What is Google Ads?

Google Ads is an advertising tool that helps businesses generate brand awareness and reach their target consumers.

Google Ads allow you to reach the right audience and on controlled budget; they don’t have a maximum amount that needs to be spent. Any company can set decide who they want to reach and how much they want to spend and Google ads take care of the rest.

Choosing Where Customers see your Ads and the Ad Formats

Google ads can be set up to be seen on different platforms and in various formats, it all depends on how you want your ad to be displayed and seen.

Ad Types:
1) Text Ad
2) Image Ad
3) Video Ad

Ad Formats

Text Ads:
Most common kind of Search ad includes a descriptive headline, website URL, and descriptive text like a call to action.

Ads with Extensions:
Provide additional information to your text ad, such as your business’s address or phone number.

Responsive Ads:
The Display Network offers ads that adjust to match the pages and apps that show them (can go a long way to help build awareness, influence consideration, and drive action).

Shopping Ads:
Contain product and pricing information, so users get a strong sense of the product you’re selling before they click your ad.

Image Ads:
Capture people’s attention as they browse websites in the Google Display Network.

Video Ads:
A standalone video ad or a video ad that runs inside another streaming video.

App Promotion Ads:
Send your customers to an app store to download your app, or include a deep link directly into your app.

Call-Only Ads:
Allow your customers to call your business directly by clicking on your ad.

Rich Media Ads:
Are engaging ad formats that often include animation or other types of motion.

Create Effective Text Ads

As previously stated, text ads are the most common but how do you make sure you are getting the most out of your text ad? Well, we will be going over some helpful tips from Google in making sure you write an effective ad!

When creating your text ad the only sections required are the headline, URL, and description.

Writing Effective Text Ads: Five Tips
1) Standout from the rest; highlight your strengths
2) Instruct customers what to do: “Call Now” or “Visit Store Today”
3) If you are having a sale, let customers know
4) Make sure to include keywords that customers would use when searching in your ad
5) Make sure that when customers click on your ad that it brings them to the page where they will be able to purchase quickly

Five Tips to Improve your Landing Page
1) Be specific and relevant with content
2) Be transparent and show customers you are a reliable source
3) Make your page user friendly whether that be on a computer or mobile device
4) Be quick- don’t make customers wait when clicking on your page
5) Have an even more user friendly site when it comes to mobile devices

Enhance Your Ad with Extensions

Extensions are features on your ad that help give the audience more information and content.

Extensions pop up with your ad when Google Ads detects the appropriate time it should. They show when it is expected to improve your performance and/or your Ad Rank meets Googles minimum ranking.

Manually Set Up Extensions

A) Three extensions that support all business goals
Sitelink Extensions- link people to certain pages of website
Callout Extensions- add additional content to ads
Structured Snippets- highlights certain elements of product or service being offered

B) Encourage customers to visit your business
Location Extensions

C) Getting customers to call or message your business
Call Extensions
Message Extensions

D) Encourage customers to visit your businesses website
Price Extensions
Promo Extensions

E) Get customers to download your businesses app
App Extensions

Choose the Best Campaign Types

Based on your advertising goals you will need to develop an ad campaign!

Google Ads Campaign Types

Search Campaign:
When people search on Google your ad will appear when specific keywords are used in their search

Display Campaign:
Matches your ad to websites and mobile apps that have similar content to you
Great for building brand awareness

Search Campaign with Display opt-in:
Combination of the search campaign and display campaign

Video Campaign:
This version allows you to advertise on YouTube or other video sites

Shopping Campaign:
You ad may appear in Google Shopping or other Google partner sites
Retailers that want to advertise their products would use this method

Universal App Campaign:
You are able to advertise across all searches, displays, and YouTube on apps

Campaign Goals

Once you decide on which campaign type works best for your business it is time to choose your goals.

• Do you want to increase traffic to your site or physical store?
• Do you want to increase purchases?

There are many different goals you can set in relation to your Google Ad.

Adjust your Campaign Settings

It is essential to go through the settings to tailor your ad campaign, so it is targeting the right audience and showing up when necessary.

Organize Your Account for Success

To stay organized it is best to build an organizational strategy with Google Ads

How is Google Ads organized?

Google Ads are organized by three categories:
1) Account- Email address, password, etc.
2) Campaign- Budget and settings in relation to the campaign selected
3) Ad Group- A group of similar ads and keywords

Tips!

• When you have different products or sales, you can create single campaigns for each of these
• Create different keywords and bids for each category of ad
• Check out Google Ads manager to see if it works for you and your business

Reach Customers with Targeting

Making the right people see sure your ad at the right time is very important.

Who:
Who is your target audience? Who do you want to reach? Targeting your consumers can help you in building that relationship
Where:
Where are your consumers located? Where are they located online and physically?
What:
What are your consumers looking for? What interests them? Here you can map out specific key words so your ad pops up when your target audience is searching online.

