Which Google Ads Campaign Should You Choose in 2023

Currently, there are seven different types of Google Ads campaigns that you can use right now in 2023. And especially if you're new to Google Ads, it can become quite confusing about which is the right type of Google Ads campaign that you need to use for your business. Because the last thing you want to do is to make the wrong choice and choose the wrong type of Google Ads campaign. Because if you do do that, the results could be devastating. So in this video, I want to break down the different types of Google Ads campaigns and also let you know which campaign is going to best for you. Now, in this video, I won't be going through and giving a long overview of each different type of Google Ads campaign. But what I have done is in the description below, I have also put a link to the Google Ads help page which gives some longer descriptions and longer explanations of each type of Google Ads campaign. And the reason for that is because what I wanted to do in this video is to give you a really practical guide and let you know when I personally use Google each different type of Google Ads campaign. But just in case we haven't met yet, my name is Aaron Young, I'm from Define Digital Academy and I'm your 15,000 hour Google Ads master. So let's start with the first type of campaign that we can use in Google Ads. And I will admit that this one is a very niche campaign and that's the Google Ads App campaign. And as the name suggests, it's specifically for promoting your mobile app. And the goals of the app campaign is twofold. Firstly, you can set up your app campaign to drive new app downloads. So this is for people who don't currently have your app and you want them to download your app. And then the second reason for why you would use an app campaign is if you want to drive engagements. And what you can do with this type of app campaign is that you can target people who currently have your app. So they've already downloaded your app onto their phone, but they currently haven't been using your app. So they haven't logged on or they haven't used any of the features in your app for a while. What you can do with this app engagement is that you can run a campaign to them to try and get some extra app engagements, whether that would be going on and completing a purchase or engaging with different elements of your app. So that's Google Ads app campaigns. Now the next type of campaign that you can use in Google Ads is discovery campaigns. Now, easy way to explain discovery campaigns is that they're a lot more of a broad brush approach to marketing. So rather than highly specific keyword targeting or targeting specific products, your discovery campaign is just going out in a bit of a scattergun approach. It's still targeted around different audiences and different interests, but it's not going into the keyword level. It's really just going out to find new potential customers. So because that is the reason discovery campaigns is very much what you would call a top of the funnel strategy. And because of that, I would generally only use discovery campaigns for, for businesses who have a larger budget and they already have some underlying always on campaigns that are performing really well. So what I mean by that is that they've already got a couple of established Google Ads campaigns which they're really happy with their profit levels already or the number of conversions that those campaigns are generating and they wanted to try and grow new customers. And they don't mind that this is going to take a little bit longer. And that's the one thing that I want to make really clear with discovery campaigns is that the conversion acquisition windows are going to be a lot longer, remember, because they're at that top of the funnel. So if you're new to Google Ads and you've only got a small marketing budget, the discovery campaign is not one that I would recommend. I would only recommend adding in that further down the track once you've got some success with some core campaigns. So that brings us to the third type of campaign that I want to discuss today, and that is your display campaigns. Have you ever gone to a website? So let's just say you're doing some shopping for some new glasses and, and then wherever you go, you just seem to see that ad for those glasses, follow you around. Whichever website you go onto that is a display campaign. Now when I use display campaigns, I use it for two main reasons. The first one is a remarketing campaign and that's that scenario which I gave before where we're targeting audiences who have already been to our website. We want to then show our ads. So our image based ads whenever they go around the Internet. So if they're checking the news, checking up on their favorite sports team, checking up on their favorite Netflix show to see if it's being renewed for another season. Whatever the reason is, wherever they go on the Internet, they are seeing your ads. So that's a great way that I do use a display image based campaign. And the second way that I would use that is that I would also use it to try and find some new audiences and to be honest, rather than using a discovery campaign, I'll generally use a display campaign. So an image based display campaign. And this is where I'll put in a collection of audiences that I want to target. So I want to test a new level of audiences or if I want to sort of push some ads out to my highest converting audiences, this is where I'd use the display campaign. Now the reason for why I use a display campaign instead of a discovery campaign is that I do find with display campaigns I can be a little bit more specific with my targeting. And even with those audiences, I can use a targeting option which means that I can give Google a list of say 20 audiences and say I only want you to target those audiences. And that's something that you can't do in a discovery campaign. Now the other thing that I would say with display campaigns, if you want to see success, be a little bit cheeky with some of your ads. And what I mean by that is, especially if you're doing it for a remarketing, you know, you could say something like, you know, still looking for your perfect pair of glasses or whatever the case would be, rather than just a general image campaign. And the reason for that is because you need to remember that you're pushing your ads out to these people. They haven't done a current search, so they, they may not be in the mindset of looking to buy your product or audio service. That's why you do need to use the imagery and the text on your display ads to be able to really drive that emotion. So that's just one extra tip that I want to give you if you are going to see success with displayed ads. And now let's talk about that fourth type of campaign and that is a video campaign. Now I use video campaigns very much in the same way that I would use a display campaign, except we're doing it on a video format. So I would use it to remarket to audiences or I'd use it to try and reach out to new audiences or some of my high converting audiences to push my ads to people who don't know my brand or don't know my products or services. Now two things I want to talk about and give you some extra