Michelle Rose, Author at UPILA

Google Ads Update: What to expect in 2023

Google Ads Update:
What to expect in 2023

Google Ads is making changes to improve user privacy and automate the platform. These changes will include more robust data protection measures, increased transparency around data collection and automation technology to streamline the advertising process for both advertisers and users. Here are some of the updates that we can expect in 2023.

Google Ads to discontinue content targeting for Youtube conversion campaigns

Google Ads provided a comprehensive view of your content targeting and made content targeting management and optimization simpler with options for the topic, content keywords, display expansion for search, and placement. This content targeting for YouTube conversion campaigns allowed advertisers to match ads to channels or videos to deliver more customized messages to audiences. Google Ads is making more use of automation to stay ahead of the changing shifts in the ad world while maintaining privacy-centric ways to measure results. Advertisers may need to rely more on first-party data and other targeting options, such as audience expansion and smart bidding, which will give users more control over the ads they see and help to increase user privacy, which can lead to a better overall user experience. Google has informed us that all existing campaigns’ content targeting settings will be automatically removed from video campaigns that drive conversions.

2. Google plans to transition away from similar audiences for more powerful audience targeting in 2023.

Similar Audiences is the Google tool that looks at data about your existing remarketing audiences and finds new and qualified consumers who have shared interests with that audience. It’s a powerful but simple way to reach a much larger audience and drive clicks and conversions among new prospects, similar to the Facebook lookalike audience, which also helps you improve your cost-per-click, increase your ROI, and get higher sales.

If you focus on the larger picture, Google is cultivating a more privacy-centric approach, resulting in all these changes to its ad space. Following this new development in the ad world, which is changing due to emerging privacy concerns, Google’s contribution has been to create durable, resilient solutions for advertisers to help them reach an engaged and relevant audience, even as fewer third-party cookies are available. While maintaining people’s expectations for privacy, Google has promised the transition of Similar Audience segments to be “more powerful, tested, and privacy-centric automated solutions.”

Similar Audiences segments will be available till April 2023. If you have active campaigns with similar segments, those will remain with your campaigns until August 1, 2023. After that, these segments will be removed from all ad groups and campaigns. You’ll continue to have access to historical reporting for similar segments from past campaigns. In place of similar segments, different campaign types will offer different solutions to help you leverage your first-party data, reach the right audience, and improve campaign performance so that you can optimize directly for your business goals.

An important aspect of data privacy is ensuring that personal information is collected, stored, and used securely and responsibly. This includes implementing strict security protocols, such as encryption and multi-factor authentication, to protect sensitive information from unauthorized access or breaches. Additionally, it is essential to have clear, transparent and easily accessible policies in place for consumers to understand how their data is being used and give them the option to opt out. Data Governance strategy and process are also in place to ensure that all data usage is compliant with legal requirements and regulatory standards.

Contextual targeting is a way for advertisers or brands to deliver ads to users that are more relevant and interesting to them, without compromising their privacy. Imagine you’re scrolling through your Facebook feed and you come across an article about the latest hiking gear. Using contextual targeting, an advertiser could show you an ad for an outdoor gear store or a camping equipment brand. This way you’re more likely to be interested in the ad you’re seeing, and the ad is more effective for both the advertiser and you.

Moreover, it’s worth mentioning that contextual targeting enables advertisers to reach out to users without collecting personal data, which is becoming a more important issue for many people. As more and more people are becoming privacy-conscious, contextual targeting can help to build trust with users by not collecting unnecessary personal information.

The shift towards data privacy has led to increased concerns about data collection among consumers. As a result, marketers must take steps to address these concerns while still providing personalized and effective advertisements. Contextual targeting, which focuses on the content of the webpage or app the user is currently viewing, can help to overcome these challenges as it does not rely on personal information. Additionally, marketers can also focus on collecting first-party data, clearly communicating their data collection practices, and offering value in exchange for data, to build trust with customers and adhere to privacy regulations. As the laws for data protection evolve, marketers need to stay updated and come up with new strategies to maintain consumer trust and stay compliant.

Indulekha – Complimenting Traditional Channels And New Market Launch – 2015


Client	Indulekha
Services	Pay Per Click, Search Engine Optimization
Performance Growth	2X

The Challenge

Indulekha, a prominent ayurvedic cosmeceutical brand from South India, wanted to create brand awareness in new markets and procure product recall among the target audience group from there, primarily in Maharashtra and Delhi. We had to excel beyond the expectations of the audience and widen the reach of the brand in terms of awareness and interest, eventually capturing their trust and consideration, so that they converted to loyal and satisfied customers. This had to be done in conjunction with the launch of its new flagship product.

Results

An exemplary marketing success was achieved with uncompromising content quality and bullseye targeting. While 15% view-through rate is considered as a good score for YouTube video ads, we bagged a view-through rate that went over 25%. Our marketing campaign surpassed the expectations of the brand with the acquisition of more than a million clicks and almost 8 million impressions within 6 months. With the hike in brand awareness in the new markets and augmented ad recall, the product inquiries and demand grossed more than ever, leading to the purchase of the brand by the mighty conglomerate Unilever.

