Google Ads Cheat Sheet

Everything you need to know about Google Ads

By: Sarah Vancini

Image credit: https://www.channable.com/blog/blog-channables-handy-google-ads-cheat-sheet

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Value Prop of Google Ads: Get access to a broad range of advertising products
designed to help you reach customers in the moments that matter.

What can google ads do?

● Drive Sales
● Get Leads
● Increase Website Visits
● Influence Consideration
● Build awareness
● Promote your app

3 Principles: relevance, control, and results.

Relevance:
● connect with the right people at the right time with the right message. Ads can
appear on google search, youtube and more
● Appears right when someone is looking for products or services like yours

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 ● You can customize: keywords and location to get in front of most relevant
customers

Control:
● Complete control over your budget
● Choose how much to spend by month, day or ad
● Auction based on budget to determine which ad to show
● If want to change strategy you can adjust ad, modify budget or pause/restart a
campaign

Results:
● pay only for results like clicks to websites or calls to business.
● Measurement tools show you how your site, apps and ads are performing
● Smart tech lets you create, manage and optimize your campaigns

2. Support your Business Goals with Google Ads

● Connect with people finding answers on search, Watching youtube or discovering
apps on google play
● Choose where customers see ads

Google Ads campaign types:

● Each campaign type determines where ads appear and format ads are displayed
● Types:
○ Search
○ Display
○ Video
○ Shopping
○ App

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Search
● Appear next to google search results and on other google partner sites like
youtube
● Make sure potential customers notice your brand, consider your products and
take action

Display:
● Appear across a network of over two million sites and apps
● Reach 90% of people on the internet
● Ads get matched to content related to business or to customer’s interests
● Increases exposure and reaches audiences with specific interests

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Video
● Right the right audience at scale and capture their attention
● Show your ads on their own or within other streaming video content on youtube
and across google’s network of websites and apps.
● Only pay when people choose to watch you ad
● Help you bring your business's story to life. Engage customers in different ways-
show ads before their favorite music video or while researching an upcoming
purchase

Shopping
● Ads appear on Google Shopping next to search results near text and responsive
ads
● Promote products by giving detailed info before they select your ad
● Advertise your online and local inventory, boost traffic to site or local store, find
better-qualified leads

App
● Run ads across google’s largest properties: search, play and youtube and other
mobile sites and apps
● Ads and bids automatically adjusted to get the most downloads
● Increase engagement, app installs and in-app actions (like signing up for a
newsletter or ordering a product)

Specialized Campaign Types

● Local: drive important offline metrics (store visits or instore sales) by ads on
multiple platforms. Google ads optimizes how your ads appear on search, maps,
display and youtube to maximize your offline performance
● Hotel: advertise rates and availability. Search, maps, and assistant
● Discovery: easily engage customers across google’s most popular properties
with rich, unique ad formats. YouTube Home Feed, Gmail, Google’s Discover Feed

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Smart Campaigns
● Automated
● Choose business goals and let machine learning work through Google Search,
Display and Maps
● Set default
● Great fit for those who want an easy way to reach relevant customers and drive
results but have limited time or experience with managing google ads

Optimize Campaigns
● Campaign type determines where users see your ads
● Customize features to engage meaningful audiences
● Device Targeting: reach customers on any device: desktop, tablet, smartphone
● Locations and Language: eligible to show to customers in particular locations or
chosen a selected language for browser
● Bidding and budget: how you pay for users to interact with ads. Bid limit is most
you’r pay per click for ads in ad group. Budge is the average amount you’re
comfortable spending each day on campaign. Budget can be adjusted at any
time
● Ad extensions: include more info such as location, links to pages and phone
number

Explore the Value of Google Search

1. Recognize the value of google search ads

● 3.5 billion searches are made each day on google search
● People search for info, shopping online, comparing product prices, getting
directions, learning something new
● People want to know, buy, go or do

Translate User intent into business results

● Ads show up alongside search results when people are looking for the products or
services you offer

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 2. Master the foundations of a google search campaign
● Create a Google Search campaign
● How you can create and customize your campaign

Setting up a search campaign

● How can you drive more traffic to your site, service or product
● Where do you want your ads seen?
● How much do you want to invest?
● What do you want to share in your ads?
● What keywords will match your customer’s search terms?

Search Campaign Examples

● Increase sales by bringing in more customers- marketing goal is increase sales
● Campaigns are created around a marketing goal and based on actions you want
customers to take
● Marketing goal should be the main thing you want to achieve from the ad
● Search campaign marketing goals can be : Sales, Leads, Website Traffic - Display,
Video and App campaigns have additional goals too

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 ● Networks setting determines where you want your ad to appear based on campaign type
● Ex. with google search network: ad appear on google search sites, google play, google
shopping, google maps and on non google search sites like CNN that partner with
google to show search ads (search partners)
● You can also expand to the google display ads network where your text ad can show on
sites that partner with google
● Campaigns target all types of devices (desktop, tablet, mobile)- you can customize
campaign for different devices
● Ads can be set to show to users located in or who have interest in a geographic location.
● Language targeting allows restriction where your ads appear based on user’s language
settings and language of site
● Bid strategy controls manner in which you pay for users to interact with ads
● Choose metric for campaign then see different bidding options to optimize for it- can
choose manually to set bids of clicks or like google ads do it
● Budget: average amount you want to spend each day on campaign- can change at any
time