Help Customers Find You

What are keywords?

Keywords are specific words that trigger your ad to appear, making sure your ads keywords are relevant and relate to your product or service is important.

When developing your ad campaign here you can create a list of keywords that will help in getting your ad to your target audience.

Tips!

• Think as if you are your customer and what you would put in the search bar
• Keywords should relate to your different ad groups
• Pick keywords that target your specific consumer and some that target general consumers
• Google recommends five to twenty key words per group
• Select keywords that relate to websites or apps that consumers see

Control Which Searches Trigger Your Ads

Match types is a way to control who and when your ad pops up when consumers are searching. Keywords can be used in a variety of ways; match types help your ad pop up for the right combination of words.

Make Your Ads Seen

Ads on Google’s network are competing against one another; how do you make sure your ad is going to be seen?
Factors in determining how your ad places in the realm of Google Ads:

• Your bid (the max amount you will spend for users to click and flow through o your website)
• The impact of ad formats you have enabled
• The chance of your ad being click on (Clickthroughrate CTR predicts how many times your ad will get clicked with certain keywords)
• The overall experience users get form your landing page when they click through to it
• How relevant your ad is

The Google Ads auction is the system that takes all elements and determines when and where your ad will pop up.

The Quality Score
On a scale of 1-10 the quality score measures position of your ad in relation to your landing page and the amount of keywords in your account.

Match Media Cost Models with Your Budget

Of course all of this advertising with Google isn’t free; however, Google offers customers various pricing selections that you can pick from and make sure you are getting the right ad model for you.

Depending what model works best for you, Google has something for everyone:
Cost Per Click (CPC)
Cost Per Impression (CPM)
Cost Per Action (CPA)
Cost Per Viewable Impressions (vCPM)
Cost Per View (CPV)

Determine a Good Bidding Strategy

When developing a good bidding strategy for your Google Ads account, you need to think about your overall budget, your goals with the ad, and the value of your product or service versus how much you are willing to spend per click.

Google Ads holds an auction when it has space for an ad to fill, however, if you don’t have a bin in place your ad won’t be considered therefore won’t be featured.

Managing your Bids

Bidding Goal

o Build Awareness
o Drive up website visits
o Drive online sales

Figuring out what your overall bidding goal can help you in determining where to focus when putting together a bid.

3 Tools to Determine Your CPC Bids:

Select your Bid Strategy

Google Ads has various strategies that are aimed at different goals and campaigns.

Automated bidding is an option that Google offers, it allows you to set out your ads goals and they take care of the rest. When selecting this method you have to go set it up and turn the automation on so Google can do its thing.

A keyword list will help Google determine when your ad should pop up and reach your target audience. Google ads can also automatically increase your bids, with a maximum set, of course, so your ads become more prominent.

When to Use Automated Bidding

This method is not made for everyone using Google Ads; it is important to ask yourself questions to determine if this is the route you should take.

o Do you have specific goals to meet?
o Are you ok with letting go of that time you currently spend organizing campaigns?
o Does the campaign meet Google Ads performance recommendations?
o Is conversion tracking enabled on your campaign?

How to Choose Your Automated Bidding Strategy

• Ad Clicks: automatically maxing out clicks helps your ad get the most clicks possible (within budget of course)
• Ad Revenue: target return on ad spend (ROAS) is higher bids where Google Ads believes there is more likelihood of a sale generating
• Ad Conversions: generate conversions such as enhanced cost per click (ECPC) and maximize conversions and Target cost per acquisition (CPA)

Now that we discussed automatic bidding lets go over manual bidding!

Manual bidding may be a better-suited route for you and your company’s ad campaign.

Maybe you don’t like to give up all control of your ads, and you want to monitor them, and it is possible that you don’t meet Google’s conversion recommendation as required for automatic bidding.

Adjust Bids to Favor Performers

Some ads will perform better than others; this is where Google gives you the chance to adjust your bids in favor of the higher performing ads. An adjustment lets you increase or decrease bids, and you can also increase or decrease bids per specific device.
The following image depicts the various ways you can adjust your bids.

Let’s say you want to change your bid to be shown more or less to users in some geographical regions; you would adjust your location settings on your ad.

Align Your Budget with Your Goals

Setting your Daily Budget

Every day you have a set budget that is based on the overall goal and reach you want from your ad campaign. If you reach that daily budget, your ads will usually stop showing for the rest of that day.

At the end of the day you want to make sure your ads are doing their job, they are generating awareness in regards to your brand, they are reaching the correct people, and you are seeing a return on that initial investment.

Avoid Editorial Errors

Google Ads has specific measures when it comes to developing your ad, especially when it comes to the actual text. Google requires ads to be clear and concise and free of any slang or symbols.

