You would be hard pressed to find a well performing Google Ads campaign that does not use a thoroughly vetted marketing strategy. Even the best ad copy and keyword strategy risk stagnation eventually if they are implemented without any clear purpose. In this article, we discuss how the metaphorical conversion funnel can serve as a road map for building successful Google Ads campaigns.
A Top-Down Approach to Marketing Strategy
While there may be differences in the wording, a basic conversion funnel is structured with raising awareness at the top. That’s followed by gaining interest, consideration, and conversion.
A top-down approach means to simply start by raising awareness and then work your way down the funnel. The goal is to get as many impressions and clicks as possible thereby building interest.
Google ads has two campaign goal settings that can serve this purpose: “website traffic”, “brand awareness and reach”. Each of these goals have different capabilities when it comes to the types of campaigns you can run. For example, the “website traffic” goal can run a search campaign, but “brand awareness and reach” cannot.
Both options are great for getting clicks but choosing the right goal for your business makes google an even more powerful ally. Perhaps you’re trying to build awareness of your e-commerce store. Optimizing for website traffic would be helpful. Maybe your brand is new and you’re looking to build a foundational customer base. Brand awareness is for you.
Google Ads Campaigns for Building Awareness
Once you have selected a goal, it’s time to select a campaign type. This is where the funnel strategy starts to take shape. This part of your strategy is all about raising awareness, so you’ll want to make sure you’re using your budget efficiently to max out your reach. Display and Shopping ads are great option for this. The average cost per click for Display Ads is $0.59 and $0.66 for Shopping.
Minimal CPC’s allow for more flexibility in the budget and increased reach. A Search campaign that’s optimized for clicks is an option for those without photo assets or a catalog of products, but Search has a higher CPC than Display and Shopping making it less flexible.
Remarketing Strategy for Conversions
At this point, your Display or Shopping campaign has increased your website traffic significantly. It’s time to put the rest of the conversion funnel to work. The next step is building a Search campaign with conversions being the objective.
Google Ads can track website users and compiles those users into an automatically built audience called “website visitors”. You’ll want to target that audience. You can also create what’s called a “similar audience” that includes users who are like the website visitors in their behavior but haven’t visited the site yet.
While your Display and Shopping campaigns generating interest, your Search campaign will be hard at work building trust with those in the consideration phase and eventually getting the conversion. There are certainly nuances to this strategy with plenty of ways to modify it for more granularity in targeting. However, this is a great place to begin for those looking to develop their marketing strategy for more organized Google Ads campaigns.