● Create ad groups
● For each ad group need to create specific text ads and list of search keywords (words
and phrases that prompt ads to show up)
● It’s best to create ad groups around themes or products- allows for right message to right
customers
● For each ad group create unique list of keywords- think about search terms people may
use when researching or looking for products
● Decide bid amounts- max amount you want to pay when customer clicks ad
● Create a set of text ads for each ad group.
○ Headline- catch customer’s attention
○ URL- reach page
○ Description: highlight details of offer
● Select create ag groups made up of dynamically created text ads and keywords lists-
built automatically based on content of website- ads show up for searches you may not
think of when creating standard ad groups (Dynamic Search Ads)

More Search Campaign Settings

● Ad extensions: location info, links to pages on website, phone number
● Start and end date: campaign start and end date
● Ad scheduling: choose certain days or hours of the week for ads to show

How do ads end up in front of customers:

● A person performs a search

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 ● Auction starts- google go through all advertiser’s campaigns looking for keywords in ad
group to match user’s search term. Look at bids for these keywords. Auction occurs
every time a search is run.
● Google ranks all ads and decides which one to show based on bid and relevance. If not
relevant- it won’t show
● Search turns into a sale

3. Manage which searches prompt your ads

● Keywords in an ad group = tell google which customer searches should match with your
ads
● How to customize keyword list to broaden or narrow matches

How to control which searches prompt your ads

● Think like your customer-match keywords with what customers use when looking for
your products or services (keyword targeting)
● Think about business goals: more visitors or reach more customers ready for a
purchase? Five match type options for keywords from broad to narrow:
○ Broad match
○ Modified broad match
○ Phrase match
○ Exact match
○ Negative
● You may be sure your customers are using some phrases and others you may never see
coming
● Get google to do it for you- dynamically created texts ads and keyword lists developed
automatically based on your website content- show up for more search terms than you
may have initially included

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How to reach a broad audience with match types
● Get ads in front of a wider audience and make sure not miss any search terms = broad
match and broad match modifier

Broad match (default match type)

● Shows ads if a keyword or any variations like misspellings, synonyms or related
searches are included in users search terms
● Good if you want to spend less time building exhaustive keyword lists
● Wil leach people not necessarily searching for your specific brand or business - casting a
wide net

Broad match modifier

● Adding a + sign in front of a keyword turns it into a board match modifier
● Ads appear only if keyword or close variables are part of the search term
● Certain concepts related to keywords must be present in searches to display ad

How to narrow your reach with match types: phrase match and exact match

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Phrase match: place quotes around the keywords makes it a phrase match. Ads appear only if
the keywords within the quotes or close variations match a user’s search term. There cannot be
any extra words between the user’s search terms. Extra words can appear before or after the
phrase match

Exact Match: place brackets around the keywords. Ads only show if search means the same
thing as keyword. Includes close variations of keyword like misspellings, plurals and synonyms.
There can’t be any extra words before or after search terms

How to use match types so ads don’t show up on wrong searches: negative keywords

Adding a minus sign in front of a keyword makes it a negative keyword meaning ads wont show
if someone includes that negative keyword in their search

The broader match types (broad and broad match modifier) help you discover terms
that you might not be aware of already, whereas exact match is good for those search
terms you know your customers will be using when they're searching for a product or
service that you want to provide specific messaging for.

4. Complement your keyword strategy with Dynamic Search

Ads (DSA)

● 15% of all google searches daily hae never been seen before = lost opportunities
● Building ad creatives at scale and correctly matching them to each different landing page
is HARD

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What are dynamic search ads?
● Help you increase reach of search campaigns
● Instead of creating an ad for each pay on your site and adding keywords for each of
those ads- dynamic search uses google’s understanding of your site to customize and
target your ad

How Dynamic Search Ads work

1. Specify the pages of your website, daily budget and an ad template
2. Customer enters search in google search
3. If you have content relevant to the search google dynamically generates an ad headline
and destination URL to best matching page on site
4. Web crawling indexes your site and uses it for lists to ultimately determine if customers
search is relevant. If the search term matches the index, google automatically creates a
headline and destination URL customized to customer search. Only need to create a
description in template beforehand- everything else is automatic.

