Creating a full course on Google Ads would require covering a range of topics, from understanding the basics of Google Ads to advanced strategies for optimization and campaign management. Here's a rough outline of what a comprehensive Google Ads course might include:
Module 1: Introduction to Google Ads
- What is Google Ads?
- Benefits of Google Ads
- How Google Ads works
- Understanding the Google Ads interface
- Setting up your Google Ads account
Module 2: Keyword Research
- Importance of keyword research
- Tools for keyword research
- Types of keywords (broad match, phrase match, exact match, negative keywords)
- Building keyword lists
Module 3: Campaign Setup
- Campaign types (Search, Display, Video, Shopping, App)
- Setting campaign goals and objectives
- Ad group structure
- Ad extensions
- Budgeting and bidding strategies
Module 4: Ad Creation and Optimization
- Writing compelling ad copy
- Creating effective ad creatives (text ads, image ads, video ads)
- A/B testing ad variations
- Ad Quality Score and how to improve it
- Ad scheduling and rotation
Module 5: Targeting and Audience Optimization
- Geographic targeting
- Demographic targeting
- Device targeting
- Remarketing and audience targeting
- Custom audience creation
Module 6: Tracking and Conversion Optimization
- Setting up conversion tracking
- Understanding conversion actions
- Conversion tracking best practices
- Optimizing for conversions
- Attribution models
Module 7: Campaign Management and Optimization
- Monitoring campaign performance
- Adjusting bids and budgets
- Keyword optimization
- Ad performance optimization
- Campaign experiments and testing
Module 8: Advanced Strategies
- Advanced bidding strategies (e.g., CPA bidding, ROAS bidding)
- Dynamic Search Ads
- Google Shopping optimization
- Advanced targeting options (e.g., affinity audiences, in-market audiences)
- Campaign automation and scripts
Module 9: Troubleshooting and Common Issues
- Diagnosing performance issues
- Fixing disapproved ads
- Dealing with policy violations
- Handling billing and payment issues
- Resolving technical issues
Module 10: Scaling and Growth Strategies
- Scaling successful campaigns
- Expanding into new markets
- Multi-channel integration
- Budget allocation strategies
- Long-term growth planning
Each module could consist of video lectures, readings, quizzes, and practical exercises to reinforce learning. Additionally, case studies and real-world examples can be used to illustrate concepts and strategies. Throughout the course, emphasis should be placed on staying up-to-date with Google Ads' latest features and best practices.
5 Free Digital Marketing Courses To Study In 2024
A career within digital marketing is extremely lucrative and in high demand over the next few years
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If you have expertise in digital and social media marketing, your skills could be worth $1.5 trillion by 2030, according to Coursera's Job Skills of 2024 report. In fact, research from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reveals that marketing occupations are soaring in demand by as much as 6% yearly, which is faster than the average for job growth.
Digital marketing has rapidly accelerated the success of marketing and advertizing campaigns. With billions of social media users, and billions using the web to search for topics, answers to questions, conduct shopping, and loads more of everyday activities, digital marketing is full of potential and is certainly an in-demand skill worth investing in.
The investment in developing this skill, whether it is financial or time expenditure, is certainly proving to be well worth it. With a career in digital marketing, such as a digital marketing manager, you can expect to realize earnings of as much as $124,000. And of course, the more you learn and develop yourself professionally, and the more senior-level your role, the more you increase your earning potential.
Here are five free digital marketing courses you should seriously consider embarking on so you can launch a successful digital marketing career in 2024:
1. LinkedIn Learning
LinkedIn Learning has a learning path called "Master Digital Marketing," which contains courses taught and led by industry experts handpicked by LinkedIn. The course content within the learning path ranges from mastering SEO, to marketing on LinkedIn and other social media platforms such as TikTok, to even learning marketing with AR (augmented reality).
Although perhaps not 100% free in every sense of the word, courses on LinkedIn Learning are free with a 30-day free trial of LinkedIn Premium subscription. Otherwise, with a Premium subscription you can access all the courses without any extra cost.