The editorial policy is a guideline used for all ads being shown on the Google network. By complying with the policy your ad has more chances of being shown and therefore generating more awareness of your company.

Two reasons your ad may be disapproved:
1) Spelling and grammatical errors
2) Style (do not have “Click Here” in your ad or your phone number in the text of the ad)

Conclusion

As you can see Google Ads is an excellent tool for businesses to use for generating brand awareness and reaching their target audience. There are multiple layers to consider when it comes to an ad campaign but with effective planning and set out goal it is reasonably capable with the help of Google Ads.

All Images and content has been referenced from:
Google Ads Fundamentals. (2017, September 22). Academy for Ads.

LinkedIn is a great tool for people to use when it comes to their professional life; the site is a way for businesses and people to connect. Whether you are looking for a job or just building your online professional profile, it is a platform that helps consolidate all your skills, experience, and education to one place online for others to see. The site allows for professionals to network with one another and builds potential business relationships.

Getting Started

According to the article “48 Eye-Opening LinkedIn Statistics,” LinkedIn has over 500 million members, and of those, 260 million are logging in on a monthly base. A common mistake being made by users is they are not creating a proper first impression; signing up and just filling out the sections is not good enough for your online presence. LinkedIn can be used similarly to Facebook; liking, commenting, joining groups, and more are all ways you can increase your profiles presence.

The following image is a representation of the essential levels when building your LinkedIn profile and network. Making sure that your LinkedIn profile is visible to others is important when companies are looking for potential candidates they now turn to the internet and conduct a search; what if you don’t come up on that search or your profile is bland? When companies google you, this gives you a chance to make a good first impression, but if you aren’t visible, you miss that opportunity. Another critical thing to remember is that you need to participate, connect, and build meaningful relationships; just having a profile is not enough to generate a strong network.

When people go to search for you online, there is a possibility of them having the incorrect spelling of your name, so when they go to search for you, you don’t appear. A tip given from author Bert Verdonck in the video LinkedIn Profiles for Social Business Success, have a section in your profile that has commonly misspelled versions of your name this way when your name is searched the algorithms pick it up, even if it is misspelled. If you have a nickname, it is also a good idea to have that in brackets behind your full first name, i.e., Jennifer (Jenn) LaFrance.

Having a professional picture on your profile is a good way for you to create a connection with someone; however certain things should be avoided when selecting your profile picture. A LinkedIn profile picture should not have other people in it or animals; the image should be a headshot and a current photo of you, not from 10-20 years ago.

A professional headline is another essential feature that can be used on your LinkedIn profile; this gives people a chance to stand out and show profile visitors a bit of personality. Some tips from author Bert Verdonck on creating an eye-catching headline:

• Add something you have in common
• Tell them something unexpected
• Use dividers I Increase readability
• Use your 120 characters wisely

The next step in making sure your profile is on the right path is by adding your location and industry. These two fields are important to have filled out because it helps you build a beneficial network and increases your chances of others finding you.

Your Contact Information

Email address –> LinkedIn selects the email address you use, but if this is not your primary professional address, it is important to update it.
Phone Number –> having your current phone number is essential for others that want to contact you.
Address –> the address field allows you to enter multiple addresses. Having a physical address can help when you are setting up meetings and having someone meet you. If you are based out of different locations, this gives you a chance to enter the various addresses for others to see.
Instant Message –> including your professional IM account is a way for your connections to find you on other communication platforms such as Skype.

Remember, only your connections can see your contact information!

Your Summary

The summary field is a critical part of your profile that entices visitors to read on and learn more about you as a professional.

Possible content that you can include is:
• overview of your organization and department
• a small summary of what you do at your company
• details about you so visitors can get to know you a bit better (personal branding)

Media such as videos are a way to catch visitor’s attention and show them what types of professional topics interest you. Multimedia increases the chance that visitors will continue onto the next steps of your profile.

Your Experience

Under your profiles experience section, it is essential not just to post content like it is just a resume; you want to display your results of what it is that you have done in the past and what you currently do. Just like under your summary it this is a place that should include a little overview of your company and inform visitors about what your organization does.

Job titles can be very vague and mean many different things so under your experience you can have a detailed summary about what you do on a day to day basis. You can include other bits of information such as achievements and milestones you have had with the organization. This section allows you to inform visitors about the responsibilities you have; by displaying evidence of your accomplishments and duties, this shows them that you are proud of your work.

We can’t forget about your previous work experience, having your work history shows readers where you came from and can give them insight into your skills and capabilities. Here you will want to list your duties, describe your role, provide examples of achievements, and tell the reader what you learned from your past position. Keywords are critical in attracting your target audience so make sure you think about what ones best represent you and your previous roles.

Visuals can be beneficial to your profile especially when visitors are browsing people quickly. Presentations, infographics, pictures, and videos are examples of visual stimulants that can be included on your profile.

