Know which ad types are best for you.
DavidJohn sent me a scan of some training materials he received from Google a few years ago. It’s a deck of cards with information on which Google products are most appropriate for which business types. It looks like this:
Do you recognize it? Some of it is a little out of date, but overall it’s pretty cool!
Here is the pdf that DavidJohn sent me.
To make it more useful, I converted it to text. (Did you know you could convert pdf to text in Google Drive just by opening the pdf in Docs?)
Searching for a random bit of text from the cards, it doesn’t appear to be online anywhere:
So I thought I would share the full text here. Enjoy! 🙂
Convenience Shopping
General Merchandise, Home Improvement, Pharmacies, Food Stores, Apparel, Florists, Video Tape Rentals
Google Display Network Text and Mobile Location Extensions
Overall Ad Goals
• Marketing/advertising focused on being found
• Drive footfall
Traits
• Physical location
• Utility/convenience items
• Generally transactional
• Current advertising: Print, circulars, coupons
Buyer Behavior
• Often spontaneous purchases, there is a short time from research to purchase
• Customers will often search at the time of need, wherever they may be
• Customers want to locate and transact immediately, in the fewest steps
GDN Text
Relevance and Visibility
• Reach customers in relevant placements with easy to understand text ads that communicate quickly and efficiently for urgent buyer needs
Location Extensions
Immediacy and Foot Traffic
• By adding your address, map and phone number to your ad, your customers can easily find and get to your store when they are searching on the go
• 77% of customers call or visit a business after looking for local information on their phones
(US Smartphone User Research, Google & Ipsos, 2010)
Lifestyle Businesses
Restaurants, Fitness Centers, Beauty Salons, Live Entertainment, Hotels/Motels, Casinos
Display and Mobile Location Extensions
Overall Ad Goals
• Being found/tried
• Customer experience and loyalty
Traits
• Physical location
• Current advertising: Print, circulars and inserts,
coupons, offers and aggregators
Buyer Behavior
• Customers look for an experience.
They will read reviews. Reputation matters
• Discretionary spend, low ticket value bought
at high frequency
Display
Differentiate Your Customer Experience
• Display ads, including video, allow you to communicate the customer experience and differentiate yourself from competitors
Note: If the advertiser has video content, Click-To-Play video ads and YouTube Promoted Video are recommended formats. See Ad Format card for more detail
Location Extensions
Drive Foot Traffic
• Most lifestyle businesses are local in nature and compete with similar stores to be discovered. Mobile ads with your location info and phone number in it helps drive customers to your store
Skilled Services
Doctors, Lawyers, Plumbers, Accountants, Daycare, Auto Repair, HVAC Installation
Display and Mobile Click-to-call
Overall Ad Goals
• Lead generation and new customer acquisition, especially by phone and referral
Traits
• Utility/convenience services
• Skilled services handle complex and emotional matters: health, money, law. Competence and professionalism are key
• Current Advertising: Print and online directories, SEM
Buyer Behavior
• Customers will research and compare, relying heavily on reputation and word of mouth
• Customers are often interested in establishing long term client relationships with skilled service providers they find trustworthy
Display
Grab Attention. Educate. Invite Follow-up.
• Customers will have many questions. Display ads, including video, are an excellent way to communicate the basics: people, services, experience and invite further discussion through a follow-up phone call
• Display ads can also help convey size and professionalism. They allow you to connect more personally with customers
Note: If the advertiser has video content, Click-To-Play video ads and YouTube Promoted Video are recommended formats. See Ad Format card for more detail
Mobile Click-To-Call
Increase Leads and Consultations
• Customers often want to talk to a person to help answer questions or walk through a process for large or complex purchases
• For many services, customers want a consultation, or to easily call for availability, quotes and rates . Click-to-call is ideal for helping customers connect directly with a business
Big Ticket Shopping
Auto Dealers, Furniture Stores, Auto Parts and Supplies, Retail Jewelry and Luggage, Major Appliances, Retail Computers and Software
Display and Mobile Sitelinks
Overall Ad Goals
• Build presence through purchase funnel: from awareness to consideration to purchase
• Become preferred brand
• Lead generation
Traits
• Physical location
• Current advertising: Print, radio, aggregators, SEM, online display, circulars (e.g. Best Buy for TVs, computers)
Buyer Behavior
• In-depth research and comparisons
• Long purchase cycle with repeated visits to business and competitors before purchase
• Customer service critical due to need for ongoing service and relationship
• Long replacement cycle: discretionary “one-time” spend
• Purchases relate to self-expression and identity
Display
Grab Attention. Showcase Your Products
• Customers will shop around to find what they like. Display ads, including video, are excellent visual formats to showcase products to grab attention and communicate product & brand positioning Note: If the advertiser has video content, Click-To-Play video ads and YouTube Promoted Video are recommended formats. See Ad Format card for more detail
Mobile Sitelinks
Quick Access to Essential Information
• Customers do a lot of product research and price comparison before buying a big ticket item, often while they are in a store and using their smartphones
• Sitelinks helps users get to the specific information they need by taking them directly to product or site pages that convert well
Big Ticket Services
Hospitals, Real Estate, Education, Funeral Services, Home Health Care
Display
Overall Ad Goals
Become preferred brand Lead generation, especially phone leads
Traits
• Long term services with significant relationship based component
• Current Advertising: Print and online directories, newspapers, direct mail
Buyer Behavior
• One-time, big ticket spend. Long purchase cycle driven in-depth research and comparisons
• Property, education and health are life priorities; customers will be risk averse
• Need to sample, inspect and test drive before committing and entering into a relationship
Display
Grab Attention. Educate. Invite Follow-Up.
