How do I Choose a Campaign Objective for Google Ads for My Business

Google is a household name, with people leveraging it for literally everything they want to find out about. Most of us even search on Google rather than directly entering the web address in the URL bar — making it one of the most popular marketing platforms. In fact, at this very second, 90,000 search queries are being made. 

As a business owner or marketer, Google offers you immense opportunities to find potential audiences with target keywords that they are likely to click. An effective element of Google Ads is setting proper objectives. 

Luckily, Google Ads offers an incredible advertising solution known as pay-per-click (PPC). With PPC, you can target customers who are already interested in your products by bidding to secure a position in ad placement on the Search Engine Result Page (SERP).  

What is Pay-Per-Click Advertising?

Popular on SERPs, pay-per-click advertising (PPC ads) is also used on social media channels. You can notice PPC ads right before the organic search results, exactly on top of your search result page. 

Unlike SEO, where you can grow your search ranking organically,  pay-per-click advertising can showcase your advert to intended customers whenever they search for your chosen target keyword.

With Google PPC ads, you have to pay a fee to display your website on the SERP when someone searches for a specific keyword or phrase.

The ad helps direct the audience to your website. With Google PPC advertising, you are only charged when someone clicks on your ad to visit your business webpage. 

To earn quality leads, you must set your PPC objectives right. Clear objectives help you build a seamless journey for your users — eventually leading to a high return on your PPC investment and efforts.

Choosing Campaign Objectives for Google Ads

When you invest in something, you hope for it to be profitable. The same applies to Google Ad campaigns. When running ads, you should have a clear objective in mind.

Ask yourself this:

For optimal Google Ad configuration, you need to know the answers. And this way, you will also be able to analyze the effectiveness of said ads. Furthermore, you can reap plenty of benefits from Google Ads if you set specific ad objectives, for example, more options for bidding.

Choose SMART Objectives 

With poorly defined objectives, you may end up demotivated and in financial loss — and we are sure you don’t want that. So to avoid the aforementioned, it would be best if your objectives meet the following points: 

S – Specific 

Keep misunderstandings out of the way by choosing simple and clear objectives. Keep in mind who you want to target and what the impact of that will be.

M – Measurable

You need to be able to measure your objectives with facts and figures. You need to be able to monitor all changes, and you can do that if you have a measurable unit available. 

A – Achievable

What use will it be if you cannot achieve your targets? It’s recommended to set goals that are feasible and accessible not to get demotivated by the results. 

R – Relevant

The business progress and effectiveness should be determined. When you target an audience for your business, you want to seem relevant to them. 

T – Time-Bound

From when you plan until you achieve, you need to be realistic with your objectives. Moreover, you need to set a specific time span in which you want to achieve your goals.

Main Goal of Google Ads Results

With the use of Google Ads and Google Analytics, businesses can determine the primary goal, i.e., conversions of their ads. When defining ad objectives, keep in mind that these transactions can be split between macro and micro conversions.  

An activity that brings direct business profit with a purchase and a new customer is a macro conversion. On the other hand, if a visitor completes a particular action on the website, such as signing up for a newsletter, then that is micro-conversion. Micro conversions are actions taken that can potentially lead to a macro conversion.

Google Ad Objective Types

Every ad campaign is different from the others depending on your conversion goals. An ad focused on getting more subscribers has entirely different content than one that elucidates product features.

Based on the final outcomes, Google ad objectives can be segregated into the following types:

1. Sales

Your ad will focus on bringing customers in for macro or micro-conversion.  As mentioned before, either type of conversion can potentially lead to sales and directly profit the business.

2. Web Traffic

Ideally, web traffic is great for visibility. Choosing web traffic as an objective allows your customers to visit your website to know more about the products and services you offer and at what cost.

3. Reach and Brand Awareness

Commonly, brand awareness as an objective is used by new businesses. You can also use it if you are planning a product launch. It helps boost business popularity and makes the audience more aware of the company.

Setting Realistic Objectives 

If you want to make intelligent decisions, you need your objectives to be realistic.  A business may dream of aiming high in its initial days. If you set too high of a goal, you may end up being discouraged by the results.

Instead, for the first few months, you should dedicate yourself to learning, testing, and synthesizing ad data to help you make better decisions for the future.

Once you have collected enough information about what your customers respond to better, you will invest your ad budget and optimize objectives according to areas that bring you more conversions.  