2. Google Digital Garage
Google Digital Garage has now moved to Google Skillshop, part of the Grow With Google initiative, and it hosts a range of courses including Fundamentals of Digital Marketing, which are totally free of charge to you. After completing the course, you're able to gain a certificate which you can showcase on your LinkedIn profile and to employers.
3. PPC University
This website hosts a range of informative content, via courses and guides such as PPC 101, totally free of charge. These cover topics such as PCC (pay-per-click advertizing), and Facebook ads. Although it does not cover all aspects of digital marketing, this can be a helpful resource if you're seeking to zone in on PPC as a digital marketing skill.
4. HubSpot
Another free digital marketing course provider is HubSpot, which is already known to be a leader in the digital marketing industry. Their learning arm, HubSpot Academy, provides several courses for all levels from beginner to the more advanced, such as its Digital Marketing Course: Get Certified in Digital Marketing, which also comes with a free certificate.
5. Meta
Meta offers a range of courses and certifications, paid and free, for those aspiring to build digital marketing skills. One free course is the Meta Certified Digital Marketing Associate, offered via Meta Blueprint. It is essential to bear in mind that although the study materials are free, obtaining the certification may cost you.
Undertaking a digital marketing course, and even paying for the certificate if necessary, is well ... [+] worth the time and financial expenditure
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All five of these are examples of what courses are available to you if you are passionate about upskilling (or reskilling as the case may be) and taking your professional development to the next level by pursuing a digital marketing career. Learning something new doesn't need to cost much. Through these five free digital marketing courses, you can prove your value to employers, become a trusted expert, and even work as a freelance digital marketing manager.
Google Unveils 4 Updates At IAB NewFronts 2024
Google unveiled four Display & Video 360 updates during IAB NewFronts 2024 on Monday morning,
As I reported last week in Video Ad Spend And Trends Revealed Ahead Of IAB NewFronts 2024, the IAB expects ad spending on CTV to grow by 12% to $22.7 billion in 2024.
However, when people now say they “watch TV,” it means different things than it did in the past. Today’s viewers seamlessly jump from hit shows to creator content on their CTVs. Heck, they’re even watching YouTube Shorts on their smart TVs.
Audiences are fluid, so reaching them now means showing up when and where they watch the video content they love instead of appearing on the large-screen television during prime time in the family room.
This explains why the Google NewFront seemed to be the right time and place to unveil how Google’s Display & Video 360 has evolved to help marketers and media agencies adjust their strategies and video ad buys to reach their audiences across streaming content.
A Nielsen Media Mix Modeling (MMM) meta-analysis of 15 U.S. Consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands, commissioned by Google, found that marketers using unified media buying through Display & Video 360 achieved a significant advantage. They saw a 120% higher return on ad spend (ROAS) compared to third-party video bought directly and an 18% higher ROAS than linear TV.
4 Updates For Google Display & Video 360 Updates At NewFront
At the Google NewFront event on Monday morning, Kristen O’Hara, the VP of Agency, Platforms & Client Solutions at Google, provided four updates that were amplified by a dozen other speakers.
Strategic relationships with streaming partners
First, O’Hara announced:
“We’re strengthening strategic relationships with streaming partners like Disney, Paramount, NBCUniversal and Warner Bros. Discovery. For example, our integration with Disney’s Real-time Ad Exchange (DRAX) lets you tap into their vast inventory and reach at scale.”
In response, Pete Chelala, the VP of Programmatic Advertising Sales at Paramount, said:
“Paramount specializes in creating content fans love on the platforms they can’t live without. Partnering with Google ensures that our clients can access Paramount Advertising’s premium inventory seamlessly through Display & Video 360.”
And Jill Steinhauser, the senior vice president of Ad Sales Revenue and Planning at Discovery Communications, added:
“We’re thrilled to bring MAX’s diverse content to Display & Video 360. This allows advertisers to programmatically reach audiences at scale, unifying their media in one place.”
Introducing Instant Deals Tool For Marketers
To move as quickly as streaming audiences are these days, agencies also need more flexibility. So, the second announcement featured a couple of new products.
