Smart Campaigns: Filling The Gaps In Your Paid Search Strategy

As you develop your Paid Search strategy, your account will almost always become more complex. New campaign builds, extra keywords, updates to targeting and the introduction of new audiences all contribute to increasingly granular and focused search activity.

However, no matter the complexity of an account, there will always be gaps that aren’t covered by your existing keyword list and new targeting opportunities that can be exploited for incremental performance gains. The question is - with the limited time that digital marketers have to manage accounts, how can you best use the time you do have to take advantage of these opportunities?

In the world of Paid Search, there’s one campaign type which is consistently overlooked as a useful addition to any account, even those being run by professional marketers with strategies that are far more complex than your typical activity.

That campaign type? Google Smart Campaigns.

Smart campaigns were originally created as a way for business owners to run their own Google Ads activity without requiring the time and knowledge investment that it would take to run typical search campaigns. Targeting is largely automated based on a user’s location and interest and instead of specific keywords, advertisers choose keyword themes to bid on which function similarly to Broad Match keywords in a traditional search campaign. Negative keyword themes function similarly to negative keyword lists, ensuring traffic remains relevant even while matching to broad terms.

Along with keyword themes, advertisers also have the ability to upload ad copy, images & a logo, any combination of which can appear across Search, Display, Youtube & Google Maps.

Because this campaign type is meant for novice marketers, reporting is slightly restricted compared to traditional search campaigns with a basic search term report showing searches that have matched to keyword themes along with standard traffic & conversion metrics. This is great for business owners who want to run simple activity without paying an agency, but the increased reach and flexibility of this campaign type opens up opportunities for professional marketers to run these alongside their more strategic campaign activity.

One one account working in a highly specific data focused niche, our keyword list was very restrictive with a combination of low search volume and high CPC’s making traditional search campaigns very difficult. Introducing a Smart Campaign to the mix immediately increased visibility resulting in thousands of additional impressions per week and several leads which converted to paying customers. As an added benefit, CPCs were just 10% of the equivalent cost from our traditional search campaigns, resulting in a much more efficient account.

Similarly, Smart Campaigns were used for a tourism client in order to expand visibility of a new ecommerce offering over the busy Black Friday and Sales period. From launch through to the end of the sales period, the Smart campaign achieved a ROAS in excess of 400% equating to over $50,000 in additional revenue from a total spend of just over $10,000.

While I wouldn’t recommend shifting an entire account over to Smart Campaigns, introducing them to an account in a supporting role is a simple, cost effective way to drive traffic and results. With a professional marketer managing these campaigns, traffic relevance can be tightly controlled and the restricted reporting data can still be used for actionable insights across the entirety of an account.

Want to learn more about Smart Campaigns and how they might work for your account? Get in touch.