How to structure your google ads search campaigns in 2023? Tried and tested for 40+ SaaS products

It can be challenging and time-consuming to constantly stay current with Google's numerous changes to its advertising policies and practices. It's normal to feel overwhelmed and unsure of how to keep up, especially when industry experts remind you that not staying up-to-date with the latest tactics can result in missed opportunities.

TripleDart has decided to make your life just a little easier by summing up the major updates and best practices required to smooth sail through your 2024 Google Ads strategy. This has been tried and tested for more than 30 of our clients and we use this strategies combining with our internal data analytics systems to manage and optimise our client accounts.

Every Search on Google is Unique,

For Example, Just 5 of these data points can generate 1.176 Possibilities

Google ads machine learning algorithm can help you process this and incredible array of signals in real time & deliver more relevance to drive more business results. Google ads ML actually has day to day applications; these models are able to catch complex patterns that could easily overlook human analysis.

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And  a Universal principle is

Larger Data Volume = Faster Learning

So How to Structure Google Ads Search Campaign in 2023 for Maximum Success?

It's very simple yet effective. Apply these 3 rules as follows in your google ads search account.

1. Automate Bidding & Grow Coverage

Smart bidding optimizes auction-time for each query.Algorithms automatically factor in device, geo,1st party audiences and a host of other signals.

Broaden match types within the safeguards of Smart bidding and drive incremental reach with Dynamic Search Ads.

2. Consolidate Traffic

Remove unnecessary traffic segmentations

Maximize the number of impressions at ad group-level

(for example 3.000 impr. / week) 

Reach a good conversion volume per campaign 

(for example 50 conv. / month for tROAS)

3. Optimise Creatives

Maintain relevance between queries and ads with Responsive Search Ads and dynamic features (DKI, Ad customizers, If functions). Relevance is key and these solutions help make it easier when reaching more queries per ad group.

Now we will explain how to do this in detail with examples.

How to Automate Bidding?

a) Increase Broad Match Adoption:

Broad match is able to leverage unique signals not available in other Match Types

Increasing your use of broad match keywords in your Google Ads campaigns in 2023 may help you reach a larger audience, improve your ad's performance, and save time and effort in managing your campaigns.

Keep a tab on negative keywords and prune out irrelevant terms on a weekly basis

b) Integrate 1st Party, 3P and Google  Audiences to your google ads campaigns:

First-party data is data that is collected by your own company through sources such as your website, customer lists, or point-of-sale systems. Integrating first-party data into your Google Ads campaigns can be a useful way to improve targeting and increase the relevance of your ads to your audience.

There are several ways you can integrate first-party data into your Google Ads campaigns:

Custom Audiences: Custom Audiences allows you to upload a list of customer email addresses, phone numbers, or user IDs to use as the basis for your targeting. This can be a useful way to reach your existing customers or to target specific segments of your audience.

Customer Match: Customer Match is similar to Custom Audiences, but it allows you to target users who are signed in to their Google account. You can use this feature to show ads to users who have already expressed an interest in your business by visiting your website or interacting with your brand in some other way.

Customer Data Platform (CDP): A CDP is a platform that allows you to collect and manage your first-party data from various sources, such as your website, email campaigns, and customer relationship management (CRM) systems. You can then use this data to create custom audiences and target specific segments of your audience with your Google Ads campaigns.

Website Analytics: Google Analytics allows you to track and analyze the traffic to your website. You can use the data collected by Google Analytics to create custom audiences and target specific segments of your audience with your Google Ads campaigns.

Why Audience segmentation is Important in Google ads:

Better Signals

Smart Bidding leverages richer contextual signals like time-on-list and combination of lists to analyze cross-signal effects and improve conversion rates.

Improve performance

Bidding to the correct value of audience helps advertisers optimize high and low performing audience segments and therefore drive more conversions/
revenue within existing CPA/ROAS goals.