O’Hara said:
“We’re introducing instant deals – a new tool for marketers to configure customized deals with top publishers right from the Display & Video 360 interface, skipping the complex negotiation process.”
She explained, “This buying method is already available today for high-impact reservation YouTube placements, like YouTube Select and Masthead. And soon, agencies will be able to access those same placements with non-guaranteed deals for even greater budget flexibility. Plus, instant deals are expanding beyond YouTube to major publishers like Disney.”
O’Hara continued:
“We also know managing yearly commitments across multiple publishers and deal types can be a tangled mess of spreadsheets. This is why we’ve built a tool called commitment optimizer in collaboration with our agency partners to streamline the process of managing commitments. Input your deal terms and goals, then Google AI intelligently optimizes the mix of guaranteed and non-guaranteed inventory for flexibility as well as reach.”
Agencies that have been testing the commitment optimizer are already driving results, expanding access to premier deals to five times more clients.
For example, Clare Ritchie, the senior vice president and global head of Programmatic & Inhousing at OMG, said,
“Our co-development initiatives with Display & Video 360 enable OMG to deliver custom technology solutions that help our clients achieve better results.”
Privacy-Forward Audience Solutions
The third announcement at the Google NewFront event promises to help the advertising industry reach audiences accurately while respecting people’s privacy.
Google has encouraged advertisers to invest in first-party data for years.
Google’s Publisher Advertiser Identity Reconciliation (PAIR) solutions provide a way for advertisers and publishers to reconcile their first-party data securely. This enables marketers to show relevant ads to high-intent audiences, like past purchasers, while protecting privacy.
To date, PAIR has delivered strong results for advertisers like Omni Hotels. According to LiveRamp, PAIR audiences provide 11% incremental reach compared to cookie-based lists.
O’Hara said:
“To further scale this privacy-forward solution, we’re collaborating to build open standards and contributing the PAIR protocol to the IAB Tech Lab. This will enable ad tech companies – and the industry as a whole – to adopt privacy-forward audience solutions that benefit everyone.
Shailley Singh, the executive vice president of product and chief operating officer of IAB Tech Lab, observed:
“It’s a big step towards making privacy-enhancing technologies mainstream in the programmatic supply chain.” He added, “We’re eagerly looking forward to ushering the PAIR protocol into an open industry standard.”
Seamlessly Integrating Generative AI Into Display & Video 360
The fourth announcement at the Google NewFront event focused on Google AI.
O’Hara said:
“The rise of programmatic advertising brought efficiency to media buying, but it’s time to evolve even further. We’ve heard from marketers and their media agencies that they expect a simpler, more intuitive DSP experience. So, we’re continuing to make Google AI an essential part of Display & Video 360, seamlessly integrating it into your workflows and bringing generative AI capabilities.”
She added:
“One of the first places you’ll see generative AI show up as a helpful collaborator in Display & Video 360 is in setting up your audience strategy with a feature called audience persona. Describe your ideal audience, and audience persona instantly generates a combination of audience segments that matches your goals.”
This tool enables agencies to select the right audiences from thousands of options while helping them uncover new, high-potential audiences. It improves unduplicated reach and delivers better results for their clients.
And even though Google AI offers suggestions, advertisers always have the final say. They can easily edit the generated selection, giving them full control over their campaigns.
Audience persona is expected to launch this summer, starting with Google’s audience and demographic segments.
“Of course, not all customers within an audience segment bring the same value to your business,” O’Hara acknowledged. “That’s where custom bidding comes in.”
This capability lets advertisers indicate their highest priorities within Display & Video 360. Then, Google AI uses these custom signals to focus on the impressions that deliver the results that an advertiser wants.
She said:
“Custom bidding now includes brand awareness and engagement objectives, so you can optimize for behaviors like ‘time on screen.’ We soon plan to add CTV-specific signals like genre as well.”
O’Hara concluded:
“Transparency is a key responsibility for Display & Video 360 as marketers harness the helpfulness of AI. This is why we’ve launched experiment center, a tool that lets you take control, test strategies and optimize the way you use Google AI for maximum impact.”
