Smart campaign

Smart Campaign utilizes Google’s best advertising technology; setting up a campaign takes only about 15 minutes. When you implement this type of campaign, your ads will appear across Google Search, Google Maps, YouTube, Gmail, and partner websites. These ads help capture users’ attention early in their buying journey and expand your reach to target customers on Google’s display network. What makes Smart Campaign stand out from other campaign types? How can you set one up effectively? Let Ad Support guide you through the details in the article below!

Overview of Smart Campaign

Smart Campaign lets you set up campaigns quickly and effortlessly while helping you measure performance and achieve your objectives. With this campaign type, your ads will appear across Google Search, Google Maps, YouTube, Gmail, and partner websites.

When your ads display on Google Search, you can reach users actively searching for keywords related to your products or services. Ads on YouTube, Gmail, and partner websites help attract users’ attention earlier in their buying journey.

In some cases, Google’s AI technology can generate short video ads based on the information from your Smart Campaign and linked Business Profile. These video ads are an excellent way to expand your video audience across Google’s display network.

How smart campaign work

When you sign up for a campaign, you’ll write an ad that describes your business. You will then select the keyword themes you want to target and set a budget. Smart Campaign highlight your business’s unique selling points and attract customers. In addition to appearing on Google or Google Maps, your ads can also show to people beyond your local area using keywords related to your business or its location.

If you want to advertise different aspects of your business, you can create multiple Smart Campaign and assign distinct keyword themes and budgets to each one. To attract more customers and increase clicks, the business information you provide and the content on your website will be used to create and test alternative ad variations.

Smart Campaign Objectives

When setting up a campaign, the objective you choose should reflect the action you want customers to take after viewing your ad. Here are some advertising goals you can select:

Increase Calls: If your aim is to encourage potential customers to call your business, you can use a prominent “Call” button in the ad. The campaign will be optimized to prompt potential customers to contact you directly.

Drive Store Visits: Selecting this goal means you want customers to visit your physical store. Google Ads will help you track the number of customers who interact with your business through Google Maps.

Boost Online Sales or Website Sign-Ups: Choose this goal if you want customers to take trackable actions on your website. The campaign will be optimized to encourage online transactions. Google Ads can also help set up Google Analytics to track customer activities and transactions.

Enhance Brand Awareness with Video Views: If you’re a small business or a creator on YouTube looking to raise brand awareness and increase video views, this objective is ideal. To achieve this, you’ll need to create the campaign in Smart Mode.

Differences between smart campaign and other Google ads campaign

Smart Campaign

Smart Campaign is an effective solution for businesses, enabling quick and easy setup. They are optimized to achieve specific campaign objectives such as customer calls, store visits, brand awareness, and actions performed on a website. Powered by AI, these campaigns continually improve ad performance to achieve goals, measure results, and present them in a clear, comprehensible format.

When using a Smart Campaign, you’ll need to: set a budget, select demographic and location preferences, and provide a few relevant keyword themes. Google Ads will utilize this information, along with your business type, to display ads to users searching for related products or services.

With this campaign, you won’t need to invest too much time in managing and only pay when users click on the ad or watch 30 seconds of video ads or the entire duration. Moreover, you can reach customers in any location you choose.

Other campaign types

With other campaign types, you have full control over campaign settings and access to specialized features. When someone searches for keywords on Google, Google Maps, or partner websites, your ads can appear above or below the search results.

You can choose the keywords that determine when and where your ads are shown and pay only when someone clicks on your ad. Reach customers in any location choose your keywords, bids, and account structure, and advertise in different formats with detailed reporting.

Benefits and features of smart campaigns

Smart campaign will optimize results according to goals such as receiving customer calls, visits to physical stores, sales on websites, or potential customers or views on Youtube and partner websites.

To increase campaign performance, you need to provide information about your business including creating ads introducing products and services. Choose keyword themes and advertising languages, choose location settings, and set a budget. You only need to pay when someone searches for keywords related to your business and the ad appears.

With the goal of getting more views and interactions on YouTube, you need to provide the URL of the video you want to promote along with other information about the ad, language and location settings, and demographic information. If you use these video ads, you will only pay when someone is interested and watches 30 seconds of the video ad or interacts with the ad.

