Diving into the Google Display Network (GDN) isn’t necessarily for the faint of heart. There are a lot of different aspects to consider when trying to design compelling and affordable ads that will attract potential customers and bring visitors to your site. Monitoring and balancing all the different variables can be a challenge, especially if you are also trying to keep up with the daily tasks of running your business.
If you have managed to avoid super low click through rates (CTR) and conversions rates, then count yourself among the lucky few. You may very well be GDN prodigy. However, the for a majority of people, who have experienced dismal performance indicators, they may be left wondering, “Why do I even need Google Display Network for acquisition?”.
It is all too easy to feel like targeting keywords and demographic interests simply don’t provide optimal results. In fact, you may find that your ads are appearing on unrelated and unprofessional sites that have nothing to do with your business or your target audience. Google might be one of the biggest brands in the world, but their algorithm can leave something to be desired at times.
Part of the problem is that the Google Display Network is a great tool that helps with branding and increasing reach for companies who are looking to gain exposure to mass markets, but it doesn’t do much for those who want to focus on performance and increase leads and sales.
The Solution to Poor Google Display Network Performance
In two words: managed placements!
Basically, the idea is that you ONLY target a list of handpicked sites. When you begin this process, Google will suggest a list of relevant sites, which is a good start, but really only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to managing ad placements in order to turbocharge performance.
You can take things a step further by ensuring that ads are placed in specific areas or inner pages of websites. As a result, you won’t be serving ads to every visitor. Instead, you will be serving ads on specific pages on relevant sites so that you are not wasting time and money by casting too broad of a net.
A Closer Look at Managed Placement at Work
One of our clients at Exponential.Buzz, sells a natural supplement for diabetes and came to us looking to improve their Google Display Network performance. Google started by suggesting that their ads be placed on Webmd.com, which makes perfect sense, but how many times have you visited the site to see if your sore throat was actually a sign of imminent death or whether a chipped nail should be examined by a medical professional? The main URL of WebMD gets traffic from people looking for information about a wide range of conditions, not just diabetes.
But webmd.com does garner traffic for all sorts of specific conditions. All of the structured content for diabetes is hosted on … you guessed it … https://www.webmd.com/diabetes/
Instead of placing ads across the entire site, we were more selective and worked with the client to target the diabetes content pages, simply by placing these URLs on the managed placements list.TATAM!
With just a little extra work, managed placements effectively boost performance and deliver relevant leads that can be converted to sales and help drive revenue.
But wait it gets better…
In some cases, you won’t have the option of creating a subfolder, as demonstrated in the example above, and you will need something even more specific.
For example, we work with a client who specializes in blockchain technology along with crowdfunding and initial coin offering (ICO). We were tasked with hunting down and targeting only bitcoin and cryptocurrency enthusiasts.
So what did we do? We went to YouTube and searched for the most viewed videos on the topic, compiled a list of video URLs, and pasted them into the GDN campaigns. With this kind of laser targeting you can get the display network to work even better than paid search! If that isn’t cool, then I don’t know what is.
Conclusion
The Google Display Network is a powerful tool, but with just a few tweaks and a focus on managed placement you can turbocharge your efforts and make sure that your ads are being served to your target audience. Don’t waste time and money blanketing the internet with ads and hoping for the best. Harness the power of managed placements to connect with leads and drive sales.
Your Turn
Give managed placements a whirl and let us know what you think. How much easier was it than you thought it would be? What kind of results did you experience?
