Top Google Ads Features Businesses Overlook
Top Google Ads Features Businesses Overlook
Google Ads is one of the most powerful tools for businesses looking to drive traffic and increase conversions. However, many companies miss out on some of its most useful features. These often-overlooked tools can help improve campaign performance, reduce wasted spend, and provide deeper insights into customer behavior. Let’s go over some of the key features you might not be using to their full potential.
1. Responsive Search Ads
Why It’s Overlooked
Many businesses stick with traditional text ads and don’t realize the potential of Responsive Search Ads (RSAs). While RSAs can automatically adjust to different search queries, businesses sometimes forget to leverage them fully.
What You’re Missing
RSAs let you enter multiple headlines and descriptions. Google then mixes and matches them to find the most effective combinations based on what users are searching for. By testing multiple combinations, you can reach a broader audience without creating a ton of different ads manually.
To make this work, it’s essential to input a diverse range of headlines and descriptions that target various aspects of your products or services. This way, RSAs can serve the most relevant ad to each user.
2. Bid Adjustments
Why It’s Overlooked
Bid adjustments are an easy way to optimize your campaigns, but they’re often underutilized. Some businesses set their bids and forget them, missing opportunities for greater efficiency.
What You’re Missing
Bid adjustments allow you to tweak your bid based on certain factors like device type, location, time of day, and audience characteristics. If you notice that certain devices or times of day convert better, you can adjust your bids to make sure you’re spending more where it matters.
For example, if mobile users are more likely to convert on your site, you can increase bids for mobile traffic. This helps ensure your ads are shown more to the audience segments that are likely to bring in the most value.
3. Custom Audiences
Why It’s Overlooked
Google Ads gives you the ability to create custom audiences based on behaviors and interests, but this feature isn’t always on the radar for businesses.
What You’re Missing
Custom Audiences allow you to target specific groups of people who have previously interacted with your website, app, or YouTube channel. You can combine demographic data with behavioral signals to create a more tailored audience.
For instance, you could target people who’ve visited your product page in the last 30 days or users who’ve watched a video about a specific feature of your product. This granular targeting improves relevancy and often leads to better conversion rates.
4. Negative Keywords
Why It’s Overlooked
Many businesses focus so much on the keywords they want to target that they forget about the ones they don’t want to show up for.
What You’re Missing
Negative keywords are essential for filtering out irrelevant traffic and reducing wasted ad spend. By adding negative keywords, you ensure that your ads are not triggered by searches that don’t align with your business goals. For example, if you sell premium products, you might want to exclude search terms like "cheap" or "discount."
Regularly reviewing your search terms report and updating your negative keyword list can help improve your campaign performance over time.
5. Audience Targeting in Display Campaigns
Why It’s Overlooked
Many businesses struggle to make their Display campaigns effective. One reason is that they don’t properly use audience targeting.
What You’re Missing
Google Ads offers several audience targeting options for Display campaigns, including in-market audiences, affinity audiences, and remarketing. By using these targeting options, you can show your ads to people who are actively looking for products similar to yours, or to people who have already visited your site.
If you’re not using audience targeting in your Display campaigns, your ads may be reaching people who aren’t interested, leading to wasted spend.
6. Ad Extensions
Why It’s Overlooked
Ad extensions are a free way to add more information to your ads, but many businesses don’t use them or don’t set them up correctly.
What You’re Missing
Ad extensions can increase your ad’s visibility and improve the click-through rate (CTR). You can add additional links to your site (sitelink extensions), include your phone number (call extensions), or even provide extra information like your business address (location extensions). These small additions can make a big difference in how users interact with your ads.
Using the right ad extensions helps you stand out from your competitors and gives users more ways to engage with your business directly from the search results page.
7. Smart Bidding Strategies
Why It’s Overlooked
Smart Bidding uses machine learning to automatically set your bids for the best possible results. Some businesses avoid it because they feel more control is needed over the bidding process.
What You’re Missing
Smart Bidding strategies like Target CPA, Target ROAS, and Maximize Conversions use historical data to make real-time bidding decisions that optimize your campaign. These strategies can help save time and effort while improving performance by adjusting bids automatically.
If you haven’t experimented with Smart Bidding yet, it’s worth trying out. You may find that it helps you reach your goals more efficiently than manual bidding.
8. Location-Based Targeting
Why It’s Overlooked
Location targeting is one of the most basic features in Google Ads, but it’s often underutilized or set too broadly.
What You’re Missing
Google Ads lets you target specific geographic locations, from countries to cities or even custom radii around a location. For local businesses, location targeting can be especially powerful. For example, if you own a restaurant, you can target ads to people who are within a certain distance from your establishment.
Location-based targeting also allows you to adjust bids based on the effectiveness of certain areas. If certain regions perform better, you can increase bids to ensure your ads are more visible in those locations.
9. Search Terms Report
Why It’s Overlooked
Many businesses don’t regularly check their search terms report, even though it can provide valuable insights into how people are finding their ads.
What You’re Missing
The search terms report shows you the exact keywords that triggered your ads. By analyzing this report, you can uncover valuable insights into the language your potential customers are using. This can help you refine your keyword list and identify new opportunities.
For example, you may find that a variation of your keyword performs much better than others, or that certain search terms are triggering irrelevant traffic, which can then be added as negative keywords.
10. Conversion Tracking and Attribution Models
Why It’s Overlooked
Many businesses set up conversion tracking initially, but fail to optimize it over time. Additionally, the attribution model is often left at its default setting.
What You’re Missing
Conversion tracking is essential for understanding which ads and keywords are driving valuable actions on your site. However, businesses often use the last-click attribution model, which might not give credit where it’s due. For example, a customer might click on an ad, but convert after coming back to your site through another channel.
By experimenting with different attribution models, like linear or time-decay, you can get a clearer picture of how your campaigns are performing across the entire customer journey.
Conclusion
Google Ads is full of features that can help businesses improve their online advertising performance. The problem is that many of these features are overlooked or underused. By taking full advantage of tools like Responsive Search Ads, Smart Bidding, ad extensions, and custom audience targeting, you can optimize your campaigns for better results. Keep experimenting, reviewing your data, and fine-tuning your strategy to make the most out of your Google Ads investment.