- With our constant exposure to ads on social media,
it's easy to feel like Facebook and Instagram
are the places to spend ad dollars
to invest in our business' growth,
but Google Ads is still the most powerful platform
to reach audiences effectively,
except there is one major hurdle,
they seem so complicated, but fear not.
By the end of this video,
you'll know everything you need
to truly understand before advertising
on the widest-reaching ads platform on planet Earth.
Just to be clear though,
this is not a step-by-step campaign creation
and bidding tutorial.
No.
We need to see the map
before we can set off on the journey.
And so, this video is to help you get acclimated
with the 10 different types of Google Ads you can run
as a small business owner and what each type is best for.
But of course, we've also created a detailed walkthrough
of how to actually set up Google Ads,
so be sure to watch that video once you finish this one.
Those 10 types of ads I mentioned
all sit inside of four general categories,
search ads, display ads, video ads, and remarketing ads.
Each ad type has been established
by Google to truly tailor delivery
to different types of audiences and use cases.
So, understanding these differences is critical,
so you don't end up spending ineffectively
or worse, losing money on your investment.
After all, the whole point of ads is to maximize spending
while yielding the greatest possible profit back to you.
So, let's kick things off with category one, search ads.
These ads, as we probably gather from the name,
are ads that appear in various contexts
when people type something into the Google search bar.
There are two general buckets of search ads,
text ads, which appear at the top of search results pages,
and shopping ads, which appear
depending on whether or not the search terms
yields enough results for items for sale.
There are also branded and non-branded searches
that we all do on the internet,
meaning someone could type in a branded search
for Nike sneakers for women,
with the specific brand Nike in their search,
or they could simply search
for sneakers for women alone without a brand.
So, all ads form a three-way relationship
between what the user types into the search bar,
its degree of relevance to the keywords
you bid on for your campaign,
and the ad type you select to display.
If that sounded confusing, don't worry,
because as we go through
all the different ad types we'll discuss,
I'll loop it back to this three-way relationship,
so you can really grasp the concept
and also share valuable nuggets
like who the specific ad type is for,
what types of business goals they work best for,
whether they're on the cheaper
or higher cost end to execute,
and how easy they are to implement.
The first search ad type is the branded Google search.
Again, this means someone
is specifically typing in your business' brand
into the search bar.
This means the degree of relevance is very high
since they're literally searching
for your business right into Google.
This ad type makes sense
for virtually all businesses
to campaign on for a few reasons.
Because the relevance of the search couldn't be higher
than someone literally searching for you specifically,
so the likelihood of converting them is already quite high.
Next, because of how relevant
the ad will be to the search itself,
the cost per click is low.
I'd estimate between 25 cents and $4 per click
depending on your industry and your offering.
Now, you might be wondering, hey, why would I make ads
if someone is already searching specifically for me?
And the main reason
is simply because you can dictate exactly which page
you want that ad to go to,
perhaps a new product launch or an aggressive promotion
which in turn,
would further amplify the likelihood of a conversion.
So, the goal of this ad type
is to ensure you are capturing people
who are consciously searching directly
for your brand by name.
The main downside to branded Google search ads
is that when it comes to implementation,
they aren't the easiest
requiring some knowledge and time to initially set up.
For example, understanding the concept
of negative keywords and thinking through them.
As an example, let's say Apple
wants to run branded search ads for their newest iPhone.
During the initial campaign setup,
they will need to spend some time
to input a bunch of different keyword exclusions
such as Apple Juice or Apple Farm phone number
to ensure that their ads
are not unnecessarily served to folks
who clearly don't have the intent
on learning about and buying their latest iPhone.
Since you now better understand the nuances
of Google Ads in general, we can go a bit more rapid fire
through the rest of the ad types.
And next up is non-branded Google search ads,
which as we explored a bit earlier,
is when folks search for your businesses offering category
without your specific brand name.