Dynamic Search Ads in Action

1. Types a search term
2. Google matches term to relevant landing page on site
3. Google creates ads based on your template and tailor-made headline

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Targeting Options for Dynamic Search Ads
● Landing Pages from standard ad groups: easiest option- includes all web pages that
you’re already using as landing pages for ads across accounts
● Categories: based on website content google creates targetable categories or sets of
landing pages organized by theme. Decide which set of pages to target and how to
group similar pages and level of granularity
● URL contains: target pages of your site containing specific strings ex target every url
containing “blog”
● URL is: target specific URLS
● Page feeds: generate ag group’s DSA targeting based on a feed of specific URLS
mapped to custom labels updated automatically

Benefits of Dynamic Search Ads

● Reach and coverage: capture more searches and match with searches you may have
missed but are super relevant
● Efficiency and time savings: don't spend time creating endless ads, managing extensive
keyword lists
● Transparency and control: full transparency, control bids and exclusions for irrelevant
traffic

Position Dynamic Search Ads based in business goals:

● Incremental reach: I want to have my ads appear for more relevant user searches
● Long-tail automation- I want my users to find me even on my long-tail products- great for
website content large and dynamic and fear risk of missing long-tail traffic with
keyword-targeted campaign-only strategy
● Rapid Expansion: I want to enter new markets quickly- broaden your current activity to
new business areas of countries

Understand the Google Ads Auction

1. What is Google Ads Auction?

● Ad Rank determines your ad position

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How google ads auctions work
● Auction system to rank ads that appear in search results page, determine cost for each
ad click
● Order which ads appear based on calculator called ad rank

How Ad Rank determines your ad position

● Ad with the highest ad rank gets to show in top position, and so on
● Factors going into ad rank
○ Bid: max amount willing to pay for a click on ad
○ Ad rank threshold: to ensure high quality ads we set minimum quality thresholds
that ad much achieve to hold a position
○ Content of query: look at search terms entered, persons location, type of device
using, time of search, nature of search terms, other ads and search results that
show on page
○ Ad extensions impact: how extensions and other ad formats you use will impact
performance
○ Auction time and quality: how relevant and useful the ad and website it links to
are to a person. Quality score is aggregated

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Factors determining quality of an ad
● Expected clickthrough rate: prediction of how often an ad will be clicked on when shown.
Rely on user feedback to drive decision makes and user click through rates tell us what
users respond to
● Ad landing page experience: ad landing pages that help them find what they are looking
for. Relevance. Appropriate and original content that helps users complete tasks. Easily
navigable and transparent about business- how site interacts with users computer and
how it intends to use personal info
● Ad relevance: measure of how well ad matches what the user is searching for and helps
make sure userful ads are shown

How ad rank influences actual cost per click

● Average CPC ios not the price you’re paying for each click
● CPC can vary a lot from auction to auction and depends on factors
● Higher quality ads typically lead to lower costs, better ad positions and more ad success

2. Improving Ad Rank

What is quality score: an estimate of the quality of ads, keywords and landing pages. High
quality ads lead to lower prices + better ad positions. Quality score made of expected
clickthrough rate, ad relevance and landing page experience.

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How can you find your quality score on google:
● 4 quality score status columns in google ads interface: quality score, landing page
xperience, ad relevance and expected clickthrough rate
● You should use all relevant ad extensions for your business because the
expected impact of ad extensions is factored into Ad Rank. For more details, use
this best practices guide: Using Quality Score to Guide Optimizations.

To improve your ad quality, focus on 3 components of quality score

● Expected clickthrough rate- likelihood ad will be clicked. Predicts whether your keyword
is likely to lead to an ad click. Should always be actively working on improving CTR.
● To Improve CTR:
○ Be specific in your ad- include keywords in your ad text (especially in headline) to
show people your ad is directly relevant to their search
○ Experiment with different CTAs: Offer free shipping or free returns? Call now or
book now?
○ Highlight a unique benefit of your product or service: what makes you stand out
from competition- what matters to users (ex. Exceptional warranty or return
policy)
○ Create time or location specific ad text: test seasonal creative around holidays or
special events- test location optimized creative
● Ad Relevance: how closely the ad matches the intent behind a user’s search. Improve
by:
○ Add negative keywords: prevent ads from showing on unwanted queries or
queries not closely related
○ Be specific on mobile: if mobile search is different from desktop, test mobile
specific creatives
○ Be local: target right region using only relevant languages and locations
○ Include relevant search terms in ad copy
● Landing page experience: how relevant, transparent and easy-to-navigate the page is
for users. To improve:
○ Send traffic to the right landing page- direct clicks to pages related to the query.
○ Be consistent: ensure landing page continues conversion set up by ad and
follows through with ad’s offer/CTA
○ Make the site transparent and trustworthy: easy for visitors to find your contact
info, clearly state what your business does. If request personal info from
customers make it clear why you’re asking for it and what you’ll do with it
○ Work on loading speed and clarity: content visible above the fold
○ Rethink mobile: optimize for mobile

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Deliver the right message with text ads

1. What is a text ad

What is a text ad
● Ads made up of text
● Google search network
● Should be informative, relevant and engaging

What makes up a text ad?

