ($1 to $20). Recommended for: Everyone, but do not prioritize this method over some of the more profitable campaigns on this list. However, this type of campaign should be a priority for brands looking to drive top-line revenue and acquire new customers.
Targeting
Non-brand search campaigns, as the name suggests, are keyword phrases that do not include your brand name or your products by name. Consequently, your costs are likely to be higher, as your relevance to users is lower, especially for more general keywords (for example, “buy pillow” versus “organic goose down pillow in downtown Toronto”).
The goal of this campaign is to bring new visitors and customers to your site as efficiently as possible. However, these campaigns can also deliver a positive return on ads for advertisers and a significant amount of potential reach.
You should keep in mind that the real value of a customer is not in the first purchase but in their lifetime value of purchases from your brand.
Ease of implementation: Like all types of search campaigns, this type can be challenging. These campaigns require a lot of human resources to manage and test your ads and landing pages, as well as a substantial budget to achieve results. It’s best to hire help to ensure these campaigns are managed properly.
3. Non-brand search (niche)
Goal: To acquire new customers from niche audiences that match your specialized products. Audience fit: Medium to high. (The more specialized the audiences are and the better your product meets that specialization, the more relevant you are to your audience.) Estimated cost-per-click: Medium to high ($1 to $20, depending on competition and customer/order value for other advertisers). Recommended for: Brands with specialized products or targeting a niche market within a non-brand product category, such as “vegan deodorant” or “used NFL memorabilia.”
Niche non-brand search campaigns typically involve less competition than general non-brand search campaigns. This occurs because they are more specific and thus make you more relevant to the searcher’s intent if your products align with what they are looking for.
If your business and products are suitable for niche marketing, this type of campaign is worth exploring. Niche marketing, even outside the context of Google Ads, gives brands an easier time driving traffic and potentially a positive return on ads, as it provides a targeted audience that is easier to identify and focus on.
Niche non-brand search campaigns are often grouped with general non-brand search campaigns. However, it makes sense to aggregate specialized traffic into a separate campaign and discuss it separately for better results.
If you sell third-party products, you can also apply this type of campaign by bidding on brand-specific keywords associated with them. When purchasing these keywords, you can even use the names of these brands in your ads as long as you directly link to a landing page containing those products.
Ease of implementation: This type of campaign shares the execution difficulty of other search campaigns. These campaigns require significant resources for setup and maintenance.
4. Competitor search campaign
Goal: To acquire new customers who may not be aware of your brand or product by showcasing your brand in front of shoppers searching for your competitors. Audience fit: Low. (Users are searching for a specific competitor, not for your brand.) Estimated cost-per-click: Medium to high ($1 to $20). Recommended for: Merchants already running profitable campaigns and interested in acquiring new customers. Also, merchants with high customer lifetime value or those testing different customer acquisition campaigns.
A competitor search campaign is the inverse of a brand search campaign. Instead of bidding on your brand name and products, you bid on keywords related to your competitors’ brand names.
It seems
stealing traffic from your main competitor’s keywords is smart, but it can be relatively costly since you, as a competing brand, may not be the most prominent in search results.
This strategy is typically used by brands that can justify the costs of acquiring a new customer who may have a medium order value or relatively high customer lifetime value. Otherwise, you may find it challenging to succeed with this strategy.
If the brand does not buy its own traffic or does not have much customer loyalty, and if your product is an equal or better substitute for the product users are searching for, this campaign can be very profitable for you.
(Part of the reason we strongly recommend buying your own brand terms is to prevent this type of disruption from competitors.)
Note: Dynamic keyword insertion should not be used in ads when purchasing your competitors’ keywords, and you cannot use their name in your ads if you do not sell their product on the page you are directing traffic to.
Ease of implementation: Like all search campaigns, this type of campaign is not easy and can be very expensive. You will need dedicated resources to manage this type of campaign.