The goal of this type of ad is to capture people
who have the specific intent
of searching for what you offer
without necessarily having heard of you specifically.
So, think someone typing in
just the words memory foam pillow into Google
as opposed to say, IKEA memory foam pillow.
Naturally, your brand's relevance
to the searcher will be much lower
than if they were to actually
type in your brand specifically
directly into that search bar.
And so, the cost per click
will definitely be higher than a branded search ad.
We're talking 1 to $25.
Now, hold on, you might be thinking,
what the heck, my product is $25.
How can I spend as much to get a click
as the cost of my product itself?
I hear you, but it's really important to remember
that you are not just gaining a potential sale.
If converted, you'd be actually
gaining a potential customer,
a real human who you can remarket to for far less,
even free through say, email,
who may end up spending hundreds
or even thousands of dollars
worth of products from you over the years.
This non-branded search type is technically recommended
for every entrepreneur,
but the high cost per click is something to consider.
If you're on a tighter budget right now,
it would make much more sense for you to start out
with another ad type with lower financial requirements.
And just like all search-based ad types,
the ease of execution requires some time
and thought to get right and ongoing testing to optimize.
Again, this effort shouldn't be a deterrent,
but rather, it's just a reminder
that search-based ads are a bit more complicated,
because of how versatile and effective they can be.
The third ad type we'll be chopping up
are dynamic search ads.
This is the absolute most beginner-friendly ad type
since what Google does is create ads
based on the content it sees on your website.
That's right.
You don't really have to define anything here.
If Google sees that your website
talks a lot about hiking and backpacks,
it'll target searchers who search for those terms.
The goal of this ad type
is to rely on Google's site scrapers to generate keywords
and yield new customers by serving ads
based on automatically generated ad parameters.
The relevance is tough to gauge,
because it really depends on how refined
and niched down all of the content on your website is.
It would be a really bad idea
for Jeff Bezos to use dynamic search ads for amazon.com,
because there's so much different content
on Amazon's website
that Google wouldn't even really know what to target for.
But because most of our businesses
aren't as fragmented as Amazon,
the cost per click will likely sit between 2 and $6
since again, your website's content
is probably quite targeted already.
However, keep in mind if for example,
your founder's bio on the About Us page
talks about how you were born on a cruise ship,
while cruise ships have nothing to do
with what you are actually selling,
there is a chance that Google will test serving your site
to people who search for cruise vacations.
Totally random example.
This is a tremendously quick,
easy way to get a search-based ad campaign up and running,
and especially attractive
to complete beginners who are already busy.
But if you decide to go this route,
I would recommend dedicating time early on
to track the results and campaign analytics,
so you can take what you learn
from this broad automated campaign
and learn to develop your own custom future branded
and unbranded search campaigns
to really optimize the ad dollars you'll be spending.
The fourth ad type we'll be talking about
is called Google Smart Shopping.
This is the ad type I would personally recommend
for anyone who is new to running Google Ads
and does not have the time to actively manage
and set up more effort-heavy ad types
like the ones we already touched on.
Basically, this ad type
relies on Google's ever-improving
machine learning algorithms
to do almost everything for you as effectively as possible.
It leverages three types of ads in one,
display ads, shopping ads, and retargeting ads.
We'll be touching more on display ads
and retargeting ads a little bit later.
But shopping ads are the product,
price, and ratings ads you see at the very top
of many of your own Google searches
that lead directly to a product page
based on what you searched.
So, the goal here is of course,
to rely on Google's machine learning algorithms
to generate profitable purchases
from searchers across three different types of ads.
But that said, the relevance
to what people are searching for can vary
since it's stratified across those different ad types.
Thankfully, for those newer or to Google Ads,
the cost per click can actually be quite low,
estimated as likely between just 25 cents and $5.
And because Google's Smart Shopping ads
helps you choose which products to advertise,
who to target, which creative elements to show,
and even does the bidding for you,
it's the ad type that's most recommended
for complete beginners and busy solopreneurs.