Benefits

Creating this campaign is quick and easy. You can reach customers across devices while optimizing costs by only paying for clicks on your ad to view or if someone is watching your video ad. Easily track and evaluate ad performance on the overview page and run campaigns without regular, ongoing management.

Campaign features

With the help of AI, you can exploit the features of smart campaigns to manage ads without spending much time and effort. Just set a budget, choose placements, and add keyword themes. Then Google will find ways to show your ads to people who are looking for information about the products and services your business offers. Google’s AI can maintain and update search terms over time. Some of the campaign’s outstanding features include call reporting, website action tracking with Google Analytics, ad scheduling, campaign pausing,…

How to create an effective smart campaign

Although every campaign in smart mode is considered a smart campaign, here is a guide to quickly and easily set up a smart search campaign to help you get started:

Create a new campaign

To use smart campaigns, you must link your Google Business Profile to your Google Ads account. Then, log in to your Google Ads account and click the Campaign icon. From the dropdown menu, select Campaign, and click on Campaign. Finally, click the (+) New Campaign button to begin setting up your campaign.

Select the target and choose the smart campaign type

Next, the screen will display the campaign creation interface, starting with selecting the campaign target. Including Sales, Potential Customers, Site Traffic, Number of visits to physical stores, and Brand Awareness, … Here, select Create a campaign without guidance on the target. After selecting the campaign target, select the appropriate campaign type as Smart and then click Continue.

Select the business page associated with your Google Ads account

Then select one of the connected business pages in the list of Business Pages on Google. If you want to create a campaign for a new business, select Do not use this information and click Next.

When you choose to create a campaign for a new business by clicking Do not use this information, enter the business name and click Next. Next, enter your website and click Next. Google will now scan your website to understand the content of your page.

Set up your smart campaign

Click Next and select your campaign’s primary objective, which includes increasing calls, sales, or leads to your website, increasing foot traffic to your physical store, and getting more views and engagement on YouTube.

Now click Next and Google AI will select the content on your website and automatically generate an ad with 3 headlines and 2 descriptions. You can add or modify the headline and description if you want.

In addition, you can add images and logos to your ad by clicking on the campaign to edit. On the Ad Text, Images, and Landing Page tab, select Edit. Then click on the Images tab and add up to 3 rectangular images, 3 square images, and 3 logos. Click +New Image in each section to select.

After uploading the image from your website or social media account, edit the size as desired with a minimum size of 600 x 314 pixels, the recommended size is 1200 x 628 pixels, and a maximum file size of 4.2 MB. When you have finished editing the image, click Done.

If you want to add a phone number to your ad, check the box Show call button in the ad, enter the phone number, and click Next. Add a keyword theme to match your ad with the keywords customers search for. Set up location targeting and set a custom or Google-recommended ad budget at the same time.

Test and Publish Campaign

In this step, review the campaign you created and edit it if necessary, then click Next. You can then install the Google tag to track conversions on your website or click Skip to set it up later. Once you have created ads in a smart campaign, you can run them on Google Search and Google Maps.

Tracking smart campaign performance

Checking campaign performance

By tracking campaign performance, you can determine how effective your campaign is in attracting potential customers. Based on this data, you will have a plan to adjust to increase campaign performance. Smart campaign overview information uses the Impressions metric to tell you how often your ad is shown to potential customers.

On the overview page, you will see data on the number of impressions and customer actions on the ad. Depending on your account settings, you will have information including the number of clicks, number of clicks on the call button, number of verified calls, number of views, map actions, Analytics goals, and costs.

To improve campaign performance, you need to answer questions such as whether the keywords are closely related to the ad content, are the search terms appropriate, or accurately describe the business? Also, do you need to know if your landing page is relevant and your ads are reaching the right customers in the right locations, or do you have enough budget for your campaign to perform at its best?

Link smart campaign with Google analytics

If you want more metrics to determine how well your website is meeting your expectations. By tracking traffic and customer conversions on your site, including purchases and signups. You need to link your Google Analytics account to your Google Ads account. You can then view the Google Analytics metrics your ads drive on your Smart Campaign dashboard.

