How to use €1,000 for Digital Ads Testing: Google Ads and social media marketing

We asked our Paid Media team at All Around to recommend in which channels they would use and how they would approach a Google Ads advertising campaign with a total budget of 1,000 euros. A bit of a theoretical proposition, since there are many factors involved in planning paid advertising campaigns and effectively scaling a PPC (Pay-Per Click) campaign.

With all this in mind, three of our Performance Marketing specialists share their approaches to investing in a small online ads test.

Carlos

“Assuming that the product or service is B2B and being that this is an experiment, I would certainly try some digital ads testing in new channels, but based on learnings from previous typical SEM campaigns:

First, I would install the Meta and Google Ads pixels and start collecting data from the official website.

Immediately afterwards, I would create website audiences with the maximum possible time window and start collect interesting behaviors: above average time on site, above average number of page views, etc.

We would design a landing page containing all the basic elements to explain how the product or service works, use cases, success stories, testimonials, as well as create a data collection form.

I would check for social media channels where there is currently not much competition and where there are some very niche profiles, like Reddit and Quora. I would allocate 25% of the budget to this channel type, in order to generate targeted traffic to the landing page, at the lowest possible cost through the use of keyword and interest targeting.

With that traffic, I would expect to generate some leads and potential customers, while the remaining users would enter the previously created audiences.

Later, I would impact all those who were not already leads with PMax (maximum performance campaigns in Google Ads). This would be oriented to remarketing and driving traffic to the landing page again, and I would also run lead ads in Meta (Facebook campaigns).”

If you want to know more about search advertising, don’t miss the post Basic Guide to Search Engine Marketing from Carlos.

Tamar

“There are many factors at play that determine how much to budget to put into channel and why. Assuming we are talking about a new product or service, and the client want to generate leads, I would start with 40% dedicated to a Google Ad test and 60% for a social media marketing test or another top of the funnel (TOFU) channel.

60% for a social media marketing test or another TOFU channel. The channels chosen will depend on the product. For example, if it is a B2B product or service, LinkedIn probably makes more sense than say Facebook campaigns in Meta or Display campaigns.

We grant more budget to TOFU channels in order to generate initial traffic to the website. I would always recommend starting out with driving traffic to a landing page that has a form. This is a particularly good way to qualify leads, especially when we begin by giving more budget to channels with less focused audiences such as Social or Display.

40% for a PPC test, as long as a Google Ads test actually makes sense. There are many specific products and service out there that have hardly any search volume and therefore are not worth launching Search for. Planning a Google Ads campaign test will depend mainly on your product or service. If after doing a keyword study we have found there is sufficient search volume, then this is of searches, then this is the digital ads testing channel that can generate the most quality leads. It will likely take longer, but the user is actively searching for the product/service in question and can be reached very effectively through Google Ads.

Depending on the volume of leads generated during the online ads test, I would likely maintain this budget allocation for the first few months. The reason is simple: evaluating lead quality is essential before reallocating budget from one channel to another. Ideally, the lead target will change over time and post-test, focus will shift to controlling Cost Per Lead (CPL) and improving lead quality: better to have fewer leads of higher quality than many poor leads with no value.

Beyond an initial €1,000 dedicated to online ad tests, it is important that there is additional budget dedicated to optimizing the landing page where leads come in. The more this page is optimized, the more quality leads will be generated.

To learn more about Lead generation in Google Ads: beyond text ads, don’t miss this post from Tamar.

Pablo

“My approach would be similar to that of my colleagues. In fact, recently I launched a new international campaign for a client in several markets where no PPC test had been run previously. Although in that case the budget was much higher, all the same recommendations regarding landing pages, data collection and remarketing are being applied.

However, I do differ on the percentage of budget allocated for a social media marketing test and the Google Ads test. My approach would be to initially allocate 60% to PPC test and 40% to the social media campaign. However, with campaign tracking and management, we would all likely arrive at the same final allocation based on results.

In terms of landing pages, a form is essential if the goal is to generate leads.

The only other point I would add would be to test with LaL audiences (lookalike or similar audiences) especially in the case of the social media marketing test. For a new lead generation campaign an investment of €1,000 is unrealistic in many cases and does not provide enough traffic to the website for lead generation. If this is the case, I would refine the audience targeting as much as possible, identifying which users I want to impact in order to get enough leads in each channel to help with the decision making process for allocation of future budgets.

Want to know about the latest Google updates from Google Marketing Live 2022? Don’t miss this post by Pablo to learn what What’s new with Google.

If you are looking to expand your paid search strategy with digital ads testing, don’t hesitate to contact us. The All Around Paid Media experts can Help you with your online advertising campaigns. Here you can read about our Paid Search services.