5 Steps For Successful Paid Search Campaigns In 2023
Management Summary
After leaving 2022 with many changes behind us, we now want to give an outlook on 2023. What awaits us in the new year and what should we focus more on in order to create successful paid search campaigns.
1. Focus more on your target group
With Google Ads ads, it often depends on the right ad whether a user is encouraged to click or whether we lose them to the competition. In this case, it is extremely important that the ad and, above all, the approach to the customer fits as precisely as possible.
For example, if the customer is particularly popular with a young target group and is generally very open to new things, communication should be geared towards the “you”. There are already some well-known companies that have established this and deliberately use first names with customers.
Of course, there is a risk that customers will take the approach incorrectly and become annoyed – but current developments show that language change is already taking place in many places and this can also be tested in paid search campaigns.
However, if we are in the B2B sector, we should proceed more cautiously and take smaller steps in communication. At this point there is a greater risk that potential customers will be scared away.
But we can not only focus more closely on the target group when it comes to ad texts, but also in the area of campaigns and the corresponding targeting.
Using “observation” or “alignment” it is possible to align the keywords very granularly to your target group. In this way, even very small budgets can be used very efficiently if sufficient data is available and customers search for the keywords within these target groups.
We have already discussed the approach in a blog article on the topic “7 tips for the Google Ads setup in the B2B environment | How do I deal with my own B2C competition??” shown.
2. Rethink budget distribution
But a lot can be tested not only in the area of target groups. Budgets and their management can also be a big lever. There are a lot of things to consider, especially when planning and distributing budgets throughout the year.Large Budgets vs. Specific Campaign BudgetsThe biggest advantage in large budgets is definitely the distribution over the year. Without any major specifications, this can be stored as efficiently as possible on a daily, weekly or monthly basis based on previous years.
For example, the budget can be saved in the summer months, when fewer searches tend to be generated in some industries. This budget can then be used more specifically in high-performance phases such as November with Singles Day, Black Week and Cyber Monday.
When it comes to specific campaign budgets, it is usually difficult to take this into account in the area of Google search, as we are heavily dependent on the respective demand and in some places even very dependent on seasonality. Here it is advisable to break down these specific campaign budgets and view this more as an overall budget.
3. A/B testing
Google promises uplift – is it really so?When new Google products or improvements to existing products are launched, an uplift is often promised, which usually seems to be quite significant. In the highly competitive area of Google search, these are sometimes dream scenarios that seem almost impossible.But can you really trust the roast and does it always work as well as communicated?To be honest, we are a bit skeptical about the whole thing at first and can’t give a general answer, as our “secret” actually lies in testing and of course it depends very much on the setup.
However, our daily work is also geared towards testing these uplifts in coordination with the customer by participating in Google Alphas or Betas and being able to gain initial experience here. Our numbers don’t always show the uplift that Google previously made under what felt like optimal conditions, but in most cases testing helps us to further increase the efficiency of the campaigns.
The bottom line is that new Google features should definitely be tested. However, it also depends heavily on the environment and the respective industry. Nevertheless, you should regularly plan new campaign types as well as smaller tests in your campaigns in order to generate insights and learnings.
A/B tests are a helpful tool if you want to act cautiously and not influence current performance too much. However, they can also help make the campaigns a little better.
4. Use your historical data
When it comes to a good setup for a new year, historical data should also be taken into account. Nothing is more meaningful about your performance than the data from the past year.
For example, we can ask ourselves the following questions:
- Which seasonalities can be recognized?
- Which promotions should we promote more/weakly via Google Ads this year?
- What budget allocation should we change this year?
- What influence do the generic campaigns have on the brand?
- What data from the competition do we have available?
With the help of historical data, we can plan the new year better and adapt to the circumstances even better. But new campaign types and tests should also be taken into account. This is the only way to better set up and target campaigns in order to keep up.
5. Be open to new things
As already mentioned, testing is part of everyday life for us and we look at new campaign types on Google after the launch or even in alpha or beta status.Performance MaxGoogle has already strongly promoted the topic of Performance Max (PMax) in 2021 and the topic was further pushed by Google in 2022. Initially, we carried out initial tests with the new campaign format to gain initial experience. The format is now an integral part of the marketing mix for some of our customers. This format bundles many individual campaign types into one and is often referred to as a jack of all trades. You can find out whether this is really the case in oursBlog articleread up.Ad assets or extensionsA Google Ads campaign is inconspicuous in Google searches if it does not have at least a certain number of extensions. Using these extensions, it is possible that the ads take up a lot of space and can significantly displace the competition’s ads.
For this reason, we recommend that as many extensions as possible be used in everyday life and refer to the respective advertisements.And what about Microsoft Ads?The focus is often only on Google Ads, but quick wins can also be generated in the Microsoft Ads area. The target group is in some areas more performant and can lead to significantly cheaper CPLs or CPOs.
Because accounts can be synchronized, there is almost no reason why Microsoft Ads cannot be used or at least tested in everyday life.
Conclusion
All in all, you should look left and right in your daily campaign management in order to make the campaigns better. In this way, you can get even more out of the campaigns through tests or simple steps.
Aside from these tips, Google and Microsoft will also bring some innovations onto the market, which we will then go into in more detail.