information about video campaigns. The first one is the actual ad that you're going to be using. I would highly recommend that if you're going to be using a video campaign is that you create a specific ad for it. So don't just go through and use one of your current YouTube videos on your channel. And, and the reason for that is because the metrics and the engagement metrics that you need for a video ad versus a regular YouTube video, especially long format YouTube videos is going to be completely different. And what will end up happening is that you'll ruin the performance of your long form video content and you won't get any engagement on your video. So if you're going to do a video campaign, make sure that you're recording a separate ad style video for that campaign. And another great strategy that I found has worked for video campaigns is to actually target specific channels. Think of it like this. If you've got a fitness apparel brand that you're wanting to market on video campaigns, what you can actually do is that you can go through and target some leading fitness influencers, especially if they're based in your target areas. And that way you can advertise your product directly to your core audiences. And many times this is going to be a lot cheaper than trying to do a brand deal or a brand endorsement for from those fitness influencers. And that now leaves us with the last three types of Google Ads campaigns. And that would be your search campaigns, your shopping campaigns and your performance max campaigns. Now historically if you're a service based industry, you would go straight and you would always be using search campaigns. Obviously if you don't know search campaigns are those campaigns where you complete a Google search and you see those text ads appear versus your shopping campaigns being the go to campaign for E commerce. And those shopping campaigns are those product image based ads that also have the price. So when you complete a search especially for a product that you want to buy, you will see above the search results or sometimes even over to the right side of the screen. If you're on a desktop, you'll see the product images along with the price. That's a shopping campaign and it was a really, really easy choice. If you were a service based industry, you go straight to search. If you're an ecommerce brand, you would go straight to shopping. Now as we know, performance max has come in and performance max is that one campaign which pushes out your ads to search shopping. If you are an E commerce brand as well, display YouTube also into Google Maps and it can show you ad on all of Google's available Networks. But in 2023, what type of campaign would you use if you're a service based industry and what type of campaign would you use if you're an E commerce and if you're service based, I would say still directly go to search campaigns. Now I'M not saying that Performance Max campaigns are bad for service based industries. And I've got some service based industries that are performing really, really well on Performance Max campaigns. Now the reason why I'd say generally that you want to recommend going to search and the reason for that is because with the Performance Max campaign, it's going to jumble all of your non branded, branded and competitor search terms all in the one campaign. And if you want to be able to break that out and really limit your spending. So if you want to have a targeted amount of spending on competitive campaigns, targeted amount of spending on brand and then target amount of spending on non brand search is going to be the way to go because you can be a lot more specific. You can add in extra negative keywords and you can even make your ad copy more targeted for those different markets, whether it's going to be branded campaign, non branded campaign or a competitor campaign. Now I do know that you can add negative keywords to Performance Max campaign, but some of them then need to be account wide. But even still with that functionality, you don't have the same level of control between those different types of search terms. So that's why I would still say that if you're a service based industry, go for search in 2023. Now if you're an E commerce brand, I'd be saying go directly to Performance Max. Now I do know that people do have different opinions on this and some people are still very much pushing shopping. And I want to make it clear that I'm not saying Shopp is bad, especially for E commerce brands. But what I am saying is that especially in 2023, I've started to see a trend of performance max performing better than shopping campaigns. And the reason for that is this, is that Google is heavily pushing its Performance Max platform. And as more and more brands are coming into Performance Max, it's taking on the market. And what is happening is especially through 2022 when shopping and Performance Max was still there, shopping was still working well. And the reason for that is because it had really good conversion data. So if you had a highly converting shopping campaign, it would still go on and perform really well. But what is happening now is that with Performance Max campaigns because we do know that it goes out into that discovery campaign mode, getting people at the top of the funnel in display networks, also on the YouTube network and in all different other areas, if the Performance Max has primed or already shown your ad to that user and then they complete that search, a Performance Max campaign is going to bid a lot more aggressively on that individual user. So if you're only running a shopping campaign, your campaign may not be as aggressive in its bidding for that individual user because it's got no prior context. Whereas in a Performance Max campaign, if it's got someone who's had two or three or maybe even four different interactions and then they complete that targeted search, that Performance Max campaign is going to bid highly aggressively. And then also as well, after initial bid, it will continue to remarket until it gets that sale. And, and that's the reason for why I say that I am now leaning towards the ecommerce brands to start off with Performance max campaigns in 2023. But regardless of whether you use search campaigns or Performance Max campaigns, one thing that you are going to need is that you're going to need to know how to optimize those campaigns correctly. And that's why I want to give you access to my Google Ads Optimization checklist, and that is perfect for search campaigns. And then I also want to give you access to my Google Ads E Commerce Optimization checklist, which is perfect for Performance Max and also shopping campaign. What these checklists do is they let you know not only all of the different optimization tasks that you need to complete, but also lets you know whether you need to complete that task every week, every month, or every 90 days. Once again, thank you for joining me. And if you're wanting to use search campaigns in 2023 to make sure that you've got your search campaign set up correctly, go through and watch this video right here. Or if you wanted to use Performance Max campaigns, go through and watch this video right here. Thank you for joining me. See you next time.