The ease of implementation is quick and pain-free,
and like dynamic search ads, can form a fantastic baseline
for you to learn from and build the confidence
to create much more manual custom search
and shopping campaigns
in the future to really supercharge your results.
And by the way, we're only touching on Smart Shopping ads,
but if you want to learn
about branded and non-branded shopping ads,
which admittedly, are much more involved
in terms of setup as well as maintenance,
I welcome you to check out a detailed,
yet very, very easy to understand article
on the Shopify blog,
which I'll link down in the description below.
We have gone through search-based ads,
so let's take a look at the display ads category
which are ads you see on other websites outside of Google.
For example, you may have noticed ads
of things you've been searching for,
popping up on news websites or random blogs or forums,
whether those ads are text, an image banner or video-based.
These are all display ads
that show up on websites that have signed up
to be a part of the Google Ads display network.
And with over 2 million websites
that are signed up, these ads can be truly effective.
The first ad type in display ads
we'll be talking about are topic and interest ads.
The goal of this ad type is to increase awareness
of your business by having your ads
show up on third-party websites
that relate to a specific topic or interest.
Ideally, those related to what you're selling.
The relevance can be super high if your product or service
has third-party websites that are hyper-aligned.
For example, maybe you sell kitchen gadgets.
So, all the home cooking blogs
that have signed up
to be a part of the Google display network
would indeed, be hyper-relevant.
And because of this high degree of relevance,
the cost per click is quite low.
I estimate a guess of between 25 cents and $3.
This ad type is definitely recommended for you
if you have a product or service
that speaks deeply to people with a very specific topic
or interest that they're passionate about.
And of course, if you know of websites
that cater to those topics or interests.
With topic-based targeting,
your ads will show up on sites that have aligned themselves
to that topic category
when they signed up to the display network.
While interest-based targeting means that your ads
will show up on any website in the display network,
but only serve to site visitors
who have recently searched those topics on Google.
It's relatively easy to get set up here,
but of course, if you want to serve image
or video-based display ads,
you will need to create those pieces
of creative in order to do so.
The sixth ad type we'll discuss
are called managed placements ads,
which are display ads
you want to show up on a very specific website
that is a part of Google's display network.
And so, the goal here
is to target a very specific website's audience.
A fantastic option if you know your target customers
frequent a particular blog or website.
The relevance to that site's audience can be very high,
especially if you really spend the time to test
and refine both your creative as well as your messaging.
And because of this high potential degree of relevance,
the cost per click is likely between $1 and $10.
And you are of course, paying a premium
to be so hyper-targeted at a specific website's visitors.
This is only recommended to you if you are sure
that a particular website's visitors
are indeed aligned with what your business is offering.
And in terms of ease of execution,
it's very easy to do once you get a hang
of navigating around Google's robust ad management platform.
As we continue on, we'll now be taking a look
at the third category of ads, which are video ads.
Did you know that the second
most popular search engine in the world is actually YouTube?
And since they're owned by Google,
you can of course,
manage YouTube ads all in the Google Ads platform.
So, let's kick this category off
with the in-feed video ad type, which as a name suggests,
means that a video ads you create
will show up directly in a YouTube user's feed
based on what they search in the YouTube search bar.
The degree of relevance is quite high
since you define where your video ad
will be displayed based on a user's search.
But the bigger challenge is making a title
and thumbnail that'll be compelling
for the user to click and actually want to watch.
Because of this high degree of relevance,
the cost per click can be very low,
estimated as just 10 cents to 50 cents per click.
But that said, you've got to actually create the video ad,
which can be free if you just film
and edit on your phone, or tremendously expensive
if you hire a production company to create the ad for you.
This ad type is recommended
not just for searches of a specific topic or keyword,
but also for audiences of a specific YouTuber.
For example, let's say you know YouTuber creates videos
that align heavily with what you sell.