● On search network show above and below google search results
● Need a headline, URL and description

Headline
● Up to three headline fields
● 30 characters each
● First two headlines required, third is not

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 ● Include at least one keyword in headline (relevance)

Description
● Two fields
● Up to 90 characters
● Highlight unique details about product or service
● Mobile space is tight- google optimizes ad to show highest performing text
● HIghlight what makes your business unique (shipping, variety, offers)
● Include prices, promotions and exclusive offers
● Empower customers to take action: CTAs (purchase, call today, order, browse, sign up,
get a quote)

URL
● Shows website address
● Match as to your landing page- make sure promos or products in ad are included on the
page.
● 2 optional path fields can be added to display URL. Each field can hold up to 15
characters. Gives users idea of what will see when click ad

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 2. How to create effective text ads

Steps to create a text ad in google ads

● Sign in to your google ads account
● In page menu on left select ads and extensions
● Select the + button and choose the text ad option
● Enter a url, headline and description and optional path fields- preview on mobile and
desktop will appear
● Select save ad

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Best practices for excellent google ads creatives
● Implement 3-5 ads per ad group
● Optimize your ad rotation for clicks or conversions
● Use at least 3 extensions for each ad group
● When you rotate your ads to optimize for clicks or conversions, ad groups with
three or more high-quality ads may receive up to 15% more clicks or
conversions, compared to ad groups with one or two ads.
● That’s because Google selects the best ad for every auction, ensuring the right
message gets in front of the right customer. When combined with three or more
ad extensions, this best practice can result in even better performance.

3. Responsive Search Ads

What are responsive search ads

● Let you create ads that adapt to show more relevant messages to customers
● Supply headlines, descriptions URLs for ads
● More headlines and descriptions you enter, the more google ads can test adn serve ad
variations to match user’s search terms
● Enter headlines and descriptions
● Google ads assembles text into multiple ad combos in way that avoids redundancy
● Over time test the most promising ad combos and learn which ones most relevant to
your customers
● Make sure to choose ad groups that have a good amount of traffic, and then
regularly monitor their performance and ad status.

What are the benefits of responsive search ads?

● Flexibility- adapt to device widths

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 ● Relevance- google displays most relevant ad
● Reach- more potential customers with multiple headlines and descriptions-
compete in more auctions and match in more search terms
● Performance- increase ad group performance- attract additional clicks and
conversions that existing ads aren’t capturing
● You can provide up to 15 headlines and four descriptions for a single responsive
search ad. And Google Ads will automatically show different combinations
depending on the search query.

Important note
● Create at least one responsive search ad for each ad group and include at least
two expanded text ads in that group
● For help with writing content for your ads, check out this Search Creative Best
Practices Guide.

Resources
To learn more about text ads, select the links below.
Write successful text ads - Google Ads Help Center
Create a new text ad - Google Ads Help Center
Edit your text ads - Google Ads Help Center
Create a responsive search ad - Google Ads Help Center
Search Creative Best Practices Guide: Responsive Search Ads

Make Ads Relevant with Search Ad Extensions

1. Explain why ad extensions matter

● Users are either looking for: general info, product, location, something else
● Using right ad extensions improves user experiences and increases engagement

What do users want?

● Relevant information
● Information based on their moment: users are consulting multiple sources across
multiple devices- have become more demanding and impatient to get results- quickly
provide results that meet their intent, interest, location and more

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 ● Ads that contribute to their experiences: create a good user experience and encourage
others to take action- provide users the right information

Why does this matter to users?

● Providing relevant ad extensions encourages users to make more informed decisions
and take action
● Increased engagement: increase likelihood of matching user’s moment and addressing
signals like intent, device, interest, location. More relevant and higher engagement
● Better ad quality + ad rank
● More qualified leads: giving users info up front translates to more qualified leads- users
know what to expect when they come to your site- more likely to fulfill action called to
from ad

2. Choose the Right Ad Extensions

How are ad extensions served?

● Co-trigger
● At any time up to 4 extensions can show

Universal extensions
● 3 extensions everyone should use: sitelinks, callout extensions, structured snippets

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Sitelinks: direct to specific sections of website

● Additional links appear just under text of search ads to specific web pages
● Benefits
○ Increased engagement, increase CTR and brand terms
○ More conversions: directly to right page less steps to purchase
○ Easy to manage: add and update at account, campaign or ad group level without
need to bid separately or add separate keywords- system automatically display
best performing or most relevant sitelinks for each query
● Why use it? The link in the sitelink can’t be the same as the headline links
○ Diving store sales: store hours and locations (find a store)
○ Making online conversions: special discounts, new offers, men’s shoes,
subscribe now
○ Raising brand awareness: our values, learn more about our business story
● Tips and best practices
○ Add as many sitelinks as you can. Ideally implement 8-10 per campaign. Make
sure at least 2.
○ Select right landing pages- link directly to popular or high converting sections of
website
○ Guide user- in sitelink title mention what find on landing page

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Callout Extensions: High value adding attributions

● Short and specific 25 character snippets of text

● Highlight info about value adding attributes of biz, products or services
● Benefits:
○ Boost engagement- 10% increase in CTR
○ Easy to implement- just add 25 characters for most languages
● Why you should use
○ SHort snippets of text
○ Drive store sales: free pickup in store- no lines at checkout
○ Online conversions- 356 day returns, free shipping over 25, 24/7 customer
service
○ Brand awareness- zero waste policy, organic material only
● Tips:
○ Be brief: include at least six of them in your campaigns
○ Be appealing: unique offerings, apply at a high level to whole business
○ Be concrete: focus on specific info ex. 4.7 inch LED display vs large LED display,
34 MG max mileage vs great fuel economy)
○ Think bullet points: free shipping is better than we have free shipping- sentence
case beats title case

