If you’ve never used Google display adverts, what’s holding you back? Do you fear they’re far too complicated to set up, that you’ll need a graphic designer to create some snazzy ads and they’ll cost you a fortune? Well those are just some of the many myths that surround display advertising via Google Ads.
The trick is first and foremost to think about your potential clients. Where do they live? What age are they? Where do they hang out online? What are their interests? What are they looking for? If you can narrow down your target market, then you’re on the right track to start with Google display ads.
Then the setup is nice and logical – honestly! Don’t be afraid of Google display advertising – we’re going to bust those common myths so you can start display advertising without fear.
MYTH 1. Google Display Ad Campaigns Are Hard To Set Up
The rationale for setting up display ads is no different to setting up search ads. You simply set up a “Display Network Only” campaign and choose the basic settings for:
- Location targeting – where exactly does your target market live?
- Language – what language does your target market speak?
- Bid strategy and daily budget – set keyword bids manually and set a daily spend budget
- There are other options for the advanced user but when setting up, these don’t need to be pre-defined – you can adjust these later if need be, once you see how your campaign is performing.
TIP – Under Advanced Settings, click on the Ad delivery section. Head to frequency capping and set it to 3 or 4 viewable impressions per day – a great way to prevent the same person seeing your ad too many times in one day.
As with search campaigns, you need to set up Adgroups and these need to be very focused around a specific theme – which must perfectly match your display advert and your landing page.
MYTH 2. Google Display Adverts Need To Be Professionally Designed
Imagine you want to create display adverts to promote your Christmas period dining options at your restaurant. You may have a several special menus / events with specific target markets in mind eg:
– office parties
– Christmas lunch
– Boxing day lunch
– New Year’s Eve
You could easily create 4 adgroups with adverts tailor-made to each offering. And the best news – you don’t need a graphic designer for Google display ad creation! You can choose from a variety of options in the Ad Gallery:
Just by choosing the simple Dynamic ads, you can create a simple advert by following Google’s helpful guidance:
Upload a logo, upload an image and add a headline!
Then Google lets you choose the layout and the size of the ads you want to display, and adjusts the layout accordingly! No graphic designer required!
TIP – make sure your display ads are fully branded in terms of logo, colour choice and image. Ideally the “look” should match the “look” of the landing page you ad will take people to. The more consistent you are with your approach to branding, the more people will start to associate these visual ads with your brand.
MYTH 3. Google Display Adverts Are Expensive
Why do so many people think this? In part this myth has come to be because people (who don’t know better) tend to look at what they spend on display adverts compared to what they spend on search ads, and find the comparison unfavourable. ie. they see fewer conversions for a display advertising campaign compared to a search campaign.
But don’t forget – you set your daily budget! Google won’t exceed this. You ARE in control. If you want to spend a very conservative £5 per day on display ads, you can. You’re not going to get the same number of impressions – the brand exposure – compared to a company that spends £50 per day, but with some clever targeting (see Myth 5), you might do great, thank you very much, in the brand awareness stakes.
MYTH 4. Google Display Adverts Aren’t Worth It Because Click Thru Rate Is Low
You know what – CTR for display ads are much lower than for search ads. But if that concerns you, you’re missing the point about display ads.
Search ads are displayed when the searcher’s keyword is a good match for your keywords, adverts and landing page. Hence relevant ads are shown to people actively seeking specific products or services.
However display ads can be set to pop up when someone is – or isn’t – actively seeking products like yours (see Myth 5).
The bottom line is that display ads are all about increasing brand awareness (remember the tip about getting your visual ads consistent with your brand?). A well set up display advertising campaign can see your ads shown to literally hundreds of thousands of people in just a few short months. And because they are visual, rather than plain ‘ole text, they get noticed!
Someone may be checking the news online, and see your advert for Christmas office parties pop up. If they have no interest in this, they will ignore it. If, however, they had “find venue for office party” on their to do list, they are going to notice your ad.
Now they might not click on your ad straight away – too engrossed in the news. But if they see your ads on other sites they visit, your brand, your restaurant, your offer is going to start to stick in their mind. And eventually they’re going to click on your ad to find out more.
But remember this – you only need to pay for EACH CLICK on your ad. So all of those hundreds of thousands of brand impressions aren’t costing you a penny!
MYTH 5. Google Display Adverts Are Placed On Random Websites
Google is smart. Google knows that people don’t want their ads to appear on random, unrelated websites. That’s why the targeting options for display advertising are VAST.
- Demographics – in addition to the location and language choices you made in the campaign set up (see Myth 1) you can choose your target market by age, gender and/or parental status
- Keywords – add in keywords to tell Google to display your ads on sites with related content
- Interests & Remarketing – probably our favourite option! You can target your ads to people actively looking for products like yours (affinity audiences), to people who are interested in products like yours (in-market audiences), to people who have already visited your website (remarketing lists) and to customer email lists. And Google is clever enough to define “similar lists” – people who are similar to those you have already defined.
- Topics – by defining specific topics, you can tell Google the types of pages that you want your adverts to appear on. This is a broad way to get ads shown on a lot of websites about the topics you have chosen.
- Placements – if there are some websites/ mobile apps / video content where you would really, really like to see your adverts displayed, you can add them as placements. Google will tell you if the sites are part of the Google Display Network or not, and thus whether they are eligible for ad placements.
Hopefully this brief overview of Google display adverts will show you they aren’t as scary as some may think. The set up is similar to the search adverts, you simply have more choices! We believe Google display advertising is a very powerful tool – one that increases brand awareness significantly within a budget you define – and helps get your visual message in front of the right target audience at the right time.
We are experienced in managing Google Adwords campaigns for both display and search networks. If you are interested in our Google Adwords service, just drop us an email for a no-obligation chat.