The tool’s dashboard offers top-line insights, enabling quick, data-driven decisions. The experiment center goes beyond tracking just conversions, providing a comprehensive view across the entire customer journey – from awareness to consideration and action.
It provides a new way for advertisers to see how their latest AI-powered strategies compare to their previous approaches and understand the impact of consolidating their video streaming buys on a single platform.
Watch This Space For Youtube Announcements
As I reported last week in Video Ad Spend And Trends Revealed Ahead Of IAB NewFronts 2024, social video is on track toward its second year of 20% year-over-year (YoY) growth and is projected to rise to $23.4 billion.
So, I was expecting YouTube to unveil umpteen updates to their digital video strategies during their evening reception. However, YouTube didn’t share any news or presentations during the closed event for customers.
Why not?
Well, it’s worth noting that this year’s YouTube Brandcast event, part of the broadcast upfront week, is scheduled for May 15, 2024 at Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall.
This is probably where YouTube plans to share a plethora of strategic insights with television network executives, major advertisers, and the media at the beginning of an important advertising sales period.
VidCon Anaheim 2024 will take place from June 26–29, 2024 at the Anaheim Convention Center. Over 55,000 attendees are expected to pack the Community, Creator, and Industry tracks. Stay tuned for more breaking news and important developments at this event.
In the old days, TV newscasters would say, “Don’t touch that dial” or “Film at 11.” But neither of these statements makes any sense today. These days, CTVs don’t have dials, and digital cameras don’t use film.
So, just as we’ve had to adjust to these changes in the way we watch TV, we’ll also need to adjust to the new way that Google and YouTube package and communicate their video strategies.
In 2023, YouTube revealed its strategic direction over three key events, and in 2024, we may not get a clear picture of the changing landscape until the end of June.
More resources:
Featured Image: metamorworks/Shutterstock
Quora Ads -- A Great Alternative To Facebook And Google
Quora is a knowledge-driven social network where users engage with content and where advertising can be closely matched to context for great results.
Search engines all want to move beyond a reliance on keywords and answer searchers’ questions. They try to make their results deliver more complete and compelling answers to search queries. I remember the search engine Ask Jeeves which was based on human-curated answers to the most important questions.
Then there’s the more scientific search engine Wolfram Alpha which provides excellent and complete answers to mathematical and scientific questions.
Where advanced search engines such as Google and Bing are using natural language processing to understand questions, Quora is using humans, but not in the way Ask Jeeves did, and not in real time. It is a community of curious people who will ask and answer questions on anything you like.
Wolfram Alpha is a computational intelligence engine providing scientifically proven and exhaustive answers to common questions about mathematics, science, technology, and more. Image source: Author
Overview: What is Quora?
Anyone can ask a question or answer a question on Quora. The best answers are voted up by other users who can also comment and discuss the initial information. As a social network, Quora is a user-driven, content- and text-rich platform, where users are highly engaged and spend a longer time on each piece of content than on other platforms. It’s quite addictive and a great source of information.
Quora is far from the size of Facebook and Youtube, but it is closely trailing smaller platforms such as Twitter and Pinterest. Image source: Author
4 benefits of Quora Ads
Quora is halfway between a search engine and a social network. And its advertising takes inspiration from both sides. Let’s look at some of the benefits of Quora Ads.
1. Reach 300 million users
As shown in the July, 2020, Statista chart above, Quora has 300 million users, much smaller than Facebook’s 2.7 billion, but not insignificant. Quora’s user numbers are almost the size of the population of the United States. The same source places Twitter at 353 million and Pinterest at 416 million, only a little ahead of Quora.
2. A serious social network
Business considers some social networks too superficial, but Quora stands out as a platform you use to learn, share knowledge, research, evaluate, and ask questions, making it a serious network. Social media management tools can’t post to Quora because of the unique nature of the content there.
3. User engagement
According to Quora, users spend 30 minutes per day on the network. This means users are engaged with the network and actively interact with the content they find there. If you’re marketing more complex products or services with longer decision cycles, you’d be wise to make Quora a part of your social media strategy.