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Structured Snippets: give glimpse of what’s offered

● Describe features of a specific product or range of products and services offered before
clicking
● Benefits:
○ Get more qualified leads- when provide more specific info about what you’re
offering before visit side = more likely to convert
○ When should you use?: highlight specific aspects of your products or services ex
■ Amenities: wifi, breakfast, pool, gym, spa
■ Types: loose fit jeans, tapered leg jeans, relaxed fit jeans
■ Destinations: Las Vegas, New York, Tokyo, Rome, Cancun, Paris
○ Tips and best practices
■ Focus on the essential- make sure info is useful and attractive to users. 4
values should be added to each header. Make sure at minimum 2
■ Be relevant: must make sense in context of the chosen header
● Avoid confusion when it comes to structured snippets vs. callout extensions.
Structured snippets highlight specific aspects of the products or services offered,
while callouts highlight what makes a whole business unique.

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Location Extensions

● Give directions to the business. SHow your business address, phone number and map
maker alongside ad text. Mobile devices link with directions to business
● Benefits
○ Drive store sales
○ Drive online sales- many users feel more confident buying online if know there is
a store close by to return or exchange
○ Increase performance- 10% boost in CTR
○ Boost visibility: add bid modifier for users who are close to store location.
Increases ads visibility and chances user will visit store
○ Report store visits- location extensions are required of advertiser wants to report
store visit
● When to use: if you have physical stores, or encourage customer visits
● Tip and best practice
○ Keep info updated- served through Google My Business account
○ Adapt Bids- bid more aggressively for users close to stores to ensure they see
your ad with advanced location settings in google ads

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Affiliate Location Extensions:

● Give directions to retail partner locations in select countries

● Allow product manus to drive visits to retail partners that sell products
● Display headline and URL for manufacturer’s website, ad text for manufacturer’s product
and nearest retailer
● Benefits:
○ Drive store sales
○ Drive online sales
○ Report store visits
● When to use: ideal for manus.
● Tips
○ Maximize local reach
○ Adapt Bids

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Call Extensions

● Get calls from customers

● Phone number allow mobile users to directly call business
● Benefits
○ Convenience
○ Qualified Leads (increase options for connection)
○ Flexible schedule- specify dates, days of week and times of day call extensions
appear aligned with business opening hours.
● When to use: if do business over the phone and value phone calls as much as clicks to
website
● Tips
○ Measure impact- enable phone call conversions reporting in account settings to
assess which campaigns, ad groups and keywords are most effective at driving
call conversions
○ Provide great service on the phone

Structured snippets, callouts, and location ad extensions are eligible to show with
call-only ads.

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App extensions

● Have an app to promote

● Drive traffic to website or app store from text ad
● Benefits: option to install app via the extension increase app’s visibility and grow
installation base
● When to use: have an app to promote, guarantee ad impression based on a
keyword
● Tips
○ Be clear: headline link should direct to your website while app extension
links to app store- don’t link headline to app store as well
○ Show it: implement extension to serve both brand and generic keywords
○ Be inclusive: don’t limit extension to keywords oriented to driving mobile
app downloads since users still have option to click through website

Price extensions:

● Showcase your services and range of products alongside prices. Globally in

several languages and currencies

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 ● Benefits: better customer experience and set clear expectations
● Easier for people to compare options
● Tips:
○ Be granular and relevant to user queries
○ Make sure descriptions relate to headers
○ Don’t use promo copy in descriptive lines
○ Don’t repeat deadlines and description lines

Promotion extensions

● Quickly and prominently display info about promotions without updating every ad
● Benefits: below ads in eye catching
● When to use: highlight special offers and sales and include monetary or
percentage discounts
● Tips
○ Select special occasions and events- prepopulated occasions to have
promo extensions appear with bold labels (back to school, black friday,
boxing day)Check out the Help Center for all available occasions.
○ Flexible scheduling- choose to show promo extensions within date of the
occasion or specify dates, days and week or times of day want them to
show

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Message extensions

● Adapt to new communication style- message extensions in mobile only format

enables clients to easily connect with users who prefer text
● Benefits:
○ Convenience- customers can interact with business on own terms- ensure
your business doesn’t miss opportunity to connect to customers when not
a good time to call
○ Prequalify- give users chance to ask questions, review products, talk
pricing and engage in other ways they can’t on your site
○ Ability to generate leads: receive messages from users- put then in queue
to call later when convenient
● When to use: great when you want to give customers an alternative to calling.
Provide an initial touchpoint to generate leads, book appointments and state
sales process. Make sure process in place to respond to messages
● Tips
○ Optimize message extensions: have clear STA like “text us to get a quote”
put together pre filled message text that makes users excited to contact
you.
○ Schedule your message extensions- show when someone is available to
provide answers
○ Provide great service: reply to texts in professional and timely manner

Best practices
● Use the right number of extensions

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 ○ At least 3
○ Recommend to have 4
○ Minimum have sitelinks, structured snippets and callouts
● Keep them fresh and updated
○ Change link text and URLs whenever something new to communicate like
sales or special offers
● Monitor performance
○ Monitor at ad group level to see how increasing performance by capturing
relevant traffic and queries

3. Automated Ad Extensions

4.

