5 Latest Google Ads Features And How to Make it Work For You

Google never stops releasing new updates and features to enhance the search experience through its algorithms and upgrades. For your SEO or PPC agency, keeping up with the constant changes can be challenging. But managing the learning curve can become the factor that separates successful marketers and businesses from the rest, especially if you run Google Ads without a paid search agency.

If you buy ads on any of the search giant’s channels, knowing the new smart features is not only necessary but equally essential. You’ll have to understand the changes these features will bring and how they will impact the results from your ads. All to make them work for your marketing goals.

Source: Google

Here are five of the newest Google Ads features to those it may concern and how to use them to your advantage.

1.  Gallery And Showcase Shopping Ads Over All Networks

You can be testing Gallery and Showcase Shopping Ads on Search. Do you know 85 percent of respondents prioritize visual information over text information? The stats from Intent Lab Research show that users in all categories such as wine and spirits, household goods, and electronics prefer visual information 50 percent of the time.

Google Ads provides a new way for showing ads in Google’s Search Network. These new ad formats are meant solely for mobile display. Hence, their dimension put them at a better advantage of making better impacts relative to text ads. And you can also get more creative with this visual format. Apart from the SERP, where they appear as Showcase Shopping Ads, other placements for this new feature include:

• Gmail
• YouTube
• Discovery

How to use it to your advantage

The key to using this new feature is unlocking the potential of the visual appeal through creativity. For instance, you can have your PPC agency research what your target might find most appealing on the respective placement channels such as YouTube or Gmail. Obviously, there will be some level of try and error before you can achieve the right fit for your target audience. But drawing on past ads and designs will come in handy.

 

2.  Free Listing on Google Shopping

There is no mistaking that Google Shopping is still among one of the top paid PPC channels of Google. However, this shouldn’t prevent you from enjoying any free traffic you can with it, especially if you have a paid search agency. One may ask why free? The answer is simple. After Google introduced its shopping channel, some interesting happened.

It removed most other price comparison websites such as Shopzilla, Shopping.com, and BizRate, from its search engine results page (SERP). The decision was a bold but aggressive one. It led to many concerns: a €2.42 billion (~$3 billion) fine by the European Commission for violating EU antitrust law. According to the commission, Google’s move gave an unfair advantage to a specific Google product, the comparison shopping service. Google is still appealing this fine. But in the meantime, it’s made the feature that enabled other alternatives on its SERP and services.

But how do you get this to work for you?

How to use it to your advantage

It would help if you began optimizing all your Shopping Ads, understanding the specific products with the highest click and conversation rates. For instance, you use any Google analyzer to get shopping insight into the results. Using this information, you can tweak your product pages and product feed to help concentrate on products with the highest profit margins.

Once you complete this step successfully with well-customized pages and feeds, you may proceed to the Growth Menu and locate your Google Merchant Center account. Here, you want to activate “Surfaces across Google” by clicking “Active.”

 

3.  New Customer Acquisition

All conversions are good but not equal. If there should be a grading of acquisition channels, a conversion from a first-time buyer will rank higher than a purchase from a returning customer. And that goes for the channel through which the new customers become loyal ones.

No doubt loyalty is the end game of all conversion, and your strategy also needs to prioritize existing customers and cater to their needs. However, search engine marketing shouldn’t be the primary way to target existing customers because it’s not the most efficient channel for achieving this purpose.

Customer relationship management, done through earned social media or email marketing, is much more efficient at re-engaging existing customers. Building a functional symbiotic relationship between loyalty and acquisition is a sure way of optimizing your customer lifetime value.

Determining the lifetime value of a customer helps define the right marking budget per customer. And Google Shopping can help take into account the lifetime value of your customers. Navigate to “Settings” and use the “New Customer Acquisition” to determine the price you’re ready to pay.  

How to use it to your advantage

Track new buyer in two ways as stated below:

• Use differentiated tags for old and new customers using the tag manager in your eCommerce platform. You can highlight any tag depending on the type of customer.
• Ensure you connect your Google Analytics and Google Ads accounts. Then the algorithm can determine all sales generated on your website irrespective of the channel it comes from.

As a general recommendation, you should do this in tandem with your paid search agency and promotion strategy. Concentrate on boosting your best-recruiting products through strategic product selection. And note products that generate the first sale for new buyers on your website.

4.  Tracking Offline Conversions With Google Ads’ Local Campaigns

The internet is undoubtedly is a big part of business today. It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that a significant portion of business still occurs offline. The business world doesn’t only revolve around e-commerce transactions and zoom meetings. However, most companies neglect offline conversion tracking.

If you can believe the stats from Google, local searches account for 30 percent of all mobile queries. The stats show it’s also the segment recording the fast growth. Plus, 75 percent of the people completing these local searchers will visit a store in the next 24 hours. That’s a considerable amount of conversion that online tracking cannot account for.

Fortunately, the new feature for Google Ads’ Local Campaigns is here to save the day. User location identification in local campaigns is possible through Wifi and GPS. Google makes ad display choices based on the user’s real-time location and business advertising presence.

How to use it to your advantage

The secret to successfully track offline conversions is to integrate offline elements into an omnichannel tracking setup. So those not having an omnichannel tracker now might be the best time to set it up. Then you can measure various kinds of conversion by creating different conversion actions for each campaign.

• Offline purchase due to offline Conversions API.
• In-store visits via automatic tracking of walk-in traffic through Google.
• Using the usual tracking pixel to measure online purchases.

When you can identify your conversions through the interface, you’ll be in a better position to optimize based on your goals and justify every dollar sent on your PPC agency.

 

5.  Impressions on Display & YouTube Advertising

Naturally, display and video ads won’t be the first to come to mind at the mention of online acquisition. They are mostly known for creating brand awareness and influence targets. However, Google intends to change this narrative.

The reason is simple. The amount of data Google has on user-profiles and intents is so massive that predictions of purchase decisions come easy for them. Facebook built its platform using the insight it gained from user sharing and browsing history. Likewise, Google is familiar with its user behavior: from their media preferences such as music and video choices, search queries, and past purchases recorded from Gmail receipts.

All these data points enable the algorithm to only show users relevant ads at the time most appropriate when the user is ready to make a purchase decision. Now you may increase conversion by the use of performance-based targeting for Display and Youtube Ads.

How to use it to your advantage

To use this feature, do the following:

Use “Custom Intent on your competitors” and “Similar converters” to achieve the best possible targeting.

Deploy Smart Display with Troas or CPA bidding strategy. Successfully implementing this will help you to keep the benefits of the Smart Display framework and maintain control at the same time.

It is worth keeping in mind that Google’s algorithm will not choose to display your ad only because of the strategy or many it brings to Google. The key is to ensure your products have an audience.

 

Conclusion

Google never stops testing new features. The best strategy you can employ to have a top-performing Google Ads account, even with your paid search agency, is to follow suit and test new features as soon as they release. This way, you would have optimized it to the maximum when each feature reaches mass adoption. It also keeps you ahead of the competition and ensures you have enough time to make any adjustments and apply your insights.

Keep in mind that there’s so much more to learn over the lifetime of each ad campaign apart from the insights from your PPC agency. Therefore, you want to use the expert tips and recommendations for these five new features as soon as possible. If there are any doubts, don’t hesitate to leave a comment or reach out directly.

Tags:- ads on Facebookdigital advertisingpaid adspaid advertising