You can target to serve your ads
to users who search for that content creator's videos.
These ad campaigns are quite easy to set up,
but again, you've got to create the video ad itself.
The eighth ad type are in-stream video ads.
These are the ads that show up before,
during, and after YouTube videos
that you watch that are either skippable
if they are longer than 30 seconds
or not skippable if they're less.
The goal here, of course,
is to interrupt a YouTube user's deliberate desire
to watch a video with hopefully,
something that is super aligned
with their purchasing plans and patterns.
This leads us into the degree of relevance,
which really, can be very low or very high.
Meaning, in-stream interruption ads might be very low,
because let's face it, you're getting in the way
of them watching something that they really wanted to watch.
But also, if it aligns with their desires,
can convert to immediate action.
Because of these diametrically opposed degrees of relevance,
the actual cost per click is low,
estimated at just 10 cents to 50 cents,
which makes this ad type ideal for anyone
who wants to primarily drive massive awareness
and not necessarily immediate sales.
Despite being very easy to actually set up and run
and having low costs per click,
the same consideration applies to all video ads.
It can cost a ton to produce
if you hire a professional video production company.
The ninth ad type are called bumper ads.
These are also video ads,
but specifically ones that are less than just six seconds.
And you might be wondering
what kind of messaging you can hit with such little time.
And so, the primary goal of this ad type
is for general product or brand awareness.
Especially useful if the YouTube viewer
already knows about your brand or offering.
The relevance is generally in the mid-range
since although you are indeed interrupting a YouTube
user's desire to watch a video that they clicked on,
the bumper ad is so short
that it's hardly interpreted as an annoyance.
Because of that, the cost per click
is quite low estimated at 10 to 50 cents,
and is also recommended for you if you sell a consumable.
For example, lately when I've been watching YouTube,
I've been getting served a lot of bumper ads
for a toilet paper brand, which makes sense,
because we all need toilet paper,
and at some point, I'll always need to order more.
So, this bumper serves as a great reminder
to check if I'm running low on TP.
It's also great for retargeting to people
who have recently visited your website
as a flash reminder for them to come back,
which leads us to the next ad type,
the retargeting or remarketing ad.
Sometimes people will visit a site, even add things to cart,
but just don't check out for many potential reasons.
The goal of remarketing ads is to follow them
around the internet in the days
after their last visit to your website
to hopefully entice them to return and complete a purchase.
The degree of relevance here is very high
since, hey, they've literally
recently visited your business online.
And because of this, the cost per click is relatively low,
estimated at just between 25 cents and $3.
This feels like a no-brainer for any business
that is already driving traffic to their website.
But in terms of ease of execution,
although it's technically easy to just implement,
it's important to put some effort
to future segment who you are retargeting,
ideally narrowing down to people
who showed a concrete intent of purchasing,
whether it's remarketing to folks
who added something to cart
or visited a specific product page
of something you are aggressively trying to move.
And Shopify makes all of this super easy
with a specific Google sales channel
built right into our platform.
And if you haven't yet,
I welcome you to access your 100% free,
no strings attached trial to Shopify
by clicking the link right up here
or down in the description below.
But look, the bottom line is this,
of the 10 ad types we discussed based on what we know
of most of our audience here on Learn With Shopify,
if you are just starting out with your e-commerce business
and have limited resources and limited time,
the easiest way to get started
with minimal risk is to use the Google Smart Shopping ad.
But Google Ads are so robust
and I genuinely hope that when the time allows,
you will take a plunge
into learning more about targeting keywords,
exclusionary keywords, and all that jazz,
because learning to leverage the largest,
most far-reaching ads platform on earth
will pay huge dividends as you continue to grow and scale.
And like I said at the beginning,
if you're now ready to actually see a guide
on setting up your first Google Ads campaign,
you should definitely watch this video right over here.
But hey, if you got some value,
hit that like button for me, won't ya?
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