What are automated ad extensions

● Give customers relevant info up front translates to more qualified ads
● Gets opted into all automated ad extensions eligible for

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 ● Carefully generated by machine learning
● Fully automated extensions: directly populated by google and no action needed on your
part. Shown automatically when google predict improves ad performance
● Advertiser provided extensions: not automatically generated but google recommends
implementing options amount for business to get more impressions. Always supercede
automated ones

Dynamic extensions
● Dynamic sitelinks: automatically generated site links for search ads
○ Optimized to direct customers to relevant pages with website
○ One or two line formats. Look the same as ad provided sitelink extensions
○ Between 2 and 6 dynamic sitelinks can show with specific ad- depends on device
● Dynamic structured snippets
○ Automatically surface useful structured custom info
○ Additional line of non clickable text in form of header: value 1, value 2 and value
3. One line or two line version of this automated extension.
○ Content generated from website and data from internal resources
○ SHow with text ads in any position on google search.
○ Minimum of two snippets will show but no max number

Dynamic Callout Extensions

● Automatically generated callouts
● Text generated from existing content on website
● If system can find match on landing page of high value phrases can be used in callout
“get a free quote” “book online” “stores nationwide”
● Up to 6 dynamic callouts can show depending on device and content

It's important to keep optimizing the ad extensions you create because they’ll always
supersede the dynamic versions.

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Seller ratings (stars) extension

● Automated extension that lets users know if your business is highly rated for
quality service
● Generate a seller ratings score
● Google Customer Reviews: free service that helps businesses collect feedback
from customers- with one click at checkout customers can choose to receive
surveys to rate experience.
● SellaService- independent company evaluates customer service performance of
online businesses
● Google led shopping research: evaluates the customer service performance of
online businesses- own methodology- similar to StellaService
● Google Consumer Surveys: platform collects ratings for businesses
● Third party review sites: aggregate user reviews

Checking the performance of automated extensions

● Ads & extensions tab
● Click Automated Extensions

Increase Efficiency with Automated Bidding

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 1. What is automated Bidding

What is Automated bidding

● Setting appropriate bid
● Performance- how visible your ads are and amount of interactions you get in each
unique moment- could miss valuable conversions
● Auctions- appropriate bid can often be a moving target that’s challenging to reach at
scale with manual bid
● User journey complexities-Automation can take location, time, device, etc into
consideration with automated bids

Benefits of Google Ads automated bidding

● Built for complex customer journey- set bids based on users context
● Best solution to effectively account for all available variables
● MACHINE LEARNING
● Time saved
● Auction-time bidding
● Depth of signals used and cross analysis: comorbidities

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 2. Choose the right bidding strategy

3.

Awareness-based bidding strategies

● If want to make sure your ad is visible for certain queries and at certain locations on
page
● Goal: visibility
● Bid Strategy: Target Impression Share
○ Make sure your ads are meeting a specific impression share threshold for a
specific location on search results page- anywhere, top of page, absolute top of
page
● Use for raising awareness of brand and campaigns that include brand terms

Consideration-focused bidding strategies

● Drive as many clicks as possible within a set level of spend
● Goal: Clicks
● Bid Strategy: maximize clicks- set bids to try to get as many clicks within target spend
● Use for: budget constrained campaigns focused on driving clicks, dive more click
volume, max traffic when extra budget is received, upper funnel keywords that have high
assist value in conversion

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Conversion-Focused Bidding
● Tracking actions post-click, valuing conversions equally, max number of conversions
● Goal: Conversions
● Bid strategies
○ Maximize conversions: drive as much conversion volume as possible within
budget. Don’t need to provide specific CPC, CPA or ROAS targets.
○ Target cost per acquisition (tCPA): automatically sets bids to help you increase
conversions while reaching average cost per acquisition goal
○ Enhanced cost per click (eCPC)- automatically adjust manual bid up or now
based on each click’s likelihood to result in conversion
● Use if…
○ Max conversions: advertisers want to max the number of conversions for
campaigns. Want to spend a fixed budget and dont have explicit SPA/ROAS goal
○ Target cost per acquisition: max amount of conversions without considering order
value such as lead generation and ecommerce business. For a display campaign
using target spa- chose to pay for conversions billing
○ Enhanced cost per click
■ For search this is for advertisers who want set the core bid manually or
through third party bidding tools with added layer of real-time optimization
■ Display- for advertisers who do not have conversions tracking, use a third
party bidding system or insist on setting bids manually with added layer of
optimization real time. Great for lead generation and drive online sales.
● You must be tracking conversions for conversion-focused bid strategies to work
properly, with the exception of eCPC on Display.

