Google Ads changed in 2022 FOREVER. This is what works NOW

I've been running Google Ads since 2010 and I can confidently say that in all of that time last year, 2022 was the year that we saw the most fundamental changes in Google Ads, with the largest one being Google changing the way that keyword match types operate in that it moved away from just targeting the keywords that you had selected to moving to a meaning or an intent based keyword match system. And in fact, on a survey that I ran right here on this channel where I asked if you could change one thing about Google Ads, what would it be? 47%. So nearly half of everyone who responded said that they want the return of real exact match keywords like they used to function before 2022. And then on top of Google also changing the way that keyword match types function, it also removed two core fundamental pillars of Google Ads. Firstly, they took away expanded text ads and forced you to start using responsive search ads. Now, responsive search ads have been around for a number of years, but you're always able to choose whether you had expanded text ads where you could control the way that your ads appeared versus responsive search ads where as the name suggests, they're responsive and Google can change them around. And then even further, Google also removed smart shopping campaigns and replaced it with their shiny new toy performance Max campaigns. So as you can see, that is a lot that went on in 2022 and what I want to do right now as we move into 2023, I want to help you and give you the four core strategies that are working right now in 2023. And the reason for why I know that these strategies work is because they are the result of countless hours and also over a million dollars in ad spend every single month in different business niches. So e commerce, service based business to business, business to customer. So I can confidently say that what I'm about to share with you works once again because I've seen the data and we've tested these different strategies across all of those multiple accounts that add up to the over the million dollars in spend every single month that I either look after physically or I'm coaching people through. So I'm in the unique position that I I've been able to see massive amounts of data so that I can boil it down into the four core things that you need to be doing in 2023 for success with Google Ads. And just in case we haven't met yet, my name is Aaron Young from Define Digital Academy and I'm your 15,000 hour Google Ads master. And if you want to Stay up to date with what is working in Google Ads right now. Why don't you subscribe, but also turn on the notification bell so that you never miss when I release a new video in 2023. All right, with all that said, let's get straight into today's teaching. And the first core strategy that is working right now is having campaigns with less ad groups. And this is as a result of Google changing that keyword match type. For many years, as long as I can remember, a successful Google Ads campaign had sometimes 10, 20, 30 multiple different ad groups which were all targeting very specific keyword themes or or specific keyword niches. But because Google Ads has changed how those match types work, we now need to also adjust how we set up and operate our campaigns. And think of it like this, because Google Ads has really heavily broadened the number of search terms that could trigger an ad for a single keyword. We now need to also adjust so we don't need as many ad groups, because if we have really strict and stringent ad groups, they're going to be bleeding into each other. And that then means that Google can't really get a clear gauge on which of the best ad copies are working. So a clear example of this would be if you were setting up a campaign to advertise your skateboard shop. Previously, before Google had changed this keyword matching, you would probably have three or four or even five different ad groups, with those ad groups being an ad group targeting skateboard shop, another ad group targeting skateboard store, another ad group targeting skate shop, and, and then another ad group targeting by a skateboard. And the best structure was to have those individual ad groups so that you could have clear ad copies and that you could also get higher quality scores so that you could lower your cost per click. But as we said, the problem is now is that that one keyword, skateboard shop, would actually target all of those different individual keywords where they mentioned. Even if you had skateboard shop set up as an exact match keyword, it would also trigger ads for searches like buy a skateboard or skateboard store or skateboard store near me. So because that is the case, we need to go through and change how we structure not only our campaigns with less ad groups, but also too. I'm going to show you how you need to also structure your ads to come in line with this less ad group strategy. And let me show you right now what I mean. So first I want to show you the benefits and what happened in a real life campaign where we reduced the number of ad groups. And this campaign previously had three different ad groups. And then what we did, and the only action that we did is that we paused these two lower ad groups and then moved them all into this core number one ad group. And we made the change here. And you can see it had two things. Firstly, it reduced the cost, but then it also increased the total number of conversions. And the reason for why this happened is because it removes the testing that Google had to do between these two different ad groups. Because remember what I was saying earlier in that when you had those keywords previously, before Google had updated the match types, there was really clear boundaries of what ads would trigger for different search terms. Whereas now, because that's a lot broader, you actually had this situation where your keywords within the same campaign were targeting each other. So the algorithm didn't really know which ad group to show and which ads to show within those ad groups. So by heavily reducing the number of ad groups, it allowed Google to better target the traffic which was performing the best. And you can see quite clearly here with the results, this red line, as soon as we made those change, we started to see a big increase in performance. But what I want to show you now is when it comes to your ad copy, how you can make sure that you're still seeing highly relevant headlines. Because, as we know, the reason why we had so many different ad groups is so that we could, especially in this headline position, one, we could match what the user was searching. Because this, there's still really, really strong data which shows that if you can match in your headline what the user researching, they're much more likely to start clicking on it. So what you need to do is you need to use a feature which is called keyword