Marketers have been pulling their hair out trying to get to grips with Google Analytics 4 – fortunately, we’ve got some good news.

There are a bunch of incredible courses and resources available that’ll boost your confidence and understanding of how to use the new platform.

Here, we’ve compiled a list of 9 Google Analytics 4 training courses that you may want to consider.

Cost: $249

Level: Advanced

Duration: Two days

Search Engine Land’s former ‘Search Marketer of the Year’, Colleen Harris, is running this SMX Masterclass course online live on August 16 and 17. “The Marketing Land course is designed to give people practical applications of GA4,” Harris said. “It’s also looking at GA4 under the theme of ‘I got through July now what do I do?’ So much of GA4 this last year has just been getting things set up now it’s time to go back and say ‘how can I get more out of this tool?’”

Harris will be covering the following topics:

• How to compare Universal GA and GA4 data after the move to GA4
• Understanding how to build audiences to use within advertising plus a deep dive into the advertising reporting in GA4
• Best practices for custom reporting and libraries
• Differences between custom events, parameters and dimensions
• How to leverage GTM for custom events and parameters

Cost: $600

Level: Three learning levels – principles, intermediate and advanced

Duration: One day

This course, put together by The Chartered Institute of Marketing, is available both in-person and online. It sets out to teach marketers how to implement GA4 and show them the advantages this system has over its predecessor, Universal Analytics.

Key features of the course include:

• Insights powered by artificial intelligence (AI) 
• Deeper audience integration with Google Ads 
• Customer lifecycle-framed reporting 
• Customer-centric data measurements  
• New navigation and reporting 
• Enhanced e-commerce reporting 
• Customise reports
• Using explore reports

Cost: $2,500 (for any team size)

Level: Beginner to intermediate

Duration: Six hours in total, spread across two three-hour sessions on different days

Delivered to you and your team live online, no experience is necessary for Measure Lab’s GA4 course – although there are more advanced courses available. The course comprises four modules designed to help marketers get up to speed with Google’s new analytics tool.

The course covers the following topics:

• How GA4 works 
• Account structure and setup
• Using the interface 
• Key metric definitions
• Tracking your campaigns 
• Standard acquisition reports 
• Attribution modelling 
• Advanced marketing reports
• Reporting identities 
• Event and page reporting 
• Event customisation 
• Funnels and user flows 
• Building and using Audiences 
• Exploration techniques
• Segments 
• Activation 

Cost: $49.99

Level: Beginner to intermediate

Duration: 10 videos

SEO consultant Joe Hall created this all inclusive GA4 course specifically to help SEOs. In the course, Hall details each step to getting your website set up on GA4, as well as how to build various custom reports for organic traffic.

The course covers the following topics:

• Setting things up
• Events and conversions
• Collections and library
• How to create an organic traffic report
• How to create an organic landing pages report
• How to create an organic conversions report
• How to create a referring search engines report
• How to create an organic sessions GEO map report
• How to create an organic traffic dashboard
• GA4 Organic Traffic Report Creation Cheat-Sheet [PDF]

Cost: $225

Level: Intermediate to advanced

Duration: 7 HD video lessons to watch at your own pace

Love Data’s practical and comprehensive course was created to help marketers master GA4 and give them a much needed confidence boost. The lessons teach you how to build GA4 reports and use them to improve the performance of your website and/or campaign.

This course covers the following topics:

• How to use the default reports and customize them to meet your needs.
• Correctly track inbound marketing campaigns and report on their performance.
• Create custom audiences for in-depth analysis, reporting, and remarketing.
• The major differences between GA4 and Universal Analytics.
• Using conversion and e-commerce reports to measure and optimize conversions.
• Understanding how your marketing channels work together to drive conversions.
• Configuring GA4 to collect meaningful and accurate data

Cost: $635

Level: Intermediate

Duration: One day

Available in person and online, Jellyfish’s GA4 course was designed for marketers who already have some knowledge of GA4, such how reports are created and data is collected. It teaches all marketers need to know about setting up GA4, configuring and auditing properties and how the new platform differs from UA. Marketers will also have their newfound knowledge put to the test with hands-on, in-platform exercises.

This course covers the following topics:

• Introduction to GA4 & Considerations
• Planning a GA4 Implementation
• Initial GA4 Set-up
• Enhanced Measurement
• Event & Ecommerce Configuration
• Custom Definition Set-up
• GA4 Property Settings
• GA4 Product Integrations

Cost: $299

Level: Intermediate

Duration: 5 hours 9 minutes

Created by Charles Farina, Head of Innovation at Adswerve, this course aims to teach marketers everything they need to know to get started with GA4. Farina discusses an array of topics from data integrations to funnels to pathing reports. Upon completion, marketers are awarded a certificate.

Key features of the course include:

• Understanding why GA4 is the future of Google Analytics and why getting started now is important
• Learning about the new event-driven data model GA4 uses and how it is similar or different to other analytics solutions
• Developing an implementation plan for dual-tagging or migration of your existing Google Analytics properties
• Ability to leverage enterprise features that were previously only available in Google Analytics 360 including the BigQuery integration, funnels, and unsampled data

Cost: From $1,620

Level: Beginner to intermediate to advanced

Duration: One day

Optix Digital Academy offers bespoke training days, which can be delivered in-person and online, to suit your business’ needs. Marketers are invited to submit a brief detailing specific areas they need assistