Unleashing Google Ads: Tips and Tricks
At YRV Dynamics, we’re excited to reveal our latest collection of high-performing tips and tricks for Google Ads mastery. Designed to lower CPC while boosting ROAS significantly, our insights offer a strategic edge in Google ads optimization. We also tackle prevalent myths, providing clarity and enhancing your advertising performance.
Google Campaign Objective
There has been some debate on the purpose of pre-emptively picking Google's objectives. The rumor was Google would adjust the cost-pers based on what was chosen in the above menu. This is false — their platform already tracks dozens of signals, especially since AI is involved. This rumor probably originated in the pre-AI years of buying. The reason for this objective is for the buying template to arrange for Leads vs. Sales vs. Website Traffic vs. App Promotion. For example, the leads drop-downs and platform build will be focused on that key objective.
By picking no-goal guidance, buyers have more control over the placements they want to pick. Most buyers find the previous objective choice redundant.
Conversions vs Conversion Value
- Conversions: Purchases or units sold. Because we’re dealing with units sold, lower AOV (average order value) takes precedence. More expensive products take a longer lead time, with more spending to find purchasers. Therefore, cheaper products or SKUs with similar prices perform better with this optimization.
- Conversion Value: Can be complementary to tROAS, but geared towards high-yielding ROAS. This is ideal for higher-priced products.
Another note on conversion value is tROAS. I recommend aiming for lower bidding auctions in the marketplace. This will allow the campaign to enter more auctions and help push your overall ROAS higher. The theory is lower priced auctions will give the algorithm room to win high-performing bids. Based on my buying experience, entering more auctions with a lower tROAS yields great results.
The same methodology applies to click traffic. Although you can enter a CPC limit, as with CPA (conversion) or a high tROAS, you risk not running any paid ads if the bid is unreasonable. In other words, no spending will occur as the marketplace views your bidding option as too aggressive.
If you have CPA or CPC dictate, I advise you to see where the marketplace nets out and manually bring down the cost. In this case, you bring down the costs in increments, “training” the algo to work within your parameters. You then bring 15–20% bids with each incremental level you achieve. You will need to wait a week for each level. If the buyer rushes this process, it may not spend, and you may need to wait twice as long. At the same time, you will need to supply the various creative leveraging and duplicating “hero,” top-performing ads.
Negative Keywords: Your Key to Leveraging Broad Targeting
Google is constantly recommending Broad KW targeting whenever possible. Through their rep meetings or auto-recommendations on their ads buying platform. Broad KWs and Smart bidding are ways Google leverages AI in-platform. Some buyers have found success here. The key is using negative KWs to avoid terms you want the campaign to exclude. This allows you to incorporate Broad to achieve a low cost-per but remove terms from your search mix.
Another tip is to constantly check your search terms reporting as a guide to ensure the wrong terms are not being used within the search campaign. Most buyers forget this point. Without double-checking what Broad or Phrase Match is delivering against, the buy relies on the Google Ads keywords — → again, not the term delivery. This double-check highlights what words were used for the campaign.
Launching a New Campaign: Events Leading to Purchases
Upon launching your Search ads, there is much discussion on where to start the campaign. Our launch process at YRV Dynamics begins with website traffic/ clicks. From here, we examine the CPC and CTR based on ad copy, KW targeting, and broad/ phrase/ exact KW match options. Eventually, people will opt into emails, ATC (add to cart), and IC (initiate checkout). At this point, users are entering your funnel, and purchases should begin firing. After five to ten + purchases, set the optimization event to conversion. This is where the ROAS and conversion value of the buy comes into play.
Brand vs. Non-Brand
There is much debate on branded vs. non-branded terms. I always recommend using brand terms in your search nix. For e-commerce brand KWs assist with the following:
- Paid Branded KWs promote shorter sales flights like Black Friday or Cyber Monday. SEO may take too long for those organic terms to populate within the organically. By the time those terms do show, the sale is over.
- Conquesting your terms. However, this practice has been declining over the years due to declining quality scores, which factor into account landing pages and ad relevancy.
- Maximizing your SERP real estate: In this case, brand terms show + organic terms for a larger SOV on the SERP (search engine results page). This includes additional highlights such as extensions.
- Yield high conversion rate and low CPC: Non-branded terms bring in ACQ users/ unexposed. However, users come back and convert on branded terms. This is why brand terms are important. They close the smart funnel, allowing the platforms to yield a proper conversion path. Thus, the campaign has an established process for conversions/ conversion value.
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Yousaf Yunes is the CEO/ Lead Founder / Principal at YRV Dynamics, with more than 15 years of expertise in the advertising industry. He’s garnered a Top Rated Plus status on Upwork, earning a perfect job satisfaction score of 100% with twenty-one 5-star reviews from his Upwork clients. Yousaf earned certifications in Google Search and YouTube/Video and holds dual Blueprint certifications in Meta’s planning and buying. Yousaf has also won the Monty McKinney Award for the Institute of Advanced Advertising Studies (IAAS).
During his downtime, Yousaf is the lead moderator for the largest Meta group focused on Blueprint, known as “Facebook Blueprint Certification Prep,” which boasts a membership of over 30,000 individuals.