Revenue-focused bidding strategies

● Tracking revenue or value associated with conversions and want to max it at a
specific return on ad spend target
● Good fit if tracking conversion value and have campaigns at least 5 0conversions
in past 30 days for search and at least 15 conversions in past 30 days for display
● Goal: Revenue
● Bid Strategy: Target return on ad spend (target ROAS): automatically sets bids to
help get as much conversion value as possible at the target ROAS you set
● Use case- want to automatically optimize bids to max revenue within target ROAS

Enhanced CPC, Target CPA, Maximize Conversions, and Target ROAS fall specifically
under the umbrella of Google Ads Smart Bidding. They’re conversion-based bid
strategies that leverage an exclusive set of signals to bid at auction time.

Copyright Sarah Vancini 2021. All rights reserved

Once you’ve decided which automated bid strategy works for your business, check out
Finding success with Smart Bidding: Google Best Practices (Search) and the Smart
Bidding Guide (Display) to help further simplify your account structure and get the most
of your bid strategy.

Research Valued Customers with Search Audiences

1. Identify benefits of google’s Search Audience Solutions

Audience solutions in practice

● Create autidence lists based on signals then layer the audience lists onto ad groups
● Condition her bids, creatives and keywords based on various customer groups
● Combine intent exhibited from search keywords with insights about potential customers
● Get customers at the right moment with the right bid and message

Evolving to meet customer expectations

● People expect all online interactions to be helpful, personal and frictionless

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Meet your marketing goals
● Awareness
● Consideration
● Conversion and Loyalty

Marketing Goal: create awareness

● Detailed demographics: reach people based on demo like marital status, education,
parenting stage, homeownership
● Affinity Audiences- aggregates people who demonstrated strong interest in given topic

Marketing Goal: Drive consideration

● In-Market Audiences: drive consideration among people who are actively researching
products or services you offer and who are in market to guy them and may be
considering other places to buy them
● Remarketing lists for search ads (RLSA)- Helps you reach people who have engaged
with your website or youtube channel in the past
● Similar Audiences for Search: find new customers that share behaviors and
characteristics of your remarketing audience segments

Marketing Goal: Increase purchases and loyalty with existing customers

● Customer match: upload your own data into google ads and reach custom segments
across devices. Find loyal customers, exclude current customers, reach those that
resemble your customers
● Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA): help you reach those who were customers in
the past (gone to website’s thank you page)

How audience solutions can enhance your search strategy

● Variable bidding: layer at least one audience group on top of search campaign- bid
differently for that audience based on their value to business
○ Increase your bids on certain audiences
○ Decrease your bids on certain audiences
○ Ad auctions are competitive, and you want to make sure you’re making the
right bids when certain groups of people are searching for you.
● Keyword expansion: expand your keyword set to larger set terms and more broad
terms. Engage the mid and upper funnel for greater reach
○ Use generic keywords

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 ○ Only show ads to certain audiences
● Creative customization: reach different audience segments with unique
messaging. Tailor your ad content based on user
○ Build ad groups catering to specific audience lists
○ Create bespoke text ads for groups of people

2. Reach Prospective Customers with Google’s Search

Audience Solutions

Affinity Audiences
● Aggregates users who’ve demonstrated qualified interest in topic

Detailed Demos
● Reach customers based on activities on google.com. Activities may indicate
parental status, parenting stage, homeownership status, marital status and
education status

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In-Market Audiences
● Tell the difference between interest and intent. Reach people when they’re in the
mindset to buy

it's recommended that you apply these audiences to view list- and segment-specific
performance and implement creative customization.

How do these solutions work?

● Signals- see related patterns of behavior
● Survey- behavior surveys
● Scale- users use between mobile and desktop- google get holistic behaviors

3. Harness the power of your own data to reach your marketing

objectives

4.

Remarketing lists for search ads (RLSA)

● Some people searching for your keywords may have visited your home page, added
items to a shopping basket on your site then abandon it, may be entirely new to site
● Allows you to serve unique ad creatives and set ad group bids differently based on past
interactions

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Improving campaign performance with RLSA
● Never heard of site: Create a text ad that includes a "new user offer" to reach the
first group, as these people haven't been to her site yet.
● Visited site before: Bid higher for the second group, which has a greater chance
of converting, since these people already know about her site.
● Reached checkout page: Create a text ad that includes a special "return offer" to
reach the third group. These people might decide to return and make a purchase!
● Increase her bids on certain audiences
● Decrease her bids on certain audiences
● Create ad groups targeting generic keywords and only show ads to those who’ve
visited her before
● Tailor her ad creatives based on the customer
● Exclude certain audience lists from her campaigns

A remarketing list must have at least 1,000 users on it before it can be used.

Customer match
● CMR data- leverage online and offline customer data
● Upload customer data into google ads- match it against people who search on
google and form into audience lists
● Segment: based on desired marketing action (ex. Reactivation of lapsed
customers)
● Upload: upload list to google ads
● Audience lists- translated to audience list and made available for targeting on
search, youtube and discovery
● Customize creative with special offers or incentives specific to audience

Why complement your audience strategy with customer matches?