insertion. And the way that you do this is that you use a brace or that squiggly bracket, and then you choose keyword insertion, and then you click Apply. And what this will do is that regardless of what keyword the user uses to trigger your ads, it will always appear in that position. So that's a great way of you being able to use the new strategy, which is right now that you're reducing the number of ad groups, because Google has broadened the way that those keywords function, and they're going to now be appearing to a wider range of search terms, but still making sure that in that headline, you are using the keyword match term that the user used to treat your ad. And now, the second strategy that I want to talk about that is working in Google Ads right now has to do with those of you who are using Performance Max campaigns. And this is all about setting your asset groups and your performance max campaigns around groups of products or services and not creating asset groups based around different audiences or keyword matches. And then on top of that, the next part for success in performance Max campaigns is always making sure that you're increasing the number of impressions that your performance max campaign is seeing. Because we know that there's a very strong correlation between the number of impressions and the total conversion value or number of conversions that your performance max campaign is getting. And let's jump into a screen share so I can walk you through these two components. So for your performance Max campaigns, the first thing I wanted to take you through is that when you're on your performance Max campaign, you then want to go into your asset groups and you want to make sure that you're only structuring your asset groups around different types of products or services. So in this example, we've got a villa resort that we're advertising and we've only got two asset groups. The first one is targeting our one bedroom villas and the second one is targeting our two bedroom villas and we don't have any other asset groups. And the reason for that is that you need to remember that asset groups were created so that you could go through and tailor your messaging for your individual products. So in this one bedroom villa asset group, all of our photos, our headlines and descriptions are a one bedroom villa versus our two bedroom villa Seminyak, which is all about our two bedroom villas. Now some people are going through and trying to be a little bit funky with the way that they set these up. I've seen some accounts where they've had up to 90 different asset groups and they're all built around different audiences and different keywords. But the problem with that is, is that you need to remember a core functionality of performance Max campaigns. Is that what when you go through and add in your audience signals, so you're adding in your keywords through the custom segments, you're adding in your own data audiences, so your website visitors, and then you're also adding in your affinity and interest targeting through different audiences that they're only small suggestions to Google. And what you need to remember with your performance max campaigns, you can't stop Google from going outside of your selections. And this isn't hidden. Google makes it really, really clear where it says that performance max will go beyond your selections to find new conversions versions based on your goals. So because of that, when you're Setting up your Performance Max campaigns, when you're having your asset groups, you only want them structured around different core products. And with the determining factor being do you want to be able to tailor some different messaging towards that group of products. So if you're a retail store and you had a Performance Max campaign based around different types of workout pants, what you could do is that you could have one core campaign which is targeting those, but then you could have different asset groups. So one around three quarter length tights, another one around full length joggers, another one around shorts. So the product category is the same, but then you're breaking down your different asset groups so that you can tailor the images and also the marketing messages for those specific products. But you should never have the situation where you've got multiple asset groups targeting the same product, but just based around different audiences. So for example, if I had three or four different one bedroom villa asset groups that was targeting the same product, but the only difference was is that we're targeting different audiences. Because remember, you cannot block Google from doing that. So it's going to go beyond. And then what you're having the situation of is that even if you're seeing the data there, that it looks like one asset group is performing better. That's a little bit misleading because Google is still going beyond those selections. So that's the first thing with Performance Max. And the second thing is that you need to remember that your impressions and your conversion value are heavily aligned. And this is a campaign that I took on and we're just in the process of trying to recover it. And what I want to show you here is that in the yellow line you can see as our impressions go up, our conversion value goes up. As our impressions go down, our conversion value goes down. And the reason for why this happens is because Performance Max campaigns, you got to remember they have an inbuilt discovery campaign in them in that the people who are clicking on your ad today are generally not converting today. They're converting three days or seven days or 14 days from now. So that's why it's really important that with your Performance Max campaign, a key metric that you always need to be looking at and reviewing is the number of impressions that your Performance Max campaign is getting throughout 2023. And the third strategy that I want to take you through that is working in 2023 is to make sure that you're completing monthly ad copy split tests. Now, before you start yelling at the screen saying, well, split tests have always been important, but the reason for Why I included this is because of the introduction of responsive search ads for your search campaigns. And also with Performance Max, I've seen a really big trend in that people are only running one responsive search ad and not doing any manual ad copy split tests because they just believe that Google is going to be running this for you. And the same with Performance Max, people aren't going through and they haven't got a process to regularly go through and update and run some different ad copy split tests. And the reason for why this is so important is because yes, Google will go through and run some different ad copy split tests, but Google needs at least 2,000. It used to be 5,000. Now in some cases it's about 2 to 3,000 impressions before they can complete a single split test. And