Save time

Target CPA, Target ROAS, Max Conversion, Max Conversion Value, and eCPC automatically use applied first party audience signals, removing the need to continuously manually optimize audience bid modifiers.

 c) Value Based Bidding over Conversion based

Value-based bidding:

• Value-based bidding involves setting your bids based on the estimated value of a conversion.
• This strategy is best suited for businesses that want to maximize the return on investment (ROI) from their campaigns.
• For example, if you are selling a product and have determined that the average customer lifetime value (CLV) is $500, you may want to set your bids based on this value. If a conversion is worth an estimated $100, you would set your bid higher than if a conversion is only worth an estimated $50.

Conversion-based bidding:

• Conversion-based bidding involves setting your bids based on the likelihood of a conversion occurring.
• This strategy is best suited for businesses that want to maximize the number of conversions from their campaigns.
• For example, if you are selling a software product and have determined that certain keywords have a higher conversion rate, you may want to set your bids higher for those keywords to maximize the number of conversions.

Conversion based  strategy - Reduces bids for low expected value interactions

Value based bidding strategy - Helps drive high quality leads in a competitive landscape.

How to Consolidate Traffic from various campaigns?

Consolidate traffic by removing unneeded traffic segmentations + moving to larger volume ad groups and campaigns

• Try to maximize the number of impressions per ad group, ideally 3,000 impr/week
• 1 ad group = 1 URL. This will allow more volume and more variety of queries per ad group, while still staying on-theme
• Mirroring the website is a good way to build a ML-friendly account structure + consolidate ad groups

Example: Remove Unnecessary Traffic Segments for Campaigns

• 0 active campaigns have 50 conv/month
• 3%(75) of all active ad groups are generating 100% of conversions(113) and 1%(49) active ad groups have only 1 conversion
• 0 active ad groups have >3000 impressions/week
• 0.8%(88) of all active KWs are generating 100% of conversions
• 573 KWs have Low search volume

Portfolio bid strategies & Shared budgets

Bundle campaigns w/ similar performance targets if not yet ready to consolidate campaigns.

Shared budgets & bid strategies can be used to prioritize in the most efficient way, across campaigns that have similar goals.

‍How to improve creative excellence in Google ads search campaigns?

• Responsive Search Ads with Good/Excellent Ad strength per ad group
• 4+ extensions per ad group 
• Pair responsive search ads with broad match keywords and Smart Bidding 
• Enable optimize ad rotation when ad groups have more than one text ad to show your most relevant ad

‍How to measure a good RSA?

While content helps your product establish trust and authority in your industry, good copy is what motivates, encourages, and convinces your audience to engage with your product..

Google Ad strength is a tool that measures the relevance, quantity, and diversity of your responsive search ad content. 

Advertisers who improve ad strength for their responsive search ads from 'Poor' to 'Excellent' see 9% more clicks and conversions on average.

Cheat Sheet for writing RSA headlines & descriptions:

Maximize Engagement With Ad Extensions

Best Practices:

• Keep content fresh, relevant and high quality.
• Watch out for overlap or repetition.
• Cover four key extensions and maximize co-trigger
• Enable all extensions that make sense for your business.
• Always on image extensions. Early results show advertisers are seeing up to a 10% increase in CTR when image extensions or dynamic image extensions show with their Search ads in top positioning. 

Benefits of Ad Extensions

• Ads that include extensions are more prominent on the search results page, making users more likely to see and engage with them
• Each extension that is enabled increases CTR by 10–15%* on average and can also drive other valuable interactions
• Extensions provide more information directly in the ad, so users already know what you offer by the time that they click on your ad

3 Rule Approach

Pair broad match keywords and Smart Bidding with responsive search ads to help you reach new, high-performing queries and optimize your bids in real time. Advertisers that adopt responsive search ads in campaigns that also use broad match and Smart Bidding see an average of 20% more conversions at a similar cost per action.

Google Ads Search Optimisation Effort & Impact Analysis:

Final Thoughts:

We hope that this article has provided deeper insights into what to include in your Google Ads strategy in 2024. In our experience, utilizing and adapting to these practices has borne fruit to all your campaigns.

By partnering with a saas ppc agency, you can amplify your marketing efforts and achieve remarkable scalability. This strategic collaboration will help you leverage expert insights and advanced tactics to drive your business forward. Let's work together to turn your growth aspirations into tangible results.

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