How we did it?

The predominant channel in our marketing campaign was YouTube Video Ads. It was coupled with a national level Google search campaign, too. Further, to enhance the efficiency and stabilize the market demand, a remarketing campaign was incorporated.

We focused on creating content with superior quality that could catch the attention of the target audience fluidly and incite a blend of intrigue and interest among them. This was made possible with a series of before and after videos, crafted to showcase the promising results of the product. Our strategy was to sequence these ads and target them at the audience in a way mandating that those who saw the first ad would be retargeted with all the ads in the series. This strategy improved ad recall and increased product intrigue significantly, resulting in a view-through rate going north of 25%.

A whopping number of 600K+ clicks fell through in a month and within 6 months, we bagged 6 million video views on YouTube. Consequently, product enquiries soared from the new markets and sales on Amazon shot up from the new markets.

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Marketing Mindfully: Navigating the Data Privacy Landscape.

The changing landscape in consumer privacy has made all of us more aware and careful about data collection in our day-to-day lives. This widespread tension regarding the collection and utilisation of consumer data is poised to change the world of marketing as we know it today.

Consumers today prefer effective, personalised advertisements but are apprehensive to share their personal information. These growing concerns are being acknowledged and addressed through privacy restrictions and data protection rights.

In the digital world, data privacy is the right of consumers to delegate how third-party companies and organizations use their data. Personal, demographic data are just some information that may be disclosed. While these details help marketers create more personalised experiences, the majority of consumers are now concerned about their privacy being violated.

In India, there hasn’t been any data protection law in place, though in November of last year, the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology issued a bill named The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2022 draft bill, which aims to enable personal data processing while recognizing individuals’ rights and “the need to process personal data for lawful purposes.” It allows cross-border data transfers with “certain notified countries and territories” and establishes a Data Protection Board to oversee compliance and impose penalties, stated not to exceed 5 billion rupees. The draft bill is open for public feedback for some time. This notice appears to follow the basic rules of convention, that is, to exercise data protection rights such as the right to know what personal data is being processed by whom, whether that data requires correction or updating, and the right to request deletion of data that is no longer relevant for processing.

The restrictions imposed by laws, as well as the consumer’s privacy concerns, must be considered. As these shifts in data protection occur, marketers must strike a balance between maintaining the trust of consumers and retaining their personal data. They’ll have to learn to recognize users’ privacy concerns and use that information carefully without jeopardizing the brand’s value.

As they say: “With great analytical ability comes great responsibility.” In the coming years, you should have a redesigned marketing strategy that maintains consumer trust while adhering to privacy regulations. Here are some of the measures that you can take while making your strategy

Plan means to collect First-party data

First-party data refers to the data that a brand collects directly from its customers through various sources such as its website, mobile app, or customer relationship management (CRM) system. This data can include information such as customer demographics, behaviour, preferences, purchase history, and more. This data is highly valuable for a brand as it allows them to gain insights into their customers and personalize their marketing efforts, as well as improve their products or services. Additionally, it also enables the brand to build direct relationships with its customers, fostering customer loyalty and retention.

Have Clear communication

It is essential in building trust with customers and ensuring that they understand how their data is collected and used. This includes being transparent about data collection practices and providing clear and concise information about data collection and use policies.

Offering value in exchange for data

Is an effective way to address data privacy concerns and encourage customers to willingly share their information. One way to provide value to customers in exchange for their data is by offering them incentives, such as discounts, free products or services, or exclusive access to content such as e-books, guides, or other resources.

For example, a company might offer customers a discount on their first purchase when they provide their email address, or they can offer customers access to exclusive content or special deals in return for filling out a survey. By offering something of value in exchange for data, companies can help to build trust with customers and make it more likely that they will willingly share their information.

Additionally, offering value in exchange for data can help companies to provide a better experience to customers. Offering personalization, relevance and tailored content and offers to customers can be seen as a benefit by them and they would willingly provide their data for that.

Another way companies can offer value, is by being transparent about how their customer data is used, and providing clear explanations about how the data is collected, stored, and protected. This will help to build trust with customers and make them more comfortable sharing their information.

Increasing transparency is also crucial in addressing data privacy concerns. This means being upfront and honest with customers about how their data is collected and used. This can help to build trust and foster positive relationships with customers.

Updating internal policies is crucial in addressing data privacy concerns. This includes conducting regular audits to ensure that data usage and security practices align with consumer-centric policies. It is important to have a comprehensive understanding of the regulations and laws that govern data privacy in order to ensure compliance and protect the rights of consumers.

An important aspect of data privacy is ensuring that personal information is collected, stored, and used securely and responsibly. This includes implementing strict security protocols, such as encryption and multi-factor authentication, to protect sensitive information from unauthorized access or breaches. Additionally, it is essential to have clear, transparent and easily accessible policies in place for consumers to understand how their data is being used and give them the option to opt out. Data Governance strategy and process are also in place to ensure that all data usage is compliant with legal requirements and regulatory standards.

