Inside Google Ads podcast: Episode 25 - Campaign Settings

Do you think Google Ads are easy to set up or hard to set up? 

I ask because I was having a conversation about this yesterday on a coaching call with a new client. She's been working with Google Ads for 12 years, so she's also an expert, but she wanted me to come in and put some fresh eyes on an account she was having trouble with. 

It was interesting because over the course of the call, it's not like I told her anything she didn't know, but having that different perspective allowed us to get into some really good, detailed conversations about different features of Google Ads. And what we discussed and decided over the course of the hour is that it's really easy, perhaps even too easy, to launch a Google Ads campaign, but really hard to get a grasp on all the different settings and options and features and ensure you're using them in the best way for your business. 

So that's what we're here to talk about today. What settings should you use for your Google Ads campaigns? 

I'm your host, Jyll Saskin Gales. I spent six years working for big brands at Google, and now I work for you. 

This is Inside Google Ads, Episode 25, Campaign Settings.

Our first question comes from Godson Osi on TikTok, and they ask, why do a campaign without guidance? 

This comes from the advice I give a lot, whether it's in my free social media content, in my course, or my coaching calls, that when you create a new campaign in Google Ads, I always recommend choosing “without guidance” at the first step. 

Why is that? 

Many people erroneously believe that the campaign objective you choose at the beginning is like your bid strategy. It's telling Google if you want to achieve brand awareness or sales or offline leads or whatever, but that's not what it is at all! It's more like a choose your own adventure, and Google is asking up front what your objective is so it can narrow the options available to you later. 

We don't want to do that. When we're setting up the Google Ads campaign, we want to make sure we have all options available to us, so that if we then choose Video campaign, we get all the Video campaign subtypes, or if we then choose Search campaign, we can choose the settings we want to choose. 

So when you're creating a Google Ads campaign, pick “Start a Campaign Without Guidance” as the first step, choose the campaign type you want, and then go on from there. 

As my daughter would say, easy peasy, lemon squeezy. 

Our next question comes from Sam S on TikTok, and they ask, why not? This is in response to a video where I said that you shouldn't use Auto-Apply Recommendations. Why not? 

Well, let's back up a step and answer: What are Auto-Apply Recommendations? And then, why you probably shouldn't use them. 

Auto-Apply Recommendations are things that Google Ads surfaces in your account, and it suggests you should do for improved performance. Things like adding Broad Match keywords, fixing your conversion tracking, adding more assets to your Responsive Search Ads, etc. There are dozens of these. 

Now, on their own, these Recommendations can potentially be a good idea. You probably do want to add image assets. You probably do want to have proper conversion tracking.

But what most people don't realize is that the same Recommendations are surfaced in every account. They are customized to your account, so for example, if you already have image assets, it won't say to add image assets because you have them already. But there's like a set library of, I don't know, 40 to 50 of these. And Google checks all accounts and recommends the same ones everywhere. Some of them are pretty innocuous, but some of them, like changing all your keywords to Broad Match or adding new keywords or changing your bid strategy, can have a huge impact. It's not necessarily what's best for your business. 

I do recommend you look at the Recommendations. They can be helpful and you can accept or dismiss based on your judgment. 

Now, if you have Auto-Apply Recommendations turned on, that gives Google Ads permission to automatically apply, to basically accept all the Recommendations it wants, and this could potentially wreak havoc on your account. You may see that all of a sudden (or maybe you won't even notice) Oh, Google's just added 100 new keywords! Or, oh, Google's just created a whole new ad for you! It could have good results, but it could have disastrous results, and we don't want that. We'd like to have, well, at least a little bit of control over our campaign. So for that reason, I don't recommend using Auto-Apply Recommendations. 

Before we get to our third question today, a quick reminder that you can get the transcript of Inside Google Ads episodes delivered to your inbox every Thursday. Sign up for free at free.jyll.ca, that's J-Y-L-L dot C-A, and at that same link, you could also sign up for my monthly Google Ads newsletter or my monthly small business marketing newsletter, if either of those interest you as well. 

Our third question today comes from Brozzers on TikTok. And they ask, do you always use 7-Day Attribution for Google? 

No, I don't use 7-Day. But let's back up. What is attribution? 

Attribution is how you give credit to various marketing initiatives for driving results for your business. Let me give you a practical example and, something very rare for me, I'm going to use a sports analogy here.

Let's say you're playing hockey and player one passes the puck to player two, and then player two scores a goal. Player two scored the goal. Player one assisted by passing the puck to them. So how do we give credit? Who gets credit for that goal?

