Google adwords has a lot of great features that can help us to improve performance of our ad campaigns and increase ROI from ads.
But people are not even aware about these features.
So in this article, I am going to share with you 7 google ads features that can increase your google ads performance but you might not be using that so far.
Keep reading till the end.
Category:- Ad Creation
1. Ad Customizer
Problem
Suppose, you run a SAAS company and your target market is USA, UK and Canada, you are willing to run google ads and want to show personalized messaging to the people from these different locations.
E.g
People from USA:- Best X software in USA.
People from Canada:- Best X software in Canada.
People from UK:- Best X software in UK.
Then what can you do?
1st option: you can create dedicated campaigns for each of the locations and do all the work from beginning to end 3 times.
2nd option: Ad customizer, it lets you show personalized messages for each of the locations without creating other campaigns. I will show you below as the example.
What is Ad Customizer?
Ad customizer is a very good feature offered by google that lets you to show custom ads for a particular target location, keyword, ad group, campaign and more.
Why Ad Customizer is important?
It is very helpful for optimizing ad relevance and CTR of the ads that ultimately helps you to increase the quality score on your keywords.
Another good feature of this type of ad is that your previous data not get deleted even if you will do any of the changes in the ads.
Use Case with live demo?
Lets say, I want to show my ads of inbound marketing services in 2 different countries, one in the USA and another in Canada.
For USA, I want to show my ad text “Best Inbound Marketing Services in USA”
And for Canada, I want to show my ad text “Best Inbound Marketing Services in Canada”
Then I can do it using ad customizer feature.
Let’s create this step by step:
In the beginning, I would create a spreadsheet for it and create some columns.
First column would be of target location, because I want to customize my ads based on different locations
Then, I would create columns of ad headings.
In the heading 2, you will notice that I have written 2 different headings based on their relative locations.
Pro tip:- After every columns of headings, make sure you are creating a column of length so that character limit of each headings will remain in your mind & you will not cross the maximum character limit of headings.
Similarly, I will do this with description 1 & description 2.
Now, I will save this sheet in a CSV format.
Then I will go to my google adwords’s account, click on the tool icon and will go to the business data.
Then, I will click on the + icon, then again on ad customizer data tab.
Here, I will upload the CSV file that I created earlier, and will give the name to the data feed also.
Then, I will click on the apply button.
The file will get uploaded.
Now, I will create an ad that will work for both of my target locations with different text.
I will go to Campaign > Ad group > Ads & extensions.
Then I will click on the + icon and will select the Text ad option.
Then on the headline 1 tab, I will type a curly bracket, then an option of ad customizer will appear, I would click on it.
Then, the system will show me the data feed that I had uploaded earlier.
After clicking on the data feed, the system will ask to fill data in the selected field and because the field is headline 1 so I will select the headline 1 option.
Similarly, I will do this with other fields.
Then, I will save the ad.
So, Through this way my 1 ad will be created that will show different texts for different target locations.
But before using this feature, you should keep some of the things in your mind.
Points to remember
- If you are using this feature in your ads then you always have to create more than 2 ads in a single adgroup, otherwise google will not show impressions in your single ad. Another ad can be a normal text ad.
- The text length column that I created in the spreadsheet shouldn’t contain the same text, you can differentiate them by giving name like this:- length 1, length 2. Just like I did.
2. DKI Ads
What is DKI Ads?
DKI ads often known as Dynamic Keyword Insertion ads, It is a feature that is also used for ad creation.
This type of ads shows the same query in your ads that a user types on google.
Below image is an example of this kind of ad:-
Why DKI ads is important?
This type of ads is also used for optimising ad relevance and CTR that ultimately increase the quality score of your keywords.
How to create DKI ads?
For creating this type of ad, log into your google ads dashboard.
Then go to Campaign > Ad group > Ads & extensions.
Then click on the + icon and select the Text ad option.
Now, click on the field where you want that the exact same keyword will be shown when the user types that keyword on google.
Let's say heading 1, so click on it and type curly bracket, then an option of keyword insertion will come, click on it.
Then, the system will ask from you to fill default text.
This default text will be shown if a user type a query on google which is more than the character limit of Headlines in ads.
Then select the case of the text.
Then fill the rest of the information.
And click on Save Ad
So, through this way your DKI ad will be created.
Category:- Targeting
3. Custom Combination audience
What is custom combination audience?
This is an audience type that we create by applying some criteria with 2 or more already created audiences.
Why custom combination audience is important?
You can target a specific group of people from the audience lists that you already have, you don’t need to create another audience list from the beginning.
Use Case with live demo
Suppose, I am running ads for Inbound Mantra & my goal is to generate as many as leads.
I am sending the traffic to inbound mantra’s inbound marketing service page.
And, Once they will fill the contact us form, they will land on the thank you page
And I have 2 audiences already created.
- One list of those people who land on my inbound marketing service page.
- Another list of those people who land on my thank you page.
And I want to show re-marketing ads to those group of people who land on my inbound marketing service page but have not visited my thank you page.
Then I will create a 3rd audience using a custom combination feature.
Here is the step by step method:-
- Click on the tool icon and go to the audience manager section.
- Click on the + icon and select custom combination option.