Contextual targeting is a way for advertisers or brands to deliver ads to users that are more relevant and interesting to them, without compromising their privacy. Imagine you’re scrolling through your Facebook feed and you come across an article about the latest hiking gear. Using contextual targeting, an advertiser could show you an ad for an outdoor gear store or a camping equipment brand. This way you’re more likely to be interested in the ad you’re seeing, and the ad is more effective for both the advertiser and you.

Moreover, it’s worth mentioning that contextual targeting enables advertisers to reach out to users without collecting personal data, which is becoming a more important issue for many people. As more and more people are becoming privacy-conscious, contextual targeting can help to build trust with users by not collecting unnecessary personal information.

The shift towards data privacy has led to increased concerns about data collection among consumers. As a result, marketers must take steps to address these concerns while still providing personalized and effective advertisements. Contextual targeting, which focuses on the content of the webpage or app the user is currently viewing, can help to overcome these challenges as it does not rely on personal information. Additionally, marketers can also focus on collecting first-party data, clearly communicating their data collection practices, and offering value in exchange for data, to build trust with customers and adhere to privacy regulations. As the laws for data protection evolve, marketers need to stay updated and come up with new strategies to maintain consumer trust and stay compliant.

Data-driven Marketing in 2022

Challenges of Data-Driven Marketing

Customer data is a key source in shaping a Data-driven marketing strategy. Finding and collecting this data is extremely challenging in today’s world, particularly in the last five years.

In this occasionally hectic world managing and executing data-driven strategies is not child’s play. In addition, Data-driven Marketing tools are technology-dependent, making them too dynamic. At Upila, we talk about both the good and the bad, and hence it is important to discuss the challenges that every marketer faces with data-driven marketing. Let’s not waste time, cut to the chase and discuss 6 major challenges that marketers face.

Challenge 1: Finding High-Quality Data

With tons of data pouring in, finding high-quality data has been a challenge, marketers need to ensure up-to-date and consistent collection of data.
Also, having lots of data does not always guarantee any actionable results. In reality, incomplete data makes more hiccups as you will be relying on assumptions and not facts.

Marketers need to overcome these challenges by monitoring the data in real time and keeping them updated to help businesses respond quickly to customers’ needs with more personalised solutions.

Challenge 2: Finding The Right Audience

The world is pushing for more privacy and safety. In the pro-privacy world access to data, especially behavioural data is challenged. Unlike Traditional Marketing, where ads are targeted to a mass audience, data-driven marketing targets segmented audiences based on behaviour and interest. Segmenting the audience allows marketers to align their collateral with specific messages according to the audience’s desires and needs. This allows marketers to target them with suitable copies or creatives to improve conversions. With data quality deteriorating, the whole data-driven process becomes pointless in finding the right audience.

Nowadays, This challenge is addressed by many marketers by adopting methods to collect first-party data. That is, they have started collecting their own data by inbound mechanism and using them with the audience’s permission. Also, it is suggested to rely more on Contextual targeting.

Challenges 3: Make Use Of Real-Time Data

As collecting first-party data is the new game. Analysing this data from different sources in real-time is required which has turned out to be a heated process. And with the increase in the volume of data, marketers would find it difficult to manage and use this data efficiently.

This challenge is addressed with the use of automation and AI simplifying real-time monitoring. Nowadays, It has even become easy for marketers to collect data, even if their audience uses multiple devices and has their presence in multiple locations.

Challenges 4: Identifying The Right Platform

Another big challenge is to identify what platforms to adopt and the ever-changing and fast-paced world of Data-driven marketing has made it tough as marketers have to constantly update and upgrade for better integration of their data channels and full-proof analysis.

Challenges 5: Breaking Down Data Silos

Silos are sets of data collected from multiple platforms and may often be collected by multiple teams making it not just bigger but fragmented and cluttered.
These scattered data are tough to analyse to find oddities.
They don’t have a singular view of the outputs, and marketers need to break them apart to keep them up to date in one place.

This is achieved by using the right Database management and integration tools where the data from all the sources are accessible and analysed in one Dashboard.

Challenges 6: Rinsing and Finalising Data

As data is collected as silos, they come from different platforms and are way too cluttered to be valid.
These data may also come in different formats. So, it is necessary for marketers to carefully analyse the data, rinse out inaccuracies and unify data from different sources into one Dashboard.

Recent research states that over 64% of marketers feel that improving data efficiency is the single biggest challenge they face while personalising marketing messages for their audience. And there is no unique solution to this other than keeping the data most relevant and up to date.

A data-driven strategy is all about discovering Actionable data.

Marketers need to ensure that they have actionable data. Experienced marketers identify them by asking, “What do I do with this data?”. And if they have an answer as the next step, the data is termed actionable.

Actionable data identifies patterns and defines relationships between data sets. To gather such actionable data, marketers must first understand their goals and their effect on a positive ROI.

As a data-driven marketer, it is essential to understand these challenges you face while venturing into and strategising a Data-driven approach. We have only noted a few above but would love to hear more in our comments.