When linking these two accounts, you need to use a login email address. The tracking code will be provided by Google Analytics so you can track traffic and it needs to be added to each page on your website.

During the process of linking Google Ads to Analytics, you will see the tracking ID in the Connect Your Website section. If you have a tracking code, go to your content management system (CMS) and find the settings page to enter the Google Analytics tracking code.

Next, you need to add the Google Analytics tag to each page on your site if you manually edit your site code. The Google Analytics tag is a piece of JavaScript code that is generated for each web page or page within a site. You can now paste the entire unedited code into each page on your site or the entire site you want to track by adding the code before the closing tag.

Additionally, you can set destination goals to track how often customers visit a certain page on your site after clicking on your ad. Add destination goals to pages that display important actions, such as Contact, Purchase, or Sign Up. These goals will help you measure how successful your ads are in driving customers to your business.

How to improve the performance of smart campaigns

Once your campaign has been running for a while and you’ve had the chance to monitor and measure its performance, you can improve its results with the following steps to ensure the campaign reaches the right customers.

Choose relevant keyword topics

Selecting the right keyword topics helps you determine when your ads will be shown. Make sure the chosen keywords are accurate and relevant to your business. Use negative keyword topics to ensure your ads are not shown for searches unrelated to your business. However, be cautious when selecting negative keywords, as too many can limit your ad visibility.

Check location settings

When you want your ads to appear in specific locations where your business operates, set up location targeting to achieve this goal. This ensures that your ads will not be shown in places where your business doesn’t operate, optimizing your budget and improving the overall performance of your campaign.

Review the budget

The budget ensures that your ads are shown to customers at the appropriate frequency. When creating a smart campaign, Google’s AI will suggest a budget based on the average number of clicks for your type of business and location. Choose an appropriate budget so that Google can distribute your ads with the desired frequency.

Create effective ads

Ads provide an opportunity for your business to showcase itself and attract potential customers. An effective ad accurately describes your business while standing out from competitors. You should build ad content to ensure it conveys the right message and improve it using suggestions. To ensure your ad meets the chosen goal, write 3 to 15 headlines, each with a maximum of 30 characters, and 2 to 4 descriptions with up to 90 characters. Consider adding 2 to 4 descriptions and try capitalizing the first letter of each word in the headline to catch attention.

Emphasize the uniqueness of your business, products, or special offers. You should include offers or special promotions to attract customers. Use clear, engaging, and compelling calls to action like “Call today,” “Buy now,” or “Schedule an appointment” to guide customers to take the desired action. Ensure the relevant keywords appear in your ad content, making sure the ad or product in the campaign is also mentioned on the website.

Create Multiple Ad Versions

For the best results, you should create up to 3 ads by adding 3 versions for each campaign. When creating multiple ads, there are no additional costs, and it helps Google optimize the campaign performance based on the best-performing ad.

Optimize the Landing Page for the Campaign

The landing page plays a crucial role in the success of the campaign, and to optimize the campaign, you need to optimize the landing page as well. Provide ways for customers to contact the business, such as a contact form or a phone number, in a visible and prominent position on the website.

Highlight attractive offers or promotions to grab the attention of customers and encourage them to take action and convert. Ensure the website is mobile-friendly and that the landing page aligns with the ad content and keyword theme. You can choose your Business Profile page as the landing page if you have already linked that Business Profile to your Smart Campaign.

Contact Google Ads experts for advice

While setting up a Smart Campaign is quick and simple with AI support, to ensure a successful campaign with high performance, businesses need to monitor performance regularly and optimize ads and landing pages. In particular, creating ads with compelling content that grabs customers’ attention is essential. Contact a Google Ads expert for thorough advice and guidance on setting up your campaign and optimizing performance. Additionally, we will help you build the right keyword set, conduct A/B testing, and optimize your budget to achieve the best sales and profit results.

Through this article, you now have a clearer understanding of a type of Google Ads campaign and how to implement and optimize it. We hope you can create a successful Smart Campaign with the highest possible performance!

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