Google Best Practices for Online Marketing and Advertising

Google best practices for online marketing and advertising are core search engine marketing tactics. These practices are intended to help you get the most out of Google Adwords, helping to form the foundation of your paid search strategies. Partnered with Google Analytics, AdWords is very powerful.

 

Keywords: How Customers Reach You?

Search engine strategies are powered by keywords. Using varied sources can help to find the right keywords, though it’s important to make sure that the keywords you choose line up with your company’s identity.

Regardless of the sources that you use to generate keywords, you must consider all the ways that potential customers could reach you holistically. Therefore, some of the best sources to consider when determining how to find new keywords include the following:

• Your website
• Your products
• Your brand

Here are some other tips to choose your keywords well:

• Your keywords should stay in sync with your website’s specific offerings. Find any gaps between your website’s content and your keyword list.

• Make sure that you are bidding on core product keywords. When your audience is at the end of the buying cycle, they will be searching for a specific product or service. If you are a retailer, using product names and models as keywords can make for high performance.   

• Remember the value of your branded terms as well. If you deal with multiple products, then add keywords that are combinations of your brand name and high-volume products that people often search for in the same query.  

Align Management of Keywords with Business Goals:

Managing your advertising can be overwhelming, so companies often group keywords together for easier oversight of their budgets. Organizing your keywords this way makes them simpler to conceptualize and thus work with. One can organize them based on which part of the user experience you want them to make an impact (the beginning, middle or end), or another way. For example, by using categories such as by:

• Brand
• Geographical area
• Product line

One of the better ways to separate ad campaigns is geographically. Further, if you have different retail locations where unique set of items are being promoted, it can even be sensible to set up distinct ad campaigns for each store. Additionally, each of the following types of ads demands to be treated differently when thinking about how you want to reach your customers. A quick explanation of each will show why:

• Remarketing Ads – Remarketing (also called Retargeting by some) is a technique in which people who interact with your company or site in some way are targeted with ads, as they are more likely to become customers than people who have not interacted with you at all.
• Display Ads – Display advertising is a type of ad we’re all familiar with — in it, banner images are placed on popular websites to bring traffic to yours or put your brand in their minds.
• Search Ads – Right above the search results or to the right of them there are often sponsored ads that are for sale which are a great way to bring interested customers to your site.
• Video Ads – These are videos describing your product or company which can encapsulate your company’s attitudes and on top of that often lead to click-throughs.
• Google Shopping Ads – As these types of ads target customers who are already interested in buying (they have already come to Google Shopping), they have a greater click-through rate and lower cost per click than standard Google search ads.

Given the uniqueness of each of these avenues, separating them when you think about them helps a lot in managing your company’s overall advertising strategy.

Amount of Money to Spend:

The amount of money you want to invest in your Adwords campaign is a key factor which influences what you can expect to receive. Experts say that any campaign that is under $100 per day is a waste of effort. People begin campaigns on $20 or even $50 per day and don’t get enough clicks to provide actionable data or results.  Of course, if you are spending on the low side and not getting the results that you think you should be getting, then it’s unproductive to blame anyone else. Having a small budget is like having a Ferrari R4 and filling the tank only a quarter of the way; you won’t go very far.

Holiday Advertising Planning:

Set up your search and shopping campaigns so that your campaigns are successful during the holidays. Planning for the increased demand during the holidays in the fall and winter seasons can help you win more customers over this critical time period.

Have the following two tasks accomplished before October: Set up your promotion plan and establish a crisis-response plan. For your promotional plan, decide what and when you want to promote with your merchandising team. Remember to ask about doorbuster deals, website-wide promotions, and exclusive promo codes.

For your crisis-response plan, define what is considered a crisis, determine who must fix any problems that arise (such as technical or supply-oriented problems). Include team members, vendors, and your Google account team. This will ensure that you don’t lose sales during this crucial period.

Use the plans you made before October to build the foundation for your holiday sales. Here are three action items for early October:  

• Expand coverage of queries with increased search frequency during the holidays. Look for missing keywords by running a keyword report for the same time last year, filter for conversions greater than zero, and cross-reference against your current keyword list.

• Promote the advertisements of yours which are converting the best. Show your customers a persuasive message at the right time.

• Prioritize your holiday merchandise and top-performers.  Identify what products will drive the most web traffic during peak holiday shopping days and make them easily accessible.  

Here are some strategies to increase results during October itself:

• Maximize the relevance of your advertisements.  
• Attract as many qualified clicks as possible by differentiating your ads.  
• Make your ads more interesting with ad extensions such as site links and callout extensions.  

Holiday traffic increases in November and December.  If your campaign is ready to start in November and December, here are the strategies to optimize defensively:

• Check you are not going dark midday or mid-season, spending more than you’ve allocated. Actively measure your “burn rate” that is dollars spent to date to see if you are outpacing budget.  If you budget is limited, then view your campaign performance, prioritize your high-performing campaigns, and see what campaign is spending the most.

• Target easy-wins if you need more to reach more shoppers and more profit but low impression share.  

We hope this article has been a helpful guide to best practices in Google for online marketing and advertising and beyond. Please contact us if you need help with any work you need to do with Google Adwords.