Marketing of the future will be more data-centric, and in addition to this introduction of AI and automation will place more and more marketers and brands on an adoption spree. Though these newer tools and technology might make Data-driven less challenging, it won’t be as efficient as we think. As an early adopter, data needs to mature to show some expected results, which in itself is a tedious task.

Automated Bidding Vs Manual Bidding

Improvements in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence have enabled all ad platforms to improve automation and simplify digital advertising for everyone. Google, one of the most noted advertising platforms especially for PPC campaigns has made automation its most crucial feature improvement last year, paving way for many small businesses. Google hopes to streamline all of the PPC marketing efforts with Automated Bidding.

But how helpful, Is it? Are Marketers worried about automation?

Smaller businesses and young marketers find automation the most beneficial because it simplifies PPC on the user level, whereas some marketers are very apprehensive about giving complete control to Google. They fear automation might replace their relevance in the Online Marketing sphere. Well, What do you think? Have you been using Automated bidding? Is it a timesaver for Marketers?

To understand this better let us pit Automated bidding with Manual Bidding and learn which is the way forward in driving better ROI.

Why Automated Bidding?

Automated bidding is hailed by Google as a revolutionary feature that will save marketers a great deal of time and resources. It simplifies the process by managing bids using hundreds of signals. Each Automated bidding type is designed to accomplish a specific objective. Therefore, it is crucial to define the goal you want to achieve even before deciding on a strategy.

Google has made automation in bidding with the following goals,

Increase Brand Awareness/ Visibility
Generate more relevant leads
Increase Conversions/ Sales Volume.

Is it suited for your needs? Who would find Automated bidding more useful?

Campaign managers who manage many different Ad accounts.
Campaign managers with a large sum of data.
Campaign managers with a specific goal for their campaigns.
Campaign managers who want to save time on campaign monitoring
Campaign managers with less experience managing Manual bidding?

Advantages of Automated Bidding

Ability To Choose Goals. The first and foremost benefit of automated bidding is being able to select goals. Automated Bidding is set up by defining goals making it adaptable to any business goals. So, a Campaign Manager must understand and plan as per a chosen goal for their campaign. Google offers 7 bid strategies that align well with most of the goals needed for Marketers. We have listed them below, continue reading to know more about them.
Stay Stress-Free. By bidding with automated bidding, campaign managers can remain stress-free and save a lot of time. They also can stay off from Campaign monitoring without much of their involvement. Although they should ensure that they keep a tab on budget and data fed into Google’s Machine learning engine against the rightly chosen bid strategy.
Manage Ads With Facts, Driven By Data. Fed with the right amount of data, Google’s AI does the guessing game and decision-making for you. All you need to do as a Campaign manager is to choose the right bid strategy as per your defined goals.

Now, let's discuss all the 7 Automated Bidding Strategies

Target Impression Share. Target Impression Share improves ad visibility by automatically setting up bids that help you showcase your ads either on the top of the Google search results or anywhere on the Google search results page.
Maximize Clicks. Maximizing clicks is a bidding strategy to increase your sites/ landing page visits. It automatically sets bids to help you get as many clicks as possible within your budget. It is a Search Network only bidding strategy.
Enhanced CPC. A bid strategy that lets you automate and adjust your CPC to maximize conversions or conversion value. It combines Manual bid with smart bidding and raises or lowers bids as per the likeliness of the lead to convert.
Target CPA. Target CPA betters up your conversions by automatically setting up bids for increasing conversions as per the target cost per acquisition set by you
Target ROAS. Helps in meeting a return conversion value on ads spends by setting up bids automatically as per the target return on ads spend value set by you.
Maximize Conversions. It’s a bidding strategy that sets bids automatically to ensure maximum conversions from spending your budget. But also, the Campaign Manager can set a target CPA to meet conversions as per the target cost per acquisition set by them.
Maximize Conversion Value. It helps in meeting a maximum return conversion value from spending your budget. Again, the campaign manager can set a target ROAS to meet a conversion value as per the target return on ads spend value.

What is Manual Bidding Strategy

It is a bidding method where the bid value(CPC) is set manually without any help from Google’s AI or Machine learning algorithms. Campaign managers have full control over their campaigns and can set a maximum cost-per-click value for an ad group or even separate bids for individual keywords or placements.

Manual bidding is a highly decisive bidding method and requires a lot of monitoring and optimisation to achieve maximum return on ROI. Campaign managers should have a good understanding of the PPC campaign.

When to use Manual Bidding

Manual bidding lets you control the campaign and is best suited for lower ad budget campaigns and a smaller sum of data. It gives you an edge over automated bidding when there is a need for making quick changes and updates to the campaign. And. as it requires constant monitoring and optimisation, it’s recommended to be used when you can spend enough time on the campaign.

Some of the pros of Manual Bidding

Have full control. As discussed before, the Campaign manager has full control over the campaign such as controlling their cost on keywords or phrases that they feel will help them win the bid.
Set up a campaign with a lower Ad budget. Manual bidding allows you to run campaigns with a lower ad budget and returns under their control. Hence campaign managers have a heads up on achieving maximum ROI out of their budget.
Can adapt quickly to changes. Any changes that you make to the campaign setting get updated immediately across all Google platforms.

