Jani KahukiwaThere is no one-size-fits-all golden rule template that works in Google Ads as ubiquitous truth. We’d like to share the key campaign types that we at Solutions 8 have built for almost every client.
There are six of them!
There are exceptions to the rule, but it’s a good starting point.
Table Of Contents
Brand Campaigns
These are searches that are specifically for you, your product, and your company name. Bidding on branded traffic is a double-edged sword for a number of reasons.
We’ve got a great video on Brand campaigns that you should check out here.
We often vacillate over building Brand campaigns. On the one hand, we want to tell you don’t do it at all. You’re going to get the traffic. And on the other hand, we need the attribution. The safest bet is somewhere in the middle. It’s not 0%, it’s not 100%. It depends on your business. Get interested in learning more about the nuances of Brand campaigns. The bottom line is it is a key campaign type.
We think you should do it. At an absolute minimum, you should protect your most effective brand traffic because all traffic is a bell curve and you can bid for the center of the curve.
Inbound Campaigns
Ad spend goes here to capture traffic actively searching for your product or service.
Inbound campaigns include Search, Shopping, and DSA. This is for people who are searching for the thing that you’re selling and it may be the most important campaign type inside Google Ads, in terms of strategy. This is bottom-of-the-funnel traffic, where you actually get to make money and see the money that you’re making. Attribution is a lot easier to identify at the bottom of the funnel.
Inbound campaigns are not necessarily the bottom line of ad campaigns. They are pretty expensive, sometimes too much so. This is where Solutions 8 started. We like to start at the bottom of the funnel and then work our way up. We call it the bottom-up funnel.
Outbound Campaigns
Build traffic with awareness campaigns that educate and engage prospects. YouTube campaigns work great but may be pricey.
The most frustrating campaigns in the world are Outbound campaigns because they don’t work until they do. But you can’t tell they’re working unless they don’t. Get it?
Outbound campaigns make you feel as if half your advertising spend is wasted. If you spend $150,000 a month on YouTube, YouTube tells you your cost per lead is $5,000 to $6,000 dollars, depending on the month. You might believe the real cost per lead is $200 to $300.
That’s an Outbound campaign for you. Outbound campaigns are massively disconnected. Now, it depends on the outbound channel you’re using. It could be a YouTube display campaign or outside the Google ecosystem, for example Taboola, Outbrain, AdRoll, Twitter, Facebook. Of course, Facebook is the outbound ad mechanism coming up to nip it on its heels.
It is of the utmost importance that you go out and educate prospects. You buy attention. Outbound campaigns are critically important if you want to do marketing silos.
Inbound campaigns are bottom of the funnel and they’re more effective. It is where you’re basically paying for traffic that’s already warmed up by the industry and ecosystem. Outbound campaigns know the offer works and are keen on going out there to warm up the traffic, which is going to be much cheaper.
There’s no such thing as having functional advertising unless you have functional Outbound campaigns. Coming from a Google Ads company, this assures you there is nothing inside our self-interest that would support this narrative. We want you to know this.
Google is perfectly fine for outbound campaigns in some instances, mostly in YouTube. When it comes to the Google Display Network, we’ve never seen it work en masse. Aside from remarketing, it does work for specific outbound approaches, but it’s so big and Google’s so bad at allowing us to segment that we are certain there’s an undeniable opportunity waiting for us to crack the code on.
We’ve seen it done in a few micro niches or micro implementations or massive spins. Depending on the industry, it could be a targeted email newsletter through an association that they’re a part of. Whatever you do, don’t limit yourself when it comes to outbound. Get awareness, find out, and dig deep by any means possible.
Competitor Campaigns
These are a great way to increase traffic. Bid on your competitors’ names and offers but be aware of potential risks.
This is where you can steal your competitors’ most valuable traffic. This is also why you need to bid on your own branded traffic so people don’t do this to you. This was one of our core key strategies for our real estate investment agency.
We had the highest-performing real estate investment campaigns on the planet for almost seven years. One of the things we did anytime we entered a new geographical area, was to figure out who was spending the most in traditional advertising. Real estate investors at the time were hemorrhaging money on radio, television, and newspapers.
Nobody converts off of those alone, and they eventually go to Google Ads. And that’s where we came in. We would simply bid on their name and capture hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of traffic. It was brilliant, but don’t let somebody else do this to you.
Remarketing Campaigns
The forever unsung hero of the paid ad world, doubling overall performance. Build qualified audiences to be sophisticated.
Our Solutions 8 captain of the ship, Kasim, just loves Aleric Heck. He was recently featured on Perpetual Traffic. Go check out that episode here. He has a whole concept that he calls omnichannel remarketing. You should be remarketing across every possible ad network.
That means Google, of course, Facebook, of course, Twitter, AdRoll, Taboola, Outbrain, and anything else that allows you to run remarketing. You should be running Remarketing campaigns because that’s your most valuable traffic. It is possible to build out rules so that you’re only speaking to the viable prospects within that.
What filters are we looking at? Things like how long they’ve been on the site, they haven’t converted, they went to my pricing page. There are many aspects to consider but we can’t stress enough how vital a Remarketing campaign is!
Smart Campaigns
Try goal-driven campaigns and let Google handle the rest. Success may vary by industry but it’s worth testing.
This was something of a catchall and we’d like to put goal-driven campaigns in this category. PMax and even DSA. This last one is technically inbound, but we think it’s smart just the same because it has elements that allow Google to handle the placement, the audience, and the creative decisions.
You can’t call PMAX inbound and you can’t call it outbound. It’s a Smart campaign and it’s going to do the thing that you want it to do. It’s very much goal driven. Facebook is trying to build stuff like this. So far, results are looking poorly, but it’s only a matter of time before it starts working within the Facebook ad ecosystem.
We’d love to know if there’s a campaign category that you think we’ve missed that is worthy of being included in this blog. Get in touch with us! Don’t be shy. Show us something we don’t know!