Well, on player two's stats, it's going to say that they are the one who scored the goal. But we acknowledge that player one also deserves some credit for that, because if they hadn't passed the puck to player two, player two would have never had the puck in the first place to score that goal. So player one might get what's called an assist. (Sorry if my hockey terminology is not right. Don't kick me out of Canada!)

And so, similarly, let's replace player one with Google Ads and player two with Meta Ads. So let's say a user searches for something, clicks on a Google Ad, goes to a website, and leaves. The next day, an ad is served to them on Instagram. They click on that ad and then they convert, they buy. So Instagram Ads would get the Last Click Attribution for that purchase because that was the last click the user did before purchasing. But we know Google Ads probably also deserve some credit because if they hadn't clicked on the Google ad in the first place, then they wouldn't have been on the remarketing list for them to get served the Instagram ad. 

So if we were using a First Click Attribution, we would say, you know what? Google Ads gets all the credit for that. Google Ads drove the conversion, Meta Ads didn't. That's First Click versus Last Click. Those are two of the variety of attribution models you can use. 

Now, let's take this a step further. If we were to look in the Google Ads interface, we would see that there was a Google Ad click on one day, and the next day a purchase. And Google would say, “I did that. I get all the credit.” Because Google can't see the Meta Ad that happened. It just sees itself and then the purchase. So Google's going to say, “I drove the conversion.”

Now, if you were to look in your Meta Ads interface, Meta would say, “Hey, someone clicked on my ad and then converted. I get the credit for that,” because Meta doesn't see the Google Ads click that happened the day before, either. So Google's going to say it drove a conversion. Meta is going to say it drove a conversion. That's two conversions, but only one purchase actually happened!

If you look at Google Analytics, or a tool that can see everything, Google Analytics would see the Google Ads click, and then the Meta Ads click, and the purchase, and depending what attribution model you choose there, it'll designate that accordingly.

For most of the years of digital marketing, Last Click was what we used because it was the easiest to see - the last click that happened before purchasing, right? So in a Last Click world, Meta Ads gets all the credit. In a First Click world, Google Ads would get all the credit. There's a Linear Attribution model and that assigns credit equally, so we would say 50% to Google, 50% to Meta. There's a Time Decay Attribution model, which means those touch points that happen closer to conversion get more credit, so maybe with Time Decay, Google Ads would get one-third of the credit and Meta Ads would get two-thirds of the credit. 

All of that to say what most people use now, the default in Google Ads, is something called Data Driven Attribution (DDA). And this is really misunderstood. Most people just say, “Oh, DDA, yeah, it uses machine learning to figure it out.” And that's true, but it does something really compelling. 

Let's go back to our hockey example of player one and player two. Player one passes to player two. Player two scores the goal. What Data Driven Attribution does is it looks at the rest of player one's stats. It says, “Okay, how many other times did player one pass the puck to someone? And how many of those resulted in a goal? And how many of those didn't result in a goal? And then what about when player one is the one who actually scores the goal? Or what about when player one actually hit the puck towards the goal and it didn't go in?” So it's looking at all these different scenarios to determine the likelihood of the impact of player one's contribution. 

And it does the same for player two. It says, “Okay, player two scored this goal. How many attempts does player two make on net? How often does it go in or not? How is that different when player two gets an assist versus when player two gets the puck on their own and then shoots it in? How about when player two gets an assist from player one versus when player two gets an assist from player three?” And again, it's not just looking at the converting paths. It's looking at the non-converting paths, all the times they missed the goal, to judge how important player one and player two's contributions are.

Machine learning can do that. Humans can't. AI is powerful. 

And so that's what Data Driven Attribution does. It really takes the guesswork out because it looks at the converting paths and non-converting paths to figure out just how integral each of those touchpoints are. In this example, we only have two touchpoints before conversion - the Google Ads interaction and the Meta Ads interaction - but in the real world, real people can have 5, 10, or 20 different interactions before purchasing from you, depending, of course, on your product or service offering.

So Data Driven Attribution is a great solution because it can look at all that and say, “Okay, I've decided, we think that Google Ads deserves 0.25 of the credit and Meta Ads deserves 0.75 of the credit for this conversion.” It could be different for other conversions and other scenarios, but it's going to figure that out for you. 

Back to Brozzers question. Do you always use 7-Day Attribution for Google? No. The default in Google Ads is 30 days for a click-based, view-through is smaller if you are accounting for view-through conversions, and I usually use 30 days. I don't usually change that. It can really depend on your business and the best way to know is to see if there's a conversion lag, meaning a time delay between when someone clicks on your ad and when they actually convert. 