Conclusion

Although Google is pushing forward for more Machine learning and AI-centric approaches across all its platforms, both Automated and Manual bidding have their advantages respectively as per the needs and benefits they provide to the campaign manager. It is important to consider different other parameters and requirements such as data volume and budget to decide which is apt for your campaign. Even experienced and knowledge come to play when deciding the bid strategy. Automated Bidding has a long way to go and would need a lot of improvements to excel on par to run without human intervention.

We should carefully note that even though all this automation help in simplifying the bidding process, it is still necessary to keep track of the campaign’s progress. Instead of worrying. Marketers need to learn and adapt to these new changes and embrace new features like Automated bidding or Performance Max to drive better ROIs for their brand.

Data-driven Marketing in 2022

Data-Driven Marketing in 2022

Marketers worldwide employ data-driven marketing as a strategy to communicate their brand and reach the right audience. It is based on audience data and information and is carried out by understanding consumer needs and behaviour to create more convincing and personalised ads that ensure better conversion.

Traditional Vs Data-driven

Traditional marketing involves all sorts of marketing that is not online. So we can view everything from print, newspapers, and radio to billboards as traditional. Traditional media makes it possible to target a mass audience through trial and error. It involves a lot of conjecture and prejudice as well.

We aren’t saying they’re not practical, as 56% of the world’s customers still find print media advertisements very influential. But a Data-driven approach has an advantage over traditional marketing in terms of ROI efficiency.

Traditional marketing applies all the fundamentals of marketing, such as conducting market research and surveys of audience groups. But implementing these strategies which involve many hypotheses, brands have to try and experiment with many strategies to develop one that can be considered as their market approach. This is why marketers in today’s world need a different approach. An approach that is fail-proof and well-defined and Data-driven marketing promises the same. So, let us delve deeper and understand why the data-driven approach is future-proof, result-oriented and more affordable.

Data-driven marketing is based on carefully recounted data from our target audience. And uses it as the main source for our marketing efforts allowing marketers to understand what interests the audience towards our copy or content. This ensures we target the right target group with the right marketing collateral. Another advantage embraces real-time tracking of audience responses which a campaign manager can analyse and optimise accordingly, making the most from the campaign.

Agencies like ours have greater control over the outcome and deliver countable and tangible results.

Why Data-Driven? How did it become mainstream?

Marketers found the data-focused approach more promising as it no longer let them have a guessing game on what strategies work and how resources are used over time. Even those questionable assumptions about the audience’s behaviour, desire, and habits had become a thing of the past. Data-driven marketing gave marketers an upper hand on lead quality by targeting the right audience through segmentation and targeting by interest. With better lead quality, marketers know what those leads are and where to place them in the funnel.

Data-Driven Market trends of 2022

The Data-driven boom in the marketing space is still met with many challenges, especially due to the recent tightening of privacy policies and regulations. To quash the effects, marketers have adopted some amazing trends that ensure the advancement of their strategies. We have laid out a few of them below.

Gather First-Party Data: Adopting newer methods to collect information directly from the audience is preferred, as using these first-party data has become a key data source in data-driven marketing. This has become a mandate among many marketers as new regulations set up by different institutions and authorities have made it difficult for them to find and use third-party data. Additionally, most browser services like Chrome, Safari, and Mozilla have plans to tighten their privacy policy in the years to come.
Many New Touchpoints in Buyers’ journey: Incorporating newer channels and having an omnichannel presence is the need of the hour to provide a better brand experience, as the addition of newer and more touchpoints in the purchase cycle has made the buyer’s journey more complex.
More Personalisation: Ensuring ads are personalised, as it is important to note that 80% of recurring sales happen when a brand provides products and services in a personalised manner. As Marketers acquire first-party data from their audiences, their audiences also expect more personalisation throughout their buyer’s cycle.
AI and Automation: The year 2022 has shown an increase in the adoption of AI and Automation in Data-driven marketing activities to increase personalisation. Marketers use automation everywhere, from optimising bidding to personalising the audience’s web experience.
Brand Loyalty is on the decline: Consumers’ brand loyalty declines with the newer expectations of a more personalised and seamless brand experience across all channels. Therefore, marketers should rely less on Brand loyalty and ensure an impeccable buyer’s journey for their audience.

Data-driven marketing has a long way ahead. More and more Marketers are willing to delve into data. And with the right amount of data, they can achieve almost anything they wish.

But there are many challenges that a marketer might face. We have understood some of them today by addressing the new trends in Data-driven marketing. However, we have more challenges+unique solutions in our next blog, “Challenges in Data-driven Marketing approach“. Subscribe to our Newsletters, so you don’t have to miss them.

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Performance Max Campaign: A Step Further in Google’s Journey with Automation.

Performance Max A Step Further in Google’s Journey with Automation.