4. Topical fit
Just as Google became a major marketing channel because users were asking questions and finding answers there, Quora occupies a setting where users are looking for answers and are open to suggestions. If advertising fits well with the topic users are investigating, they will be more receptive to the message.
5. Less competition
Quora Ads is one of the smaller platforms within social media advertising, and it requires additional work for the advertiser. See this as an opportunity because fewer advertisers means less pressure to drive bid prices up and better rates for you.
What type of advertising works best for Quora Ads?
The Quora advertising platform is quite advanced, allowing advertisers to target audiences by context and behavior, to track events on their site, and to optimize for clicks, impressions, or conversions.
It has 4 major ad placements:
The best advertising on Quora is topically relevant to the target audience. This is achieved either through contextual targeting of specific topics or questions or through behavioral targeting relating to the user’s historic keywords or topic usage.
A great way for knowledge-intensive businesses to advertise on Quora is by boosting questions. To do this, the business must actively participate in the network and have good questions and answers with high visibility. By boosting these questions, they will appear in more user feeds. They will also be shown as suggested questions under other answers. This is a good way to expand the question’s reach.
This is similar to the boosting mechanisms in other social platforms and is a highly efficient form of advertising since it’s real content and not ad copy or blinking banners.
Your SEO will also benefit from your Quora questions. Users can Google Quora answers. Quora content is fully indexed by the search engine and can appear in searches for relevant keywords.
Audience targeting is also possible with Quora. You can insert a pixel on your website and retarget the audience on Quora in a relevant context. This might be what Mangools is doing in the illustration below. I have been to the site recently and when I look for social media topics on Quora, I see their ads.
Or perhaps this was a more advanced targeting of a custom audience they uploaded to Quora after I did a trial of their tool and provided my email addresses. Now, when I look for information about social media on Quora, Mangools uses the topical relevance as well as the pre-established relationship with me to show me ads for their social media management tool.
The ads shown on this Quora page are topically targeted to social media and could additionally be targeted to me via remarketing or list match. Image source: Author
How to make Quora Ads for your business
If you’re already familiar with the advertising process on social media, the Quora ads platform will be straightforward for you. Follow these steps to set up ads on the platform.
1. Set up your ad account
To get started, go to Quora Ads. Once there, click Get Started and follow the instructions. It’s easier if you already have a user account on Quora, and you can add several members of your social media team to the account. During setup, you will provide your company name, address, and tax number. It’s worthwhile uploading your logo at this stage as it will be useful later.
2. Set up tracking pixels
Once your ad account is up and you have confirmed the Quora Ads contact email, you can start preparations for an efficient ad setup. Let’s first get the biggest hurdle out of the way, namely tracking. Go to Pixels & events in the top menu and decide what tracking pixels you want to install on your website.
Quora has preconfigured a number of events you can choose from: generic, app install, purchase, Generate lead, Complete registration, Add payment info, Add to cart, Add to wishlist.
You should install the general pixel on the landing pages you plan to use on your website. If you want to build retargeting audiences, you can install them on all your website pages. If you want to optimize campaigns for conversions or app installs, you need to install those pixels in your site or your app.
You may need help from a webmaster or developer to do this. Remember to update your privacy policy and cookie consent information before adding these pixels, as they will place cookies in your users’ browsers.
3. Build your audiences
Using audiences is optional, but you should prepare them so you are ready the day you need them. If you installed the generic pixel, you can use it to create a retargeting audience. This is called a Website traffic audience in Quora. Click on Audiences in the top menu, and then click Create audience. You get a choice between Website audience, Lookalike audience, and List match audience.
The List match is what Facebook calls a Custom audience and Google a Customer match. You upload a list of email addresses, typically your clients, and wait for Quora to match them with profiles on its network. We reached a 34% match when we tried this, meaning we would be able to reach about a third of our qualified clients or prospects on Quora.
Again, make sure you have consent from users before using their personal information in this way. You should also click the encryption option to make sure the data is protected when it is transferred.