if you've got a small budget and your ad isn't getting 2,000 or 3,000 or 5,000, depending on the number and impressions in a given 30 day period, your ad copy is never going to be able to come out of its ever ending learning loop. And this is going to be costing you a lot of money. So even now in 2023, even with responsive search ads and Performance Max campaigns, you need to still be carrying out a process where you're manually split testing your ad copy. And let me show you how to do this. Let's firstly start with search campaigns and then I'll take you through the ad copy split testing process for Performance Max. But in search campaigns, you want to be making sure that even with responsive search ads, you want to be running two different responsive search ads at the same time. Now, the reason for why I'm saying only two ads is because I found that with responsive search ads, if you add in a third or fourth ad, Google would generally only show two of those ads. So the process is that we want to go through and do a split test between two ads, then we want to pause the losing ad and then set up a new ad so that we can run another split test. But one thing that I do want to make clear is that when you are going through and running these split tests is that you only want to be testing one thing. So in this time we've got the call to action of saying from just $54 a month, and in this other ad, we're running the call to action in position three of request, a free demo. So these two ads are the same in every other way, except. Except they've just got that different call to action in position three. Now, what we've been able to do, I'M showing you the results for all year. Through this process of going through and completing different split tests, we've been able to get a cost per conversion down to $34, whereas when we first started the split test, our best performing ad was up at $51. So this is a really effective way of being able to lower your acquisition costs. Now, for Performance Max campaigns, this is a little bit different. You want to be going into your campaign, then into your asset groups, and in here you want to be going into view details. And then in your view Details, what you want to be doing is you want to be going through this performance column and Google will give you three scores, whether it be low, good or best. And for this one, you can see that we've got a low score. So what we would do is we'd go through and edit and then we want to go through and add in a new headline. And what I also do here, this was the headline which had the low score, is that I actually cut this and I paste it into a Google sheet so that I know that that's a headline that I've used. And you can just set up a simple Google sheet because we've cut that, you then paste it into the Google sheet and then we go through and add in a new headline and then from there we click save. And as you can see from here, this is our new headline that we've got here and it's still pending. So what we do need to wait for is you can see with these long headlines here, this one's still learning. And I'll go through and also update this one because it's got a low score along with this one in here. And that's the simple process for how you can go through split test your Performance max headlines. And what I do recommend is, as I said, just have a Google sheet where you're always keeping a list of the different headlines that you have used in your Performance Max campaign because you can't go through and see them like you can in your search campaign. Like in here, where we've got all of the other ad copies that we have previously used. And then this brings us to the fourth and final strategy that I want to share with you that works in 2023. And I actually need to stress that this one will always work. And that is that you need to have a structured optimization strategy for your Google Ads campaigns. And what I mean by that is that you need to know exactly what you're going to be optimizing in your Google Ads campaign. Every time that you go into your Google Ads account, and the worst thing possible is that you could just go into your Google Ads account and go, look, we might check our ad copy today, or we might check our keywords, or we might check our bidding strategy. Because if you don't have a structured way in how you optimize your campaign, you're not going to be seeing the best levels of success with Google Ads. And the reason for that is because true success with Google Ads is seen where your manual optimizations are working hand in hand to support Google's automated learning and its algorithms. And if you over optimize your account by adding in too many optimizations, you're potentially limiting the learning that Google Ads can use because you're not giving it enough time to find out whether the new bidding strategy is working or find out whether the new ad copy is working. And the reverse is also true. If that. If you don't have that strategy and you under optimize your account, you're then not able to stop Google from wasting your money by continuing to test some different keyword themes or locations or ad copies, whatever the case may be, where you know that that is not going to be the best for your business. So in 2023, if you want to see true success, you need to know exactly what you need to be optimizing in your Google Ads account every 72 hours, every week, every month, and every 90 days. And to help you with that, I want to give you access to both of my Google Ads optimization checklists. And both of these have been updated for 2023. So if you have my old version, make sure you jump in and grab my updated versions. And I've got my first optimization checklist, which is perfect for search campaigns. And this lets you know when you need to complete those core options of going through and reviewing your search term audits or split testing your ad copy, checking your bid adjustments for your audiences, and all of that important information. And then I've also got my e Commerce Google Ads Optimization checklist, which takes you through the process for how to optimize your shopping campaigns and your performance max campaigns. And they're very two different processes that you need to go through. So if you want to get a copy of my Google Ads Optimization checklist for search campaigns, or that E Commerce optimization checklist for performance max and shopping campaigns, all you need to do is to follow that link in the description below. Once again, thank you for joining me. And if you're new to Google Ads or you want to make sure that you're using the correct campaign structures and optimizing your campaigns in the correct way. I want you to go through on which this playlist right here, which is called Get Google Ready in 2023. And that shows you how to correctly set up every campaign and optimize those campaigns that you will need for success in 2023. Thank you again. See you next time.