Google Marketing Live 2022 was held last month with many new improvements and features, Marketers are eager to hear about all the new features they might come across this year. But before we discuss them let’s look at Performance Max, the major feature release of Google Marketing Live 2021.

You may be wondering why a blog on Performance Max now?

Google envisioned Performace max as a full-end function with end-to-end automation with the help of Google algorithms, machine learning and data that it feeds on from a Data-driven mechanism.

With Performance Max, marketers have a goal-based automated campaign type with access to all Google inventory from a single campaign.

Our team has had their hands on Performance Max for many of our clients, and it performed better than we expected. To our surprise, Performance Max helped us deliver 20X ROAS for one of our e-commerce clients.

This is just one of many reasons why we have jotted down this article. So, in what ways does Performance Max differ from regular campaigns? And, how does it fare with other campaign types?

Let’s delve deeper into our campaign insights to define Performance Max better.

WHAT ARE PERFORMANCE MAX CAMPAIGNS?

Performance Max is a versatile campaign type that uses different channels on Google Ad’s Network, such as Display, Search, Maps, Shopping, etc., to reach a conversion goal set by the marketers. It is designed to automatically adapt to changes in real-time using automation and machine learning established by Google’s algorithms to achieve maximum conversions for the goal set by the marketer. This is achieved by showing ads on appropriate channels that are expected to perform well.

HOW DOES IT WORK

Campaign managers have much less to do, as setting up the campaign is very simplified. First, they have to provide an objective and choose conversion goals that satisfy the objective. Multiple conversion goals are set with different values to optimise the campaign to drive better ROI and achieve desirable conversions.

This is done by setting value rules. Performance Max understands the objectives and uses machine learning to automate and optimise bidding and ad placements. It uses inputs from the campaign manager, such as high-quality text, images, or video, that can significantly impact the campaign’s performance.

CAMPAIGN OBJECTIVES TO SELECT FROM(Campaign type selection)

SALES
LEADS
WEBSITE TRAFFIC
PRODUCT AND BRAND CONSIDERATION
BRAND AWARENESS AND REACH
APP PROMOTIONS
LOCAL STORE VISITS AND PROMOTIONS

DO PERFORMANCE MAX WORK ALONG WITH SEARCH ADS?

Keywords-specific Search ads have been the most trustworthy campaign type as they target a well-defined audience with the highest probability of converting. And Performance Max commends well with your search campaigns, and therefore Search campaigns have more priority over Performance Max if any query from the user matches any search keyword.

And, if it does not match, the campaign with the highest AD RANK is hierarchised as per its performance.

BENEFITS OF PERFORMANCE MAX

Performance Max is a goal-based campaign type suited for marketers with a dire setup to attain a definitive goal. It has much to offer and can scale up over time with customer data.

But automation and easing out managing campaigns are not the only benefits of Performance Max. Here I have laid down 3 other important benefits of Performance Max campaigns.

1. TARGET AND REACH A HIGHLY CONVERTING AUDIENCE.

Performance Max allows you to set objectives and goals with conversion values and inputs such as audience signals and high-quality creatives. Apart from this, it offers Google’s real-time understanding of customer intent, behaviour, and preferences. Also, you will have access to audiences from all the different channels of Google.

2. MAXIMISE TOUCHPOINTS WITH DATA AND MACHINE LEARNING

Being data-driven and with the use of Machine learning, marketers have the advantage of making accurate predictions and thus increase the touchpoints in a customer journey, ensuring better conversions.

3. GATHER MORE INSIGHTFUL REPORTS

Performance Max reports are very definitive and will inform you which creatives are performing well, thus helping you optimise creatives and drive better ROI.

WHEN TO USE PERFORMANCE MAX?

Our team has mixed reactions on when and which campaigns are apt for Performance Max from our hands-on experience.

As Performance Max is a goal-based campaign, marketers should choose it for more conversion-oriented campaigns, such as online sales or lead generation. We also recommend using them for additional reach and push for your Search Campaigns.

Though being a front runner in all Google Marketing Live events, our team has noticed that Performance Max impacts different categories of clients disparately, which has been the main reason for our mixed opinions.

We did achieve 20X ROAS for our ‘Ecommerce client,’ but that’s not the case with our ‘Online dating service client.’ We are facing higher CPA and lower traction there, which has been bleeding us out initially.

Our thoughts on why it didn't perform as we thought?

From our understanding, we have realised that this is due to the closed ecosystem of the online dating site. Google Search’s engine has fewer pages to crawl and fewer audience data due to the limitation of privacy restrictions in this category. Whereas in the Ecommerce category, most of the pages of the webstore are open and are crawled by Google’s Search engine, Google also has more access to audience data.

For Dating sites or similar client categories, our team suggests running the Performance Max campaign at a lower TCPA, allowing it to mature over time by gathering more data and signals. And, until that time, carry out other campaigns like Search, targeted Display, and Discovery on automated TCPA bidding.

Hope we have simplified Performance Max for your understanding. Now, head to our Youtube channel and watch our video on Performance Max, where our team has laid down their expertise, thoughts, and understanding. Click the button below.