So for example, one business that I'm advising, there can be up to a 20-day conversion lag between when someone clicks the Google Ad and when they actually make the purchase, so I want to make sure that I have an attribution window of at least 20 days. In this case, we have 30 days to account for that. Whereas, if I were working with another business where when someone clicks on the ad, they tend to convert the same day, I could potentially use a smaller attribution window. 

People who work in Meta Ads or TikTok Ads or other social ads often have smaller windows, like seven days, or even one day, because often those work on a view-through attribution. So it means that someone may not click on the ad, they just see the ad in their feed, and then they go look up the website themselves or something and then convert. 

Lots of nitty-gritty you can get into here around attribution, but I generally stick with the default Google Ads settings, which is 30-day click attribution and a Data Driven Attribution model. 

All right, today's Insider Challenge is based on a real client situation that my colleagues and I faced when I worked at Google. You would all know the name of the company this is based on, so I won't say it. I don't want to get in trouble, but here's the challenge. 

Say you have a client who is a high-growth startup. Their goal is to scale as large as possible, as fast as possible, and their budget is seemingly unlimited, at least the largest you've ever managed. (Wouldn't that be nice?) Would this change how you think about the attribution model? What attribution model in Google Ads would you consider? 

And for this example, let's just pretend DDA is not an option because for most scenarios, I'll say, yeah, Data Driven Attribution. Let's say that that's not around. What would you choose? First Click, Last Click, Time Decay, Linear, something else? 

You can participate by sending me your response to this challenge or any episode’s challenge. The beauty of the Insider Challenge is there's no right or wrong answer, just an opportunity to stretch your brain on real-life Google Ads problem solving. Shoot me an email at thegooglepro@jyll.ca, that's J-Y-L-L dot C-A, or send me a voice note in my Instagram DMs. I'm @the_google_pro on Instagram. 

Last episode's challenge was this: How would you reach dental hygienists using Google Ads? And this was a real scenario I faced with a client a couple of years ago, so here's how I would go about this. 

I would start by Googling it! I Googled “dental hygienist” to see what kind of stuff came up, what the suggested searches were, what the People Also Asked were, and I noticed that most of the searches were about people who want to become a dental hygienist, looking for training programs or how much they make. And so I don't want that. That is not my audience of people thinking of becoming a dental hygienist. That's almost like negatives, right? I want people who are dental hygienists. That was a good thing for me to see for some potential negatives I might need to have around kind of training and salaries and things like that. 

I looked at the Wikipedia article about dental hygienists and what dental hygienists do, and it mentioned a procedure called periodontal charting, which is something they do. And so, I Googled that and found a website called perio-tools.com, and this looked like a site that dental hygienists would use to help them with their periodontal charting. So one potential input already for a Custom Segment, either via search terms or via websites they visit. 

Next in the Wikipedia article, I saw that some dental hygienists also perform x-rays as well, and I would imagine if you're a dental hygienist who can also do radiography, as it's called, you probably would make more money. So I looked at training programs for that, dental radiography training. That is something that unless you're already a dental hygienist, you probably wouldn't search for the additional dental radiography training, so that would be a training program that dental hygienists might search for, which is something else to add to our Custom Segment. 

And then one more thing I saw in the Wikipedia article in the timeline of dental hygienists is that there is an American Dental Hygienists Association, the ADHA, and there are equivalents in many other countries as well. So I went to that website and I thought this would also be a great thing for inclusion in our Custom Segment. 

So this was just two minutes of Googling. I found a bunch of search terms and websites I could potentially use in a Custom Segment that I could use to target dental hygienists, and if this were my client, I would spend more than two minutes. I would probably spend maybe 20 or so. I'd make a list of search terms of websites and apps that I want to target, and also, if I came across anything I'd want to potentially have as a negative, like dental hygienist training programs, dental hygienist salary, those would be potential negative keywords for a Search campaign. Then I would present that back to my client and get their feedback on it, because of course, my client probably knows dental hygienists much more than I do with my 20 minutes of Googling. 

What do you think? Would you consider the same things or something totally different? 

Shoot me an email at thegooglepro@jyll.ca, that's J-Y-L-L dot C-A, or send me a voice note in my Instagram DMs. I'm @the_google_pro on Instagram. 

I'm Jyll Saskin Gales and I'll see you next time Inside Google Ads.

Sign up to get the Inside Google Ads episode transcripts delivered to your inbox each week, for free.