Module 11 - Display campaign setup walkthrough

Why bother with display campaigns alongside YouTube ads?

Display ads are a really interesting way to expand your campaigns and grow the impact of your YouTube advertising, and I want to show you a couple of ways I do that.

I am in the Google interface with display campaigns open, and I do not have any running at the moment, so I am going to create a new campaign with no guidance and choose to create a display campaign. It asks for my website, and then I give it a name, in this case something like Simon Rich Schefren interview. That is because I have appeared this week on Rich Schefren's Steal Our Winners series, which goes out to a lot of the top marketers in the world. If you ever get the chance to join it, it is a really good programme, only around forty nine a month, and you get access to some genuinely top content through Rich, who was one of the people responsible for being first in the world to launch webinars. He organises and mentors events for top marketers, people like Todd Brown, Russell Brunson and Mike Filsaime, and I am lucky enough to have appeared on his Steal Our Winners series, which is why I am setting up this display campaign to complement the interview that is going out around the same time.

Why switch away from Google's suggested bidding?

Because Google likes to automatically tick things for you and steer you towards spending as much as possible, and I would rather start from the bottom and work my way up.

If you leave the campaign on a target cost of acquisition, it might suggest something like three pounds eighty, based on an account that has been running for some time, though a new account might not get offered a figure at all, or just be shown what others in the space are achieving. To take control, scroll down and choose select a bid strategy directly, which Google flags as not recommended, precisely because it wants you spending as much as possible. From there I choose manual CPC rather than target cost of acquisition, because I want to pay for clicks rather than impressions. I also switch off help increase conversions with an enhanced CPC, because that can expand both your audience and your cost, and I want to control cost completely. Google will warn that setting bids manually may result in lower performance, but it will also result in lower cost, and everything Google does at the moment pushes you towards smart bidding, so it is worth staying a bit more in control.

How do you choose an actual bid amount?

Start low and work up. In this case I bid five pence per click, even though Google warns that typical campaigns start at around thirty pence.

I would be happy getting clicks at between five and ten pence to begin with, and I know plenty of people who start around eight to ten pence, but I want to see if there are impressions and clicks available at a lower cost first before increasing it.

How should you set locations, language and schedule?

Choose presence, people in, rather than presence or interest, so you are targeting people who are actually in the country rather than just interested in it.

If you use presence or interest, you will pick up plenty of people who are simply interested in the UK, and if you are taking this course from the US or another country, that matters even more. I leave excluded locations available too, so anything added there is properly excluded. Target language is English, and under more settings I leave prefer best performing ads on, which is generally decent. For scheduling, I run all day, because I do not know exactly when people will be searching, and in this case I am also trying to pick up clients from the US, so I add the United States as a location alongside the United Kingdom, since that is where Rich is based. With the US roughly six to eight hours behind, I pretty much need to run this all day, or split it into two campaigns. I show on all devices, then set targeting for mobile and computer.

What happens when you cannot track conversions directly?

In this case I am sending people to a third party affiliate link Rich has provided, so I cannot track what happens once they land there, and I simply focus on generating clicks.

If you are ever in that position with a third party site, it can help a lot if they install Google Tag Manager and give you access to create your own conversions within it, so you can trace conversions on their site. Alternatively, once someone reaches the end of a cart, you can ask for a redirect back to your own site, and if you get people to a thank you page, you can track that as a conversion event.

How do you layer on audience and topic targeting?

Through audiences, demographics, topics and keywords, targeting the specific people most likely to care about the offer.

In this case I target Rich and some of the other well known marketers connected to his course, people like Neil Patel and Russell Brunson, because I know that type of audience is likely to be interested, first in watching me talk about YouTube ads, and second in going on to purchase a Steal Our Winners subscription. I set that targeting up after finishing the rest of the campaign.

How do you build the actual ad?

By setting the final URL, adding images and a logo, then writing headlines and descriptions that fit Google's character limits.

The final URL is the link Rich gave me, which I test to make sure it works and lands on the right page, an invitation to join a mastermind of the world's top marketers for a small fee. For images, Google will pull some directly from the landing page, so I can use photos already on there, including ones with well known names in them, but I also upload a couple of images I made specifically for this piece of content. You do need a logo for a display campaign. I could use a picture of myself, but decide against it here, and instead choose ads created specifically for this content, including one built around the message of reducing your online ad spend using YouTube. You can add up to five videos to a display ad, with anything up to about thirty seconds working best, though in this case I stick to statics.

Why are headlines and descriptions so fiddly?

Because the character limits are genuinely tight, and it is common to write something you think will fit, only to find it is one character over.

Trying to fit Steal Our Winners with Simon does not work, and a slightly shorter version referencing Rich Schefren comes to thirty two characters, still too long, so you end up working these out character by character. I look at the landing page for phrases I can borrow, like digital mastermind group, capitalising it even though Google does not always like capitalisation, and trimming words like fifty of the world's down until it fits. At one point I even drop an apostrophe purely to make something fit within the limit, which I know is not correct grammatically, but I doubt anyone will be criticising the grammar rather than clicking through. Google gives you a score as you go, flagging things like having enough images but not enough headlines yet, and will sometimes suggest text pulled from the page itself. For the long headline, which is probably your best opportunity for a real call to action, I use something like learn from the world's best marketing experts, steal our winners with Rich Schefren, and for the long description something along the lines of access to over fifty of the world's leading marketing experts in the Steal Our Winners group, for a very small amount.

Why might Google reject an ad?

Because the wording reads as clickbait or makes an unsubstantiated claim or an overblown promise, which Google will pull or suspend.

As a caveat, you will occasionally write headlines and descriptions that simply do not get approved for this reason, and you will have to go back in and amend the wording. I would love to write something like the world's best marketing advice, but I would probably get it pulled, so instead I settle for something more measured, like learn from some of the best marketing brains on the planet. If you want to add URL options, that is where you would put your UTM links, which is covered in the funnel and UTM link building section later in the course. From there you test the link, make sure it clicks through properly, and create and save the ad.

How do you finish setting up targeting for the campaign?

Through ad groups, adding keywords and topics once the campaign itself is published with no targeting yet attached.

I create an ad group called keywords and topics, since I am going to overlay both. For keywords, rather than going broad with something like marketing, I target phrase matches containing Rich Schefren's name, and add Todd Brown, though I leave out Russell Brunson as too broad for my purposes. This is where you need to go into proper research mode to work out which keywords make sense for your own campaign. For topics, I search marketing and get options like advertising and marketing, brand management, email marketing, strategic planning, consulting, CRM, affiliate programmes and SEO, and choose advertising and marketing and strategic planning while leaving out email marketing and sales and telemarketing.

What should you expect from display ads overall?

Patience, because they take a while to learn, but they can produce really good results and a lot of traffic, especially when used well.

If you build a remarketing audience, you could follow up with display ads on everyone who has visited your website, taken a specific action on your site, or watched one of your YouTube videos, which can work really nicely. Those types of ads do take quite a long time to learn, so be patient with them, but they can always produce good results and a strong amount of traffic to a website, especially if you choose CPC bidding rather than CPM or maximised conversions on a target CPA.