● Diversify your audience strategy with a tagless strategy.
● Re-engage with customers you haven’t seen in awhile.
● Reach customers who may not have converted online and aren’t a part of your
remarketing lists (i.e, customers who converted off your app or in your store).
● Reach customers based on their purchase history (i.e, customers who’ve made at
least one purchase in the last month).
● Reach customers according to their lifetime value.

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Similar Audiences
● Leverage remarketing lists to find new customers with similar characteristics
● Similar based on recent browsing interests, search terms and videos watched on
youtube
● System scores people based on how similar they are to original list
● Layer similar audience lists over campaigns and bid higher to reach valuable
potential customers

Note: Each similar audience has its seed list members removed to ensure that no one
overlaps between a similar list and its seed list. In the case of an All Visitors list, this
would mean that the Similar to All Visitors list is composed of users who’ve not been to
your site before.

Boost Performance with Optimization Score

What are the benefits of optimization Score?

Why optimization score

● Found on google ads recommendations page
● Estimates how well your search campaigns are set to perform 0-100%
● List of optimization recs

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Benefits
● Instant
● Customized Recs
● Scalable- available for campaigns, accounts and manager accounts

2. How does optimization Work?

Put optimization score to work for you

Navigate optimization Score

See optimization score in action

Increase Conversions with Performance Planner

Copyright Sarah Vancini 2021. All rights reserved

 1. Why you should plan for performance with performance
planner

Planning is crucial first step to achieving success

● Plan your Google Ads budgets on a monthly basis in advance
By planning your Google Ads budgets in advance, you can:

1. Understand the future spend potential of current Google Ads campaigns to help
drive budget decisions
2. Take advantage of seasonality to capture incremental opportunities
3. Set optimal bids and budgets across your campaigns to help ensure that ROI
performance is maximized
4. Find new opportunities to grow your sales volumes with Google Ads

Helps you find out

●
● “How will my campaigns perform next quarter?”
● “Is there a better way to distribute my current spend to drive increased
conversions for my current Google Ads investment?"
● “How much budget do I need for my Google Ads to achieve key performance
indicators (KPIs)?”
● “How can I use Google Ads to drive more sales, while remaining profitable and
further growing my business?"

What’s the google ads performance planner

● Forecasting tool
● Explore forecasts for upcoming monthly, quarterly and annual budgets for current
campaigns

How does it work?

● Determines optimal bids and average daily budget allocations across all
campaigns
● Using Google’s seasonality data and insights, Performance Planner will predict
the results if you use optimal bids and average daily budgets across your

Copyright Sarah Vancini 2021. All rights reserved

 campaigns to maximize the number of conversions for any future spend
scenario.
● When you choose a spend point on the blue line, Performance Planner will
improve your ROI by reallocating spend between campaigns through adjusting
bids and average daily budgets.

How does performance planner forecast campaign performance

● Account history
● Machine learning
● Confidence interval high
● seasonality, clickthrough rate, competitors, landing page, and time of day.

2. How to user performance planner

How to user performance planner

● Create a new budget plan to learn the best bids and budgets for your campaigns
to drive incremental conversions.
● Explore further optimizations and forecast how you can grow your business with
Google Ads.
● Review and implement changes prescribed by your Performance Planner plan.
● Ensure you react to external factors and optimize to the target metrics set. Use
Performance Planner on a monthly basis for best results.

Optimal budgets and bids are crucial to getting most of your marketing
budget
● Additional conversions generated for same spend
● Incremental number of conversions achieve and max amount you can spend
without diminishing returns
● Incremental number of conversions can achieve and max amount spend at
desired target CPA goal
● Additional spend and resulting conversion scenarios at higher target SPA goals

Performance Planner helps improve return on investment so you can drive more
conversions within your target CPA.

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Based on 250 random Google Ads Customer IDs*Performance Planner highlighted how
to find an average 43% increase in conversions — for the same investment — by
reallocating bids and budgets between campaigns. It's also been seen to highlight how
to grow conversions by 80% for the same CPA (no diminishing returns).

Best practices
● Create separate plans for each marketing objective
● Set bids and budgets using non-last click conversions
● Regularly check plan

3. Take action with performance planner

What changes with Performance planner recommend

● Create plan with target date, campaigns, budget, target conversion volume and
target cost per acquisition for upcoming periods
● Search manual cost per click or enhanced CPC campaigns-- recommend average
daily budget and campaign bid scaling
● Search maximize click or maximize conversions campaigns- recommend
average daily budget
● Search target SPA or target return on ad spend (ROAS) campaigns- recommend
average daily budget, campaign level target CPA or campaign level target ROAS

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How do I see and implement these recommended changes
● CSV download with recommended bid scaling, target CPA, target ROAS,
average daily bidding amounts
● Can manually apply or download a google ads editor file and upload to google
ads editor to see action

Performance planner best practices

● Use non last click attribution conversions
● Create multiple plans for campaigns that have different marketing objectives
● User performance targets feature: Use the performance targets feature to
monitor targets set in Performance Planner and receive alerts and
recommendations when a campaign isn't on track.
● Use optimization score in Rec page to improve campaigns

Seasonality
Market Share: Get ahead of fluctuating auctions due to activity from other businesses
and other external factors.
Growth

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