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To get the most out of what you’re spending on Google Ads, you need to pick the right campaign type for your business and advertising goals. If you’re also using Google Ads to drive inbound sales calls, you have another layer of complexity to deal with as you also need a way to get attribution and optimization data to make your ads better. Since we’re all about making you a better marketer, we’ll show how to pick the perfect campaign type and how to maximize your Google marketing spend using the Invoca call tracking and analytics platform.
When you start trying to figure out which Google Ads campaign type to use it quickly becomes a world of endless possibilities, and not in the euphoric “I can’t figure out which pumpkin spice coffee drink to get” sort of way. Before you hide under your desk and cry: 1. Revel in the fact that we live in such a wonderful world that Pumpkin Cream Cold Brew is a thing 2. Take a cool, foamy sip of fall and read the next section to figure out what campaign type is right for you.
There’s no one-size-fits-all Google Ads campaign type. What works for one business may be a flop for another. So you must choose wisely.
As you get started with your campaign setup, you’ll be asked to pick a campaign type and campaign subtype. The campaign type determines whether customers will see your ads on Google’s Search or Display networks (or both) and what format they can be in, like text or video.
The campaign subtype determines which settings and options are available, such as the types of ads you can design. The subtype options also let you tailor your campaign to match your business goals and focus on the features that are most relevant to you.
If you just scrolled down and said TL/DR as you chugged that sweet, sweet chilled PSL, then you can watch the video below for the high-level overview. For the readers, here’s everything you need to know about the most common Google Ads campaign types.
A Search Network Campaign with Display Expansion can help you reach people as they use Google search and visit sites across the web. This option is great for marketers who want to reach the largest possible audience with the least amount of setup. Display Network expansion can help you reach customers earlier in the buying cycle by reaching people who browse or research similar products on various websites.
Your ads can appear when people search for terms on Google search and search partner sites that match your keywords, and they can also appear on relevant pages across the web on the Google Display Network. Ads are shown selectively on the Display Network and bidding is automated, helping you reach people who are most likely to be interested in the products and services you’re advertising. In general, your ads will show primarily on the Search Network and can show on the Display Network if it appears you’ll have remaining daily budget. The great thing about display expansion is that the display allocation is automated, so you can get that additional reach without a lot of extra work.
Google Ads Search Only Campaigns work well for businesses whose customers primarily find them through search. Search Network ads usually appear above the organic search results on Google Search. They can appear beside, above, or below search results on Google Play, Google Shopping, Google Images, and Google Maps, Text ads, Dynamic Search Ads, and Call-Only Ads (which we’ll discuss in a moment) are the most common kinds of ads on the Search Network. They often show with ad extensions, which allow you to include business details like location or phone number in your ads.
Your ads may also appear on Google Search partner sites, and these sites are included by default in the settings. You don’t have control over which partner sites your search ads appear on, so those who desire more control over the content of their ads and where they appear can choose to remove search partner sites from their campaigns. All Search Network partner sites are obligated to comply with our Google policies, but that does not guarantee that your search ad won’t appear on a site that does not meet your company’s standards.
Subtypes for Search Only campaigns also allow you to set times and geographical locations in which your ads will appear. This is ideal for businesses that only provide services in particular regions during certain business hours, so you’re not paying for clicks for people who are unlikely to become a customer.
If you’re trying to expand your business to a very specific audience, Display Only Campaigns are for you. Your organic search results are not affected so you’ll still show up there, but you won’t pay to reach what might be an overly-broad audience in paid search. Display Ads can be shown to people who are browsing other relevant websites, watching YouTube videos, and even on mobile apps that use the Google Display Network.
You can use Display Only campaigns to find new customers or engage your existing customers using Google audiences. Similar audiences and in-market audiences allow you to target people who are most likely to be interested in your products, helping you find new prospective customers. You can use your data, like remarketing lists or call data using Invoca’s integration with Google Ads to help you re-engage people who previously visited your site. You can also build Similar Audiences on Google using Invoca call tracking data.
Automated targeting tools are also available to help you get more conversions by finding high-performing audiences based on your existing audiences and landing page. By automatically optimizing over time, Google Ads can learn which audiences work for you. Automated bidding automatically adjusts your bid to help you meet your return on investment. Smart display campaigns combine the best of automated targeting, bidding, and creatives to maximize your conversions on Google Ads.
Call-only campaigns are different than the others in one important respect: they only allow mobile searchers to call your business. There are several reasons why you may want to run Call-Only campaigns, the main one being you want people to call your business! This is often because you offer a complex product like homeowners insurance, financial services products like mortgages, or healthcare services where people are more comfortable talking about it on the phone than they would be reading about it on your website and filling out some forms. Another reason is that you experience higher conversion rates on the phone than you do on your website. Our research has found that calls can convert at 10x the rate of clicks, and that might be reason enough for some to give Call-Only ads a shot.
Ads created in call-only campaigns are fine-tuned to show only on mobile devices that are capable of making calls. This means that they will not show up on a desktop search or most tablets. Taps on these ads will only generate calls — they won’t link to a website. Keep in mind that you have limited real estate for copy in these ads and every line of text you enter may not appear in the ad in order to make the most of the smaller screen space on mobile devices. Since call-only ads don’t let people click through to your website, make sure you’re using keywords that target high-intent customers who want to take immediate action without doing more online research.
You can also use extensions with call-only ads to provide additional information like location information, additional text, and more. There’s no cost to add them, and while Google recommends that you add all extensions that are relevant to your business, they might also be appended on mobile devices. Google claims that adding extensions can increase your ad’s click-through-rate by several percentage points, so it’s better to be safe than sorry and use them since you don’t know whether or not they will appear in your call-only ads.
Now that you have a better idea of what kind of campaign you want to use, you probably want to know how to use Invoca call tracking software to optimize your campaigns. This is accomplished with Invoca’s native integration with Google Ads, giving you closed-loop attribution for phone calls and conversions driven by your paid search and display spend. Watch this video to see how it works or read on below.
Invoca captures valuable data about the digital journey, like marketing campaign and ad creative, and ties that data to phone calls. For example, you can see exactly which paid search campaign and keyword led to a particular call. When a call is placed, Invoca captures identifiers like the Google Click ID, enabling you to report individual call events and conversions to Google Ads in real-time. Our integration offers the most reliable and precise method to get keyword visibility for mobile call extensions and calls from your landing pages.
Through this integration, Invoca is able to not only tie the individual call but also the actual call outcomes, such as mentioning a product or classifying a caller as a prospect. These outcomes are called ‘signals’.
The Google Ads integration page in the Invoca platform is where you connect your Google Ads account with your Invoca account, define which call outcomes you’d like to send to Google as conversions, and manage your Google call extension campaigns.
If you were using this integration and jumped into the Google Ads platform and navigated to the keywords report, everything would look the same except you’ll notice a new layer of call data included in your reporting. Call data appears right next to click data, giving you a more complete view into the online and offline activity driven by your paid search spend.
Since call conversions are reported in Google Ads in much the same way as online conversions, you can treat this call data exactly how you would typically treat digital data.
By providing keyword-level attribution and conversion reporting in real-time, Invoca helps marketers attribute calls to paid search and display budgets, and use call conversions to optimize their spend to drive more revenue.