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CTA: 5 Best practices for improving conversions

CTA: Best Practices to Improve Conversions

Click-to-action (CTA) is the key to maximizing conversions. In our previous blog (CTA in Digital Marketing for online businesses), we discussed that the CTA is not relevant everywhere but adding one to a campaign makes a big difference in clicks and conversions. It motivates actions and suppresses the conjectures in decision-making for the user.

CTA makes a marketers campaign stand out in the crowded digital ad space. Maybe it is the first thing the audience finds, but ensure that it is the last piece that the audience remembers. A CTA should capture the curiosity of its audiences by having a lasting impression to keep them clinging to the purpose of the campaign.

With nothing much left to spare, let us discuss the five best practices of CTA for improving your campaign conversions.

1) Larger Font with Visible Text and Right Placement

CTAs encourage responses from your audience. However, placing them right within cluttered texts or having too many of them may cause some undesirable actions or no actions at all. The positioning of CTA in your campaigns, landing pages, and emails is a prime factor and should be distant apart from all your texts, separated by adding spaces all around them. The CTA should be big enough to be seen and aligned with the order of your content to avoid backtracking. It is alright to have more than one CTA if the goal remains the same.

The bigger and bolder text makes CTA stand out from all of your content and creatives. But it should only be big enough to make it encouraging and not too obnoxious. Ensure that the size is more substantial and not too huge to make them over-attentive.

2) Short and Eye-grabbing Message with a sense of urgency

The text used on call to action should be clear, crisp, and engaging with short and specific sentences that are complete and invokes the intended action of the audience. The number of text usually ranges between 2 and 5 words and should not be too short or too long to have a wordy impact on your ad campaign results. Continue distilling the words until you reach the very essence of the message you are conveying to your audience.

Create a sense of urgency with time-oriented words such as NOW or Get them before the offer ends. That will keep your audience away from delaying their actions.

3) Experiment with colours and button shapes

Colours play a prime role by being a deciding factor for your CTA. At Upila, we always like to play with our colour scheme to verify their appearance on various screens and devices. Make them more attractive and make sure they are noticeable and absorbing enough to capture many conversions. Green, red and orange colours have a profound impact on the audience. Test numerous colour combinations and pair them with other design parts.

Button shapes can also draw attention to the CTA. Experiment with different shapes instead of sticking with the standard rounded or square rectangles. Try to check how a shape and sizes affect your campaign results. Additionally, adding slight animation like colour changes or text motions like growing out on hovering can make the CTA more exciting, aiding the conversion.

Sometimes overdoing can be annoying too and may cause a drastic drop in actions, so keep a note of all the interactions and engagements on the CTA with all these changes that you make.

4) Adding a Value proposition in the CTA

Including an offer for your audience will motivate their conversion. A value proposition makes your service look distinct from your competition by providing a unique offer to your customer. It can be anything from a free guide to an ebook to a Freemium service. Try to figure out your value proposition and include them on your collateral, either at the beginning or directly below your CTA. Refine your proposal to short and crisp phrases which can secure clicks on your CTA.

5) Bonus Words and supporting facts

Conversions can often be facilitated and improved by words, sentences, or supporting documents. These texts enrich your CTA’s offer and encourage people to act effectively.

Some examples of supporting text or documents are;

Client testimonial
Results from Case studies
A discount offer or a sales deal.

Bonus words are not always necessary, but this extra boost improves conversion in some instances.

Continue to explore and test new approaches.

With technology and audience habits changing almost every year, there seems to be a need to keep our content thoughts open to new and exciting ideas. Understand your target audience and evolve your CTA strategy with these new approaches. Research more and always keep a large stock of schemes and practices from multiple sources.

With these practices in action, we hope you can do more with your CTA.

Let us know what did work the best for your campaign. And, don’t forget to subscribe for more of our content.

MyG Eccommerce

The most popular electronics dealer in Kerala with an e-commerce outlet approached UPILA with a goal to enhance their online sales channel and drive revenue from their website. With extensive hygiene activities and ROI-oriented ad campaigns, we gave them an optimized online sales channel with proper tracking systems.


Client	MyG Ecommerce
Services	Pay Per Click, Event Promotions
Performance Growth	5X

The Challenge

When MyG, the most popular electronics store in Kerala, signed up with us, their existing performance marketing campaigns and strategies were not contributing much in terms of conversions and were not conducive to their larger business goal.

The challenge was to bring in digital marketing hygiene to make space for better strategies and campaigns. The goal was to reignite their online sales channels and drive revenue from their ecommerce channel through ROI focussed campaigns.

Results

Within two months of hygiene activities and ROI-focussed ad campaigns, we were able to accomplish a stunning business growth and cost-cutting for MyG. Discrepancies across the dashboards displaying conversion numbers were rectified.

The costs for ads were reduced by 60% compared to what was being spent before our campaigns. An increase by over 230% was observed in interaction rate. Conversions shot up by 55% and the cost per conversion was reduced by 73%. We also watched the conversion rate skyrocket by more than 350%.

