Introduction
We’ve all heard the saying that “a picture is worth a thousand words” but what if it could drive purchases too? Google display ads are an effective way to increase brand awareness, generate clicks and drive traffic to your site. In this article, we’ll break down how display advertising works and what you can do with it, including:
Building brand awareness – display
What are we trying to do? We’re trying to get people to our website and drive sales.
Do display campaigns help with this? Yes! Display helps you drive traffic to your site, increase brand awareness, and create customer loyalty. It’s an excellent tool for any business looking to improve its online presence.
Driving purchases – search
In the era of Amazon, it’s easy to forget that search is still a killer strategy for driving purchases. Every retailer should be optimizing their site for search (and most are), but there are also plenty of ways you can use Google Display Network ads to drive people to your site and boost sales.
To help you decide which strategy is right for you, let’s look at the different ways each platform can be used to drive purchases:
- Search: The primary benefit of using search advertising is that it drives direct conversions from users who are ready to buy something specific or need more information about a particular product or service. You can even target based on intent—for example, if someone searches “buy dog food,” they’re probably in the market for some puppy chow. That makes them prime targets for your ads; get them clicking through quickly and closing sales with ease!
Reach across the globe – both
- Both search and display campaigns can be targeted at a global audience.
- Search campaigns are more likely to be targeted at a local level, but display campaigns can also be targeted at a local level.
- Display campaigns are more likely to be targeted at a global level.
Target people with specific interests – both
Both Google search and Google Display Network can target people with specific interests. For example, if you’re a shoe retailer, you may want to reach only people who are actively searching for shoes in your area. Or if you sell cars, you may want to advertise to people who have recently searched for car dealerships near them. Both platforms allow you to do this by targeting keywords associated with your business or product category.
Targeting is based on keywords: whether they’re used in search queries or website content (like an article). In this way, both display ads and text ads on Google Search are like any other advertisement that appears on the web: They rely heavily on targeting keywords because that’s how their relevance is determined; the more specific those words are, the more likely it is that someone will be interested in clicking through from the ad itself!
Target past visitors – both
If you’re selling a product or service, targeting past visitors is a good idea. Google Display campaigns are particularly good at this, as they allow you to target people based on their interests and demographics. For example, if you have an eCommerce store and have an ad set up that targets any person who has visited your site in the last 30 days with no geographic restrictions, then your display campaign will be able to reach just about anyone who’s ever been on your website before.
This is one of the reasons why Google Display ads tend to perform better than search ads: Because they can reach so many more people than possible through search alone (and because of all the other targeting options available), it costs less money per customer acquired through these channels than it does via paid search advertising or social media marketing.
Announcing a new product to a broader audience – display
Display ads are a great way to reach new customers. Display ads allow you to target your audience based on specific interests and characteristics, so you can show your ad to just the people most likely to respond. If you want brand awareness and name recognition, display ads are a good option for sharing information with the public at large.
Search Ads, on the other hand, are designed specifically for converting leads into purchases. The conversion tracking will tell you how many people who saw your search ad ended up purchasing from your business as a result of visiting that page (or clicking through).
Announcing a limited-time offer – search
- Use search to announce a limited-time offer. To capture people’s attention, use the display network to announce a limited-time offer.
- Use display to announce a new product. To make sure that people who are interested in your topic see your ad, use the search network for this purpose.
- Announce new products to a broader audience via search if you want them quickly identified by other users or indexed by Google Search (for example, when people are searching for similar products).
- Target specific interests via display if you’re only interested in reaching these customers and don’t mind paying more per click than you would on search (for example, travel companies reaching out specifically to travelers).
Display campaigns are good for driving brand awareness and search campaigns are good for driving purchase.
Display campaigns are good for driving brand awareness, while search campaigns are good for driving purchase.
Display campaigns are great for driving sales.
Search campaigns are great at driving traffic, leads and clicks.
But how?
Conclusion
Both display and search campaigns are great tools, but it’s important to know how they work in order to decide which is best for your business. If you want to reach a broad audience with your message, then display ads might be the way to go. However, if you want more control over who sees your ad and what they see when they click on it (such as location), then search ads are better suited for this purpose.