Finally, you have the option to create a lookalike audience. This requires a seed audience of at least 500 matched profiles, and the more you have, the better the audience will be. If you want to make a lookalike audience based on list matches, be sure you have a seed list of at least 1500 email addresses. Learn more about lookalike audiences here.
4. Create a new campaign
Your tracking is in place and your audiences are ready, now click New campaign at the top right corner of the screen. Give your campaign a name and select the campaign objective. You can choose between the following: Conversion, App installs, Traffic, Awareness, and Lead generation.
Obviously, if you choose a conversion or app installs objective, you need your tracking pixels from step 2 to be in place. Once your objectives are in place, decide on your daily budget or fix a lifetime budget for the campaign. When you start, you should use daily budgets to get a feel for the daily spend before launching full scale. You can decide to launch a campaign straight away or indicate a later date.
5. Create an ad set
The next level in a campaign is the Ad set. Here you decide on your targeting and bidding. As for the campaign, you need to give the Ad set a name. For the targeting of your campaign, first define the location targeting. You should of course exclude regions of the world your product or services are not relevant for and include your primary markets.
Next, you choose your primary targeting from four options. You can choose broad targeting which actually means you are not targeting at all. You can also choose to target an audience you defined in step 3. And finally, you have the two main targeting options on Quora: Contextual targeting (Topics, Keywords, Questions) and Behavioral targeting (Interests, Keyword history, Question history).
You can add more targeting layers to your campaign by targeting specific devices and gender. You can also exclude both questions and audiences. It makes sense to exclude an audience of past buyers if you have already sold your product or service to many Quora users. For some targeting options, you can also opt in to appearing in the digest email Quora sends to its users daily with the top questions for the users’ selected topics.
Finally, you set your bids for the ad set. Quora uses a suggested bid range, much like other advertising platforms, but the suggestions seem high. Be careful not to be too low, however, as you won’t win the auctions and get very little impression share and clicks. The final setting is the type of ad delivery: optimize for clicks, impressions, or conversions.
When you set up ads in Quora, the interface will guide you along and indicate missing punctuation and other inconsistencies in real time, speeding up the entire ad validation process. Image source: Author
6. Create an ad
We have now arrived in the create department. You provide an ad name and decide which format you would like to use. To boost a question in your campaign, choose Promote an answer. The other two options are basically the same, except for the added image in the Image Ad. You add your business name which will appear in the ad, as well as your logo which you have already registered during setup.
The most important elements of the ad are the headline sentence which can be 65 characters long and will appear bolded, and the body text which can be 105 characters long. For image ads, upload a 16:9 format picture illustrating your product or message.
Finally, choose your CTA in the list of options: Learn More, Get the App, Apply Now, etc. In the bottom field, insert the landing page URL where you want users to land. For those obsessed with tracking, remember your UTMs (urchin tracking modules).
7. Launch your campaign
You need to install a payment method if you didn’t register it during setup. Also, account for a possible delay while Quora reviews your images and ad text.
8. Monitor and optimize
After launch, be patient. The review process needs to happen, and the campaign needs to start delivering before you have anything to monitor. Check in the day after launch to check impressions and clicks. A good trick to see delivery statistics not visible in the dashboard overview is to go to Edit Ad Set. In this view, you will see an Ad set summary including Auction insights.
After a few days with very limited delivery, we discovered that we were losing 86% of impressions to competitors because our bid was too low. We doubled it to get the campaign going.
Find your way to the Ad set summary where you will get valuable insights into the auction in order to optimize your bids and your targeting on Quora Ads. Image source: Author
The best advertising matches context
Search engine advertising was one of the first activities to take off in online advertising and still represents a large part of digital marketing budgets. It brought several new things to advertising: tracking, auction bidding, and contextual adaptation. Quora has adopted all of these characteristics in its advertising platform. A lot of the contextual targeting, however, has to be done by the marketer during campaign setup.
To succeed on Quora, you must understand how its members use it and research the right topics and questions. Once you have those elements in place, the perfect contextual match and great results are within reach.