Running a small business can be tough. Many small businesses lack resources and are underfunded, which can make competing with the bigger businesses in your industry even more daunting. But the good news is that there are many ways to use Pay Per Click (PPC) to help your business thrive and future-proof it without an unlimited budget. PPC campaigns are just one of many effective tools for online marketing. When this strategy is used correctly, it can help small businesses like yours drive traffic, generate more revenue, and achieve the results that you need to be successful in business.
What are the Benefits of Smart PPC Campaigns?
PPC advertising with a top online marketing agency provides your business with peace of mind regarding its success. You can implement a range of internet marketing campaigns including social media, blogging, and more alongside PPC campaigns to create an online marketing strategy that connects your business with target customers to generate tangible results. A smart PPC campaign can help to future-proof your business by enabling you to easily connect with your target audience, providing instant traffic, and enabling you to easily measure your results by maintaining control over your campaign.
Google Smart Campaigns
Whether you are knowledgeable about PPC or a complete newcomer to paid advertising, Google Smart Campaigns can benefit your business in several different ways. The fast advance of AI (artificial intelligence) technology at the front and center of Google Ads has made PPC marketing very different to the past. Smart Bidding, which is a Google’s bidding strategy led by AI, can now be used in any type of campaign. And Google Smart Campaigns require even less – Google can even figure out the best Ad Groups on its own using AI technology.
Where Can Smart Campaigns Be Used?
There are three separate categories where Google Smart Campaigns can be used, which are smart display, smart search, and smart shopping. They are often the best choice for small to medium enterprises that are lacking the resources, expertise, or time for managing their Google Ads account manually. And, they have a range of different benefits over standard PPC ad campaigns including:
- Bidding: Smart campaigns can manage bidding in your campaign to drive more valuable calls, clicks and more
- Extensions: Smart campaigns can automatically create a variety of ad extensions such as callouts and links for you
- Keywords: Smart campaigns can not only generate keywords automatically on your behalf based on the products and services offered by your business, but it also allows for search phrases to be edited by toggling them on or off
- Reporting: The easy to use, simple dashboard highlights the most important statistics in the campaign for you to keep up to date with
- Ad Showing: Smart campaigns will automatically show your ads across Google search, search partners, and display ads to get the best results
Requirements for Google Smart Campaigns
Since sources of data are relied on for Google Smart Campaigns to work, the more data your business can provide, the better the outcome. In addition to having data from the past thirty days at least, the data also needs to meet certain requirements based on the type of campaign you are running.
Smart Search
- No less than one hundred conversions in your Search Network
- Limits for CPA; it must not be too low
Smart Display
- At least fifty Display Network conversions
- CPA limits
Smart Shopping
- Must own Google Ads and Google Merchant Center accounts
- Your product data feed should be uploaded to the Merchant Center account
- Conversion tracking with transaction-specific values should be set up
- Audience of at least one hundred users
- Dynamic remarketing should be enabled on your website by installing a remarketing tag
What are the Challenges?
While Google Smart Campaigns certainly come with a wide range of benefits that small to medium businesses can take advantage of to future-proof their company through the use of AI and smart PPC, there are some challenges associated with each type of campaign that are worth being aware of before you get started. Be aware of the following:
Smart Search
- Remarketing cannot be used with these campaigns
- Match types cannot be edited manually
- Negative keywords list cannot be added for your search phrases
- Your audience can’t be defined based on interests
- While you can set a maximum budget, you will not be informed as to the automated bid strategy that will be applied
- A fresh new account will be started if you want to duplicate your settings and campaigns
Smart Display
- Advertisers are not able to choose the targeting settings which can result in your ads being shown to users who are not relevant
- There is no way to know which creative ad elements are performing the best as you cannot get insights into creative asset performance data
- Negative keyword lists are not permitted, along with delivery method or device targeting settings.
- You cannot target an audience manually based on interests
- Ads may be placed poorly in SERPS if you do not use placement exclusion
Smart Shopping
- Negative keyword lists and device targeting are not permitted
- Bid adjustments cannot be used
- While you can set the country to target, you can’t narrow your focus to more specific regions
Common Questions
You might be interested in giving Google Smart Campaigns a try – before you do, check out the answers to these common questions:
Which shopping campaign takes priority if a smart and standard campaign are running together?
Priority will always be given to smart campaigns if you are running a smart and standard shopping campaign for the same product or group of products. It’s best to reduce your budget by pausing other campaigns.
Is it worth continuing with standard campaigns?
Since smart campaigns can save you a lot of time and costs along with driving better results, you may be wondering if it’s worth bothering with regular campaigns. This is down to you and which campaign tends to get the best results for your business.
What is the CPA limit?
In smart display campaigns, the target CPA can be set to up to $200.
Google Smart Campaigns utilize AI to come up with the best strategies for your PPC advertising campaign, offering a suitable alternative for small businesses that can help to future-proof the brand.