Google Ads revenue touched US$ 95.4 billion in the year 2017, and it’ll only grow. Google processes over 40,000 search queries every second. Chances are that your potential customers are looking for you.
That search could be the beginning of a profitable relationship, if only you manage to show up at the right time.
You already know that the Google Ads platform is a fairly complex one (it reminds us of Adobe Photoshop). That also explains why many businesses miss out on some fantastic features that aren’t so obvious when you log into the platform.
Here are a few Google Ads features that you can use to get better results with minimal work:
Explore & use Gmail Ads
Gmail Ads is now an evolved product and it can help you get the results you seek.
However, it’s critical to note that Gmail Ads don’t exactly work like your typical Google Search Ads. For that reason, you need to set the right expectations when working with this ad unit.
Gmail Ads work a little higher up in your funnel — best used for branding, product launches, or for introducing your brand to your potential audiences.
Here are a few quick tips to make your Gmail Ads work for you:
- Use competitor domains for targeting users who get emails from your competition (also known as competitor conquesting).
- Use Similar Audiences, RLSA (Remarketing Lists for Search Ads), or In-market audiences to fine tune your targeting for Gmail Ads.
- Take advantage of your own Gmail Inbox to find subject lines that you could use for ads.
Adding topically relevant emojis (not just smileys) can help boost your Gmail Ad CTR (Clickthrough Rate)
With the possibility of adding your own email subscriber lists to run Gmail Ads, you do have interesting ways to target audiences and get more potential customers for your business.
Need an example? See what LifeSports achieved with Gmail Ads for their Black Friday campaigns. According to Think with Google, LifeSports managed to achieve about 75% less in terms of Cost-per-sale than their usual targets.
Over 40% of those sales came directly from Gmail Ads’ “Customer Match” — a way to target completely new customers based on datasets of existing customers.
RLSA (Remarketing lists for search ads)
Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA) has been around for a while. It’s a great strategy to:
- Target users who’ve already visited your website pages
- Be able to bid on broader keywords while choosing to target only qualified or high-intent user
- Bid on your brand name but limit exposure only to qualified users instead of letting the whole world see it (regardless of qualification).
- Tailor your ad copy to make it more relevant to users who just visited your website. This makes your ads more contextual and focused.
Using RLSA allows you to deliver more personalized, effective, and targeted ads to get you the results you seek. How do you get started? Here’s a handy guide on RLSA by WordStream.
Note: You’ll need at least 1000 unique visitors for the time-frame you choose to collect the audience for RLSA to work.
Similar Audiences for search
You are already of aware of retargeting (or remarketing as Google likes to call it). Retargeting helps bring back potential visitors who’d have been your customers and allows them to convert.
But what if you want to target separate audiences very similar to your existing remarketing audiences (people who showed interest in your web pages, services, products, or your brand)?
Similar audiences for search within Google Ads allow you to expand your target base of customers by letting Google find people with similar search behavior as those of your existing remarketing audiences.
John E. Lincoln of Search Engine Land explains Similar audiences in a lot more detail and writes that while features such as Similar audiences have been around for a while, many businesses don’t take advantage of it.
Chrysler, as John points out, achieved 22 percent more conversions, 14 percent lower cost per acquisition (CPA), and 11 percent increase in click-through rate (CTR), all thanks to using similar audiences for search.
Audience targeting
You could just skip audience targeting completely while building your Google Ads campaigns, and that’d be leaving money on the table. Audience targeting works just like Facebook’s audience targeting and you can specifically target people who are “in the market” for specific products or services.
For instance, you could choose to target “gamers”, “travelers”, “pet lovers”, “technology nerds”, “gadget lovers”, and more.
Depending on your business, you could zoom in to an audience that’s most likely to be interested in what you sell.
Audience targeting is available for GDN (Google Display Network), search, and Video (YouTube) and it also gives you various options such as affinity, custom affinity, customer match, and similar audiences (as explained above), depending on the network type you’d select.
Here’s how it’d look like, according to Google.
Best Google Ads features?
Which of these Google Ads features are you using (and not)?
If you need help with your Google Ad campaigns, Facebook Ad campaigns, landing pages, and sales funnels?