Ad Type Assists Ad Objective 

Once you have set your objectives straight, you need to align ad types accordingly. You may have chosen promotions, sales, sign-ups, or others as ad objectives, but when it comes to styles, you have these choices: 

Search

In case your organic ranking is falling behind, Search will help you boost your reach on Google SERP. Idealistically, it is for customers who are searching for products and services that you are offering. It can also provide you with an upper hand against your competitors. 

Display 

Commonly, display ads are shown to an audience that is not actively searching for a product. Instead, they are positions on other websites or on Gmail for those who might be interested in the product.

Ideally, if your business provides everyday-use products or services with no particular keywords, then display ads would be the right pick for you.  

Smart 

For local and physical businesses, the SMART Ad type is optimal. Smart Ads offer a mix of visuals, texts, and even maps to share the location of how near or far a particular business is from you.  

In this instance, you can run three separate ad campaigns with objectives for sign-ups, store visits, or calls. With multiple ads, you can analyze which ad generates the most results and the highest customer and then continue with that system.

Key Considerations in Determining the Right Campaign Objective

1. Identifying Problems

What do you do if the audience does not convert? You need to do deep research to identify why someone isn’t converting when they visit your website. What stops them from doing set action to complete the course of conversion? 

To identify their behavior on your website, you need to set various ads with different conversions. You could add behavioral and monetary conversions for better optimization.

Make sure you tick all of the following boxes to help you achieve your ad objective results.

Once you identify the problem along with your ad objective, you can run ad campaigns that cater well to your client’s needs.

2. Goal Evaluation

Every quarter, analyze the objectives you have set for your Google ads and how far you have achieved them. Google’s algorithm takes time to interpret what your ads aim to achieve. 

If your ads are targeting the right audience with your selected keywords, your cost per acquisition will go down each month, which indicates that your ad is doing well. This also helps you pick better objectives for your next ad campaign.

3. Competitor Analysis

When it comes to competitors, any business bidding on the exact keywords as you is one. It would help if you watched them closely. To work towards your company’s goal through your ad objectives, you have to understand what your relationship is like with your competitor.

Accordingly, you will adjust your budget and invest more into aspects that you think will work for you most against your competitors.

4. Focus on Geotargeting

Businesses are all about ROI. If your objective is to gain more sales through shop visits, then you need to know where your audience is. Local companies such as schools, doctors, grocery stores, and hotels must know which customers are closest to them and target them first. 

Although this is commonly known as geotargeting, it’s not limited to it. You can also target customers who may require your services in the future. For example, if someone is in a different state and is looking to book a hotel, then vaster geotargeting would be helpful. 

On the other hand, if your business sells snow shovels in an area that barely has snowfall, you can geotarget colder locations with snow. With this, you can target the right audience, meet your ad objective and not waste money.

5. Understanding of Seasonal Trends

It would help if you kept in mind all aspects of your business to set ad objectives. You may notice higher conversions in certain seasons.

Home decor businesses see higher sales in the holiday season, and a stationary shop may have more conversions during the back-to-school season. Whatever the case may be, you can adjust your ad objectives accordingly. 

Perhaps all year around your ads are set for brand awareness, and when it is your season, you can set them for sales and website visits.

6. Experiment

The extra budget does not hurt when you want to experiment with your Google Ad Objectives. A few hundred extra dollars can help you by providing data that can give you an insight into how your ads are working intensely. You can use this data to choose objectives that work for your company optimally.

7. Patience

Thankfully, Google offers live ad data that shows how many clicks, the amount of exposure, and which keyword is working best. This data can excite marketers and business owners, and they may want to make immediate changes to their ads.

However, it is better to wait at least a week before making any changes to an ad, so it has the time to reach its objective with ease.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1. Are running Google Ads Worth it?

Google Ads are exceptional when it comes to small businesses. One of its many benefits is reaching motivated and potential audiences by setting the right objectives. Moreover, ROI is easy to track, and pay-per-click advertising makes it cost-effective.

Q2. Why is PPC effective?

PPC gives you control over many aspects of your ad, such as ad copy, target audience, and budget. Greater control means ads can be optimized to fit desired business objectives. 

Q3. SEO vs. PPC — which is better? 

Both marketing methods come with their own set of benefits. With PPC, you achieve immediate results with an already interested audience. Meanwhile, with SEO, you receive consistent results and increase the website value over time.

Key Takeaway

Companies can achieve a plethora of their business goals using Google Ads. It is essential to choose the right ad objectives, as it helps you gain a high ROI and offers growth. 

Keep in mind to apply SMART principles to help with choosing the objectives for your Google Ads. The benefit of using Google Ads as your next campaign for your business is that you can analyze the conversions and optimize your ads to increase ad effectiveness.