• Customers want to know as much as they possibly can about a potential purchase. Display ads, including video, is an excellent format to communicate detailed information, instill confidence and overcome risk aversion
Note: If the advertiser has video content, Click-To-Play video ads and YouTube Promoted Video are recommended formats. See Ad Format card for more detail.
Utility Services
Telecom, TV, Utilities, Banks, Cleaning Services
Google Display Network Text, Display and Mobile Click-to-Call
Overall Ad Goals
• Become preferred brand
• Warm lead generation
Traits
• Regular contractual services
• Current Advertising: Radio, local TV
Buyer Behavior
• For low spend, contractual commoditized services customers will deal hunt on price and/or rewards
• Complex setups often requiring phone or in person appointments
Text
Relevance and Visibility
• For customers searching on price, text ads are
a quick and efficient way to grab attention and communicate a price point
Display
Grab Attention. Communicate Offer.
• To really grab customer attention, especially for special offers, display ads can drive greater engagement and click-through
Mobile Click-To-Call
Drive Phone Consultations
• Often customers prefer to speak to someone in person to go over options and ask questions
• Click-to-call helps with lead generation and lets customers connect directly with someone they can talk to
Google Display Network Ad Formats
Text, Display, Video
Google Display Network
Expand Your Reach
The Google Display Network allows you to expand your Reach with highly measurable traffic as users leave Google.com, finding new customers on relevant sites and placements across the web as they’re reading, learning and thinking about you.
Text
Take your text ad beyond the Search page and reach new customers engaging on relevant websites (a), watching YouTube videos (b) and also games, feeds and mobile.
Display
Show, don’t tell. Engage your customers and drive clickthrough with high quality, eye-catching rich ad formats like image (c), carousel (d) and expandable ads to showcase your business. AdWords has free, simple tools and templates so you can create polished looking display ads quickly and easily.
Video
Grab attention, engage your audience and tell your story. Video drives higher attention which leads to higher customer recall, building your brand awareness.
Click-To-Play video allows you to target your video across the web and reach new customers.
YouTube Promoted Video allows you to reach more customers searching YouTube (the world’s 2nd largest Search Engine) for videos related to your business or the audience you are trying to reach.
Mobile Search Ad Formats
Click-to-Call, Location Extensions, Sitelinks
Mobile Search Ads
Ubiquitous Reach
Customers today carry their smartphones with them everywhere and use them all the time to find local information and to help with shopping. Reach customers while they search for you on the go with mobile ads.
Click-to-call
Click-to-call helps you increase phone calls to your business with a clickable phone number in your ad. Using click-to-call you can also setup your campaigns to display a vanity phone number, to receive calls only instead of website clicks and to get in-depth call reporting.
Location Extensions
Location extensions can drive more foot traffic to your store by providing an address, map, distance info and access to directions all from within your ad.
Sitelinks
Sitelinks help you get more online business from mobile shoppers by providing deeplinks to specific product and website pages. This helps increase conversion by helping users quickly find the information they need.
Google Display Network Objection Handling
GDN Objections
Product and Inventory
Why do I need the GDN?
Internet users spend 5% of their time on search and 95% of their time browsing websites*. Reach more customers across the web. Source: *OPA Activity Index, Aug 09 to Aug 10
How is the GDN different from other networks?
The GDN offers targeting precision and suite of targeting tools (specifically contextual targeting). We have smart, auction pricing, and you get full transparency of where your ads run.
Doesn’t Google only have long tail inventory? Do you offer premium inventory?
The GDN has over two million websites in the network, from mass media to niche sites, including Google AdSense and premium publishers.
Competitors
Facebook allows me to target real people based on demographics and interests that they’ve declared.
Interest category marketing on the GDN allows advertisers to reach customers who have shown recent interest in topics related to their products and services (potentially more accurate than Facebook interests).
Network Quality
Your inventory is not brand safe.
Google does several things to ensure inventory is brand safe:
• Publisher Policy: Do not permit sites with content that violates our program policies
• Technology: Automated and manual reviews to uphold our policies
Mobile Objection Handling
Mobile Objections
Traffic and Scale
Investing in mobile search will prove redundant to my current investment with desktop search ads.
Mobile search traffic is complementary and additive to desktop search traffic, peaking during evenings and weekends in contrast to desktop search.
Mobile search isn’t material. The volume isn’t there to justify dedicating mobile-specific campaigns and resources.
Mobile search traffic grew 4x last year. 50% of all mobile web sessions begin with a search, and mobile represents an ever-growing share of overall search traffic. For example, Mobile’s share of queries for personal & home care products grew from 5% to 11% year-over-year; for auto vehicle shopping from 6% to 15%, and for restaurants 12% to 24%. As more consumers own smartphones, mobile searches should continue to grow at a significant rate.
I don’t have a mobile website yet and so can’t get started.
Google has a free mobile sites landing page builder you can use. It’s quick and easy and you can use templates for local businesses, restaurants, e-commerce and more.
And there are still many things you can do to take advantage of mobile now while you take time to make your site mobile-friendly. First, you can use a Google Place Page-it’s a free local business page which has all your business details and you can add pictures and other information to it. You can use that as your mobile website to start. Second, you can use the Call-only feature of Click-to-call ads. This way customers will see your phone number and can only call you when they click on your ad instead of going to your website.