- Then give name to the audience list.
- Then select the audience of those people who land on your inbound marketing service page & click on done.
- Now you have to exclude the audience of those people who visited your thank you page. So for that click on AND.
- Select the condition from “Any of these audience” to “None of these audience” and click on the audience list, this condition will instruct the system to exclude the people which are in your selected audience list.
Then click on Done.
And finally, click on the “Create Audience” button.
Your custom combination audience will be created using 2 already created audience.
So this was the only 1 use case of custom combination audience, you can apply other conditions & criteria as per your requirements.
Category:- Bidding
4. ROAS Bidding
What is ROAS Bidding?
Full form of ROAS is Return On Ad Spend. It is a google adwords machine learning bid strategy which is only for those sites which sell their goods online.
Basically, It shows how much revenue you have generated by selling your goods online through google ads.
Why is ROAS Bidding important?
Since google’s machine learning algorithm is becoming more & more advance day by day, optimising your ads for this type of bid strategy can be very beneficial for you.
I have seen several ad campaigns that has increased their revenue after applying this bid strategy.
How to calculate ROAS?
Here is the formula of calculating ROAS:
ROAS / Total amount spent = x%
How to apply ROAS bid strategy?
Before applying ROAS Bid strategy, first of all you have to calculate the ROAS of your ad campaign and for that you have to begin with by implementing a conversion tag on the thank you page with value integration.
For implementing conversion tag, go to tools > conversions and click on + icon.
- Select the website option.
- Give name to the conversion.
- Then select the category of the conversion, here purchase will come.
- After that, the system will ask to provide value to your conversion and there you will get 3 options.
For calculating ROAS, you have to assign some value to your conversion and if your conversion has different values each time, then select the second option "use different values for each conversion".
Then keep the other things the same.
Finally, click on the Save and Continue button.
- Then Google will give you 3 options to install the tag into your site, you can select any of the suitable option.
- If you will click on “Install the tag yourself” option then you will get 2 HTML tags in it.
- Global Site tag
This tag you have to install in the <head> tags of your site.
- Event Snippet code
This code you have to paste in the thank you page of your website, but before that you have to ask your developer to add variables in the place of “1.0”.
- Once it will get done then paste the code in the thank you page.
- And now let your campaign run for at least 30 days and let some conversions come in your campaign.
- After 30 day, when your campaign would have good amount of conversions, then it will be good to apply this bid strategy.
- Go to tools > Bid strategies, click on + icon and select Target ROAS.
- Give it a name, then select the particular campaign, along with every campaign, you will be able to see the ROAS of that particular campaign.
- Once you select the campaign, then you have to give a target ROAS to the system, It will be good if you give 2x the ROAS, that you saw earlier.
And click on save.
- After setting up this strategy, system will automatically optimise your campaign in order to meet your target ROAS goal.
Category:- Optimization
5. Relative CTR
What is Relative CTR?
It is a metric that google adwords gives to your display network campaigns, it helps to determine the CTR of your competitor on the same placement where you and your competitors are showing ads.
Why is Relative CTR important?
It helps you to understand that how your ads are performing as compared to your competitors based on the CTR, so that you can take better decisions in order to improve your CTR performance.
Where will you see this Metric?
In order to enable this metric, you need to click on the columns option and then on modify columns.
Then, in the competitive metrics section, select the option of relative CTR.
Then you will see a column of Relative CTR along with each of your display campaigns.
How to find out competitor’s CTR using relative CTR metric?
You can calculate this using a formula:- (Your CTR / Relative CTR) x 100
6. Search Lost Impression Share (Rank)
What is search lost impression share (rank)?
Search lost impression share (rank) is a metric that estimates how often your ad didn't show on the search network due to poor ad rank.
Why is search lost impression share (rank) important?
Since this metric shows you the lost impression percentage of your campaign, based on that you would be able to take better decisions to decrease this metrics that can ultimately increase your performance.
Where will you see this Metric?
To see this metric, you need to enable it.
Click on the columns option and then on modify columns.
Then, in the competitive metrics section, select the option of search lost IS (rank).
And click on apply, then you will see this column.
Pro tip:- You always have to focus on improving this metric, the more this percentage will decrease the more your campaign’s performance will increase. In order to improve this metric you can work on Ad rank.
7. Ad relevance, Landing page relevance, Expected CTR
What is:
Ad relevance is a metric that shows the relevancy of a keyword with your ads.
Landing page relevance is a metric that shows how relevant a particular keyword is with your landing page.
Expected CTR is a metric that shows how likely it is that your ad will be clicked when shown.
System give 3 types of scores in these metrics: “Below Average”, “Average”, “Above Average”.
“Below Average” means not upto the mark.
“Average” means ok but can become better.
“Above Average” means perfect.
Why these metrics are important?
These metrics play a very essential role for improving quality scores of your ads. Improving these metrics can boost your quality score that ultimately decreases the cost of your conversions.
Where will you see these Metrics?
To see this metric, you need to enable it.
Click on the columns option and then on modify columns.
Then, In the column of Quality Score, select these options.
Then click on Apply.
Then you will see these columns with every keywords.
You will notice some of the keywords which has below average scores on these metrics, their quality score is also very low.
