In the world of online marketing, ads on search engine sites and web pages are the meat to the potatoes of selling your product or service. However, running a pay-per-click (PPC) ad campaign can be confusing, and it can be challenging to maximize your ad’s views and clicks.
If you’ve ever run a Google Ads campaign, you may be wondering: what are impressions on Google Ads? How can you improve your number of impressions or your click-through rate? How does one give the right impression?
The only thing here requiring a breakdown are these steps so that you can add to your ads!
Let's get started.
So, what are impressions on Google Ads? They are simply how often your ad is shown on any site in the Google Network. Every time your ad is shown, your total ad impressions increase by one. This is also true for the Google Search Network. Sometimes, only a portion of your ad will be shown, such as your business name or a small section of your ad text, but this still counts as another impression.
“The more the merrier” applies to this scenario. More impressions are a good thing because more people are viewing your ad, but the quality of the impression is still important in ensuring that your potential clients view and click on your ad.
If your ad shows up on the Google search page when viewers search for a search term unrelated to your ad, the impression is useless because the viewer is unlikely to click on or consider your ad. No one wants to look at vitamins when they're searching for delicious butter-filled recipes!
When running and modifying your Google Ads campaign, there are several features you can use to determine how well your ad is performing and which keywords are pulling in a crowd.
Google Analytics is both a website and mobile app that allows you to see your impression share data. How convenient is that? This is a helpful tool that will help you determine how many people your ads are reaching and how effective your ad campaign is. Currently, over 28,000,000 businesses are using Google Analytics worldwide. This must be for a good reason, right?
Impression share metrics can help you determine whether you should increase your daily budget to receive more effective impressions on your ad. Don't worry. If math isn't your thing, they make this easy for you.
Your impression share is the ratio of your ad impressions to the total number of impressions your ad could potentially get. This is a helpful percentage to know because it can tell you how many impressions you’re missing out on if you don’t have a large enough daily budget for your ad campaign. If your percentage is low, it could be a good idea to increase your budget to receive more impressions. Still with us?
Google Analytics also allows you to see your search term reports, which will tell you which words people have searched that populated your ad. If any of these words don’t apply to your particular advertisement, you can block them from your ad campaign. This will help narrow your impressions down to only viewers interested in your advertisement that might click on it, improving your click-through rate.
On the opposite end of receiving too many ineffective impressions, you can also receive too few impressions, which is bad for your ad campaign. The most common reason for not getting many ad impressions is that your ad isn’t showing up on the first page of Google’s search results when people search for one of your keywords.
This doesn't mean you and Google can't still be friends. In this case, you are probably bidding too low on your keywords and should increase your budget to get more impressions. Ad spending can directly impact market shares. Take companies like Coke and Pepsi, for example. These companies invest heavily in their advertising and now together own over 60% of their market.
Another reason for low impressions could be that your keywords have a low search volume, and people simply don't search those keywords that often. The good news is that Google Ads has your back and will warn you if your keywords have a low search volume by telling you that your keywords have a low-quality score. If these words come up when looking at your analytics, it’s a good idea to change your keywords to something that may have a higher search volume to increase your impressions.
Finding keywords and the correct bidding and budget prices can be a game of trial and error, but Google Analytics makes it very easy to determine how well your ad campaigns are performing and what you can do to improve them. Continue checking your analytics, Google Ads Quality Score, and landing pages between those coffee breaks to refine and enhance your ad campaign.
An easy way to increase your ad campaign’s effectiveness is to use the Google Display Network. The Google Display Network is a tool to help you target your ads to the right audiences. This will ensure that your ad is shown on a page for a viewer interested in your ad and more likely to click on it.
Google states that "With Google Ads, you may serve your ads on the Google Display Network, a collection of over two million websites that reach over 90% of Internet users across the globe." Now that's a lot of eyes on the prize!
The Google Display Network helps you reach your potential customers by allowing you to target your ads to the right viewers while they browse the internet, not just search terms on Google. You can also target ads to people who have already visited your site by populating your ad on their web browser. Additionally, the Google Display Network has an automated bidding tool that automatically adjusts your bidding to help you maximize your impressions for your budget.
Finally, another great way to improve your ad campaign’s efficacy is to have good ad copy. Your ad copy should have a captivating and concise headline that draws a viewer in to read more. The rest of your ad copy should motivate the customer to purchase your product or service by appealing to both their emotions and sense of logic.
To write an effective ad copy, imagine yourself as a customer and ask: why might I want this product? Why might I not? What makes it worth my hard-earned dollars and hours of researching Google impressions?
Running a successful Google Ads campaign can feel like searching for a needle in a haystack. It can be difficult to know where to start or how to tell whether your campaign is effective, but now you should have a better idea of how they can improve your business.
If you still feel a little lost after reading this article, maybe it's time to call in the big dogs. Sparkinator specializes in optimizing your ROI by using a hands-on and data-driven approach to find the methods that best work for your business and target audience. We can review your account, free of charge, so you can start putting all of those big bucks towards becoming the next Coke.