5. Google Shopping Ads (Brand)
Goal: Attract searchers who are specifically shopping for your products/product categories using your brand’s distinct keywords. Audience fit: High. (They are searching for you.) Estimated cost per click: Low ($0.25 to $3). Recommended for: Companies that sell physical products and have already invested in brand awareness, and those who are comfortable adjusting Google Ads to set up this type of campaign.
Google Shopping campaigns provide a great user experience for shoppers: a user searches for a specific product, and images, prices, and ratings for items that Google deems relevant are displayed. If shoppers click on the ad, they are taken directly to that product page.
Users specifically searching for your brand are likely to be more likely to convert, so if you can set up brand-specific Google Shopping as a separate campaign, you can maximize your traffic from this source and achieve a more efficient budget. Otherwise, Google Shopping campaigns will typically include both brand and non-brand traffic by default.
Without a fragmented campaign strategy, there will always be more non-brand traffic than brand traffic, and you are likely to spend the majority of your budget on non-brand keywords, which are less likely to convert. For this reason, if you can (and have enough traffic to leverage), it is beneficial to separate brand traffic into a separate Google Shopping campaign.
Ease of implementation: Google Shopping campaigns are easier to set up than search. To create a functioning product feed that Google can pull from, you can either install the Google and YouTube apps or set things up manually in the Google Merchant Center. You will need to create separate campaigns for brand and non-brand traffic, apply negative keywords, and prioritize keywords to exclude your ads from appearing for certain queries to isolate brand-related search traffic.
6. Google Shopping Ads (Non-Brand)
Goal: Attract searchers looking for types of products you sell but not necessarily your specifically named products. Audience fit: Low to Medium. (They are searching for your product categories, not necessarily your products.) Estimated cost per click: Medium ($0.25 to $20). Recommended for: Most companies that sell physical products. However, this type of campaign should not be prioritized over some of the more profitable campaign types on this list. However, this campaign can be helpful if you have specific goals for acquiring new customers or boosting top-line revenue or top-line growth.
You can
Creating a separate Google Shopping campaign for non-brand search, similar to the aforementioned brand-related Google Shopping campaign.
Non-brand shopping campaigns operate in the same way as non-brand search campaigns. If you have the budget, this is something that should almost always be tested for online retail businesses. If you don’t have branded products, then a regular shopping campaign will be a 100% non-brand campaign.
Ease of implementation: Separating brand and non-brand traffic requires some setup, but once done, you can have separate non-brand shopping campaigns and allocate a specific budget for each. Learn more:
Google Shopping ads: What every new seller needs to know
7. Google Performance Max Campaign
Goal: Generate profitable orders through Google Shopping ads, retargeting, and display ads using machine learning. Audience suitability: Varies, as it combines multiple campaign types into one. Estimated cost per click: Low to medium ($0.25 to $5). Recommended for: Shopify merchants who are not currently using any retargeting campaigns and/or Google Shopping and want minimal involvement in managing them.
Google Performance Max campaigns use machine learning to optimize a mix of retargeting ads, display ads, and Google Shopping ads on your behalf. This campaign determines which products to advertise, the bidding amount, the target audience, and the creative ad that will appear.
Planning tip: Are you using Shopify with Google Shopping? Check out the Google & YouTube app to see how you can synchronize and run Google Ads campaigns directly from Shopify.
Your performance here will depend on the number of users searching for your brand, your products, product categories, or branded keywords. It also relies on how much retargeting you can do and the brand traffic you can bring in from shopping ads.
Ease of implementation: Performance Max campaigns represent a very easy way to engage in advertising on Google, whether it’s through shopping ads or retargeting. If you see success, there may be a greater opportunity to move to a fragmented manual campaign strategy in the future.
8. Dynamic Search Ads
Goal: Generate orders from keywords that Google automatically generates. Audience suitability: Low to high, depending on the keywords that Google’s spider creates for your campaigns. Estimated cost per click:
Source: https://www.shopify.com/blog/adwords-mistakes
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