The following two sites are good resources to check out when it comes to including visuals on your profile.

https://www.slideshare.net/ –> “Discover, Share, and Present presentations and infographics with the world’s largest professional content sharing community” (Slideshare, 2019).

https://embed.ly/ –> “The most effective platform on the web to engage your audience through rich media embeds. Get features like images, video, polls, slideshows, music, live video, forms, gifs, infographics and more automatically” (Embed.ly, 2017).

Create Your Own Brand

LinkedIn profiles have a section that allows you to list individual honors and awards that you may have; only include professional honors that are relevant to your field. Include who awarded you, the date you received the award, and a small summary of the award.

LinkedIn is also a section where you can write articles about your knowledge and expertise and then post the article. People can set up alerts to be informed when you publish new articles and as you build your network more and more people will be able to read your articles. Writing content for your profile can be beneficial and help develop your professional brand.

Other accomplishments that you can include on your profile are:

Skills and Recommendations

Showcasing your skills on your LinkedIn profile is an essential aspect of your profile but remember, only include skills that are relevant and real. Avoid skills that are not professional and don’t bother with “buzz words” like motivated and passionate. A list of professional skills can help with a visitor’s first impression of you and help make you stand out. A recommendation for this section is to select some skills that are general and others that are more specific.

“A recommendation is a statement that is written by a LinkedIn member to recognize or commend a connection, such as a colleague, business partner, or student. People who view your profile will often read the recommendations you’ve received from your connections to see what others have to say about your work” (Recommendations Overview, 2018).

Recommendations can be helpful to people who are visiting your profile but be careful not to include ones that are not going to be beneficial to the overall impression you are trying to give. Include ones that are detailed and provide evidence; a good profile should have at least five recommendations so if you don’t have any now is the time to start.

How do you ask for recommendations? If you are ok with asking someone for a recommendation, go for it, but don’t put them in an awkward position where they feel obligated, give them an out if they don’t feel comfortable writing one; you can also just let them happen organically.

Your Education

Adding your education to your profile is another way for you to build your network; fill out all fields that you can and make sure they are accurate. If you have other diplomas or degrees add them as well, don’t just include your education that relates to your industry. You can also list any certifications and courses you have completed, any training that you have is worth noting down.

Make the Most of Your Personality

LinkedIn has the stigma of just being a professional profile, but it is ok to add personal elements that represent who you are. Being relatable and showing those visiting your site that you are also human and have a personality behind the computer. Make sure your profile personality fits with your target audience and is going to help you in reaching your professional goals.

Add your volunteer history as well! This shows others that you are a caring person and that you take time out of your work and personal life to help others and your communities.

Extra Strategies to Stand Out

SEO and Keywords:
Keywords are words that are relevant to your target audience and help people find you when they search these keywords. Here is an example of a word that has many different variations that could be entered differently when someone is searching LinkedIn.

Groups:
Engaging with others on LinkedIn is a way for you to reach out to others and increase your network. Asking questions and generating content maximizes your chances of being seen and found on LinkedIn and helps you build potential professional relationships.

Follow Influencers:
LinkedIn influencers are leaders, thinkers, and innovators that generate popular content online and converse on big world topics. Some influencers that made LinkedIn top voices in 2018 list are Richard Branson, Melinda Gates, and Canada’s PM Justin Trudeau. Following influencers can be inspiring and educational for you! Take a look at LinkedIn to see who would interest you in following.

Control your visibility and privacy settings:
Under your account setting on LinkedIn make sure you have all your email addresses listed if you have more than one. They can be used to log into LinkedIn with the same password which is a handy tool. You can also edit your public profile so it can be found when people are searching online. Take the time to go through your account settings; you want to get optimal exposure and be visible to those searching.

Conclusion

LinkedIn is an excellent platform to use even if you aren’t on the lookout for a new job. As you have read, there are many steps in building a professional, but an eye-catching profile and I hope you have learned some great tips on improving your profile.

After completing the LinkedIn Profiles for Social Business Success video I went and made improvements to my profile. There are many levels to LinkedIn and various sections that you can fill out that will help in growing your network and connections.

A personal goal of mine is to improve my profile more and more each week and grow my network. You can find my LinkedIn profile at –> www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-jenn-lafrance-68a858102

References:
Recommendations Overview. (2018). LinkedIn Help. Retrieved from https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/90/recommendations-overview?lang=en

Roth, D. (2018, November 13). LinkedIn Top Voices 2018: Influencers. Retrieved from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/linkedin-top-voices-2018-influencers-daniel-roth/

Verdonck, B. (2017, February 3). LinkedIn Profiles for Social Business Success. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.lynda.com/LinkedIn-tutorials/LinkedIn-Profiles-Social-Business-Success/512777-2.html