Our Proud Numbers

Growth
in interaction rate

+ 0 %

Drop in CPC

+ 0 %

Increase in Conversion rate (A huge leap than expected)

+ 0 %

How We Did It

To launch an effective marketing campaign for MyG, we had to start from hygiene activities. There were a lot of loose ends to tie up and dormant campaigns to weed out before we could tap into their full potential. We carried out thorough cleansing of their marketing campaigns.

The next step was to set up a flawless conversion tracking so as to ensure there was no inconsistency between the different data dashboards. Due to a lack of proper conversion tracking set up, no conversion-oriented campaigns were run earlier. We corrected the discrepancies in the conversion numbers displayed in terms of number of orders and revenue value driven through online ads on various data dashboards namely Google Ads dashboard, Google Analytics dashboard and the backend of the website through basic measurement hygiene activities throughout all these measurement channels.

Once done with the hygiene activities, we spotted the opportunity for Target Return-On-Ad Spend (tROAS) campaigns since MyG was an ecommerce site with a wide array of consumer durables. We were able to set up Target ROAS ads for them which ensured conversions that yielded returns in multiples of what we spent. tROAS ads helps us program Google Ads to give us conversions to the effect of returns amounting to at least four times the ad spend. This enabled a ROI-focused campaign.

We also cleaned up under-optimized ads which had been running for a long time without any conversions or measurements. We applied Google dynamic search ads wherever possible. This ad type is extremely powerful for e-commerce sites like MyG since we are allowing the Google ad system to act in an autonomous way in terms of delivering the ad to the users based on the users search query and mapping it to the categories in the ecommerce site. Google would extract information from product descriptions and categories from the destination pages we provide and curate ads that best work with the user searching for the product or solution.

Further, we broke down the campaigns to category levels as part of the hygiene activity, making the ad campaigns run smoother and more refined. This enabled more visibility as to how each category of products fared during the campaigns. We were able to evaluate the ad campaigns based on parameters like ad spends, conversions, performance and cost per acquisition and to identify which categories needed more attention.

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John Doe

Manager

Speak to us!

BMW Oman – Lead Gen Campaigns for the New X1 2020

The prominent luxury car brand wanted to prepare for the launch of its latest model BMW X3 in Oman. We collaborated with them with highly targeted campaigning producing results that surpassed the budget limitations.


Client	BMW Oman
Services	Pay Per Click.
Performance Growth	1.5X Growth in CTR.

The Challenge

BMW Oman, a prominent name among luxury vehicles, connected with us to prepare for the launch of their latest model, BMW X3, in Oman. They required us to drive 3 Million impressions and procure at least 500 leads in order to ensure a promising start.

The target audience included individuals who currently owned luxury vehicles of other competing brands, especially those who might be planning to upgrade their current vehicle. It also included individuals who were in the market looking for luxury sedans. The target audience was narrowed down to English and Arabic language speaking population.

Results

Even with a limited budget, we were able to exceed our campaign goals of 3 Million impressions and more than 500 leads. A Click-Through-Rate (CTR) of 0.71% was achieved, which was the highest the company ever had so far in its marketing campaigns. We were able to produce 1.5 times more growth in CTR for the company

Our Proud Numbers

Impressions

+ 0 M

Growth in CTR

+ 0 X

Number of Leads

+ 0

How We Did It

We focused on one channel – Google Display Ads – for this project. Our forte being performance marketing and demand generation, having a solid database from previous campaigns gives us a good place to start from.

Our ad campaigning had to follow norms set by BMW in terms of creatives. We made HTML banners with Arabic as well as English content since our target audience included both language speakers. We requested the company to provide data of customers that we were able to convert from online leads in the preceding campaigns.

We did a strong audience profiling, monitored them on social media and discovered their interests in car brands, automotive-blogs etc. Our target profile was created based on that.

A thorough persona-building exercise was done using the information garnered through audience profiling. The well-curated targeting reduced wastage immensely.

We also sought out data of individuals who are highly likely to buy a BMW X3. This group included two kinds of audience – consumers who might be interested in upgrading their existing vehicles and people who already owned luxury cars and would be inclined to buy another one.

We carried out daily monitoring to gauge the performance which outdid the available budget, with impressions exceeding 3 million and leads surpassing 500 in numbers resulting in an overall growth of 1.5x times in the company’s CTR.

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You may be wondering why a blog on Performance Max now?

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CTA: Best Practices to Improve Conversions

With nothing much left to spare, let us discuss the five best practices of CTA for improving your campaign conversions.

1) Larger Font with Visible Text and Right Placement

2) Short and Eye-grabbing Message with a sense of urgency

3) Experiment with colours and button shapes

4) Adding a Value proposition in the CTA

5) Bonus Words and supporting facts

Continue to explore and test new approaches.

Recent Posts

Recommended Posts

We cook creative mails too. Subscribe!!!

Case Study

Bringing in hygiene and exponential growth for MyG Ecommerce.

The Challenge

Results

Our Proud Numbers

How We Did It

Testimonials

Our client's feedback about this work

John Doe

Google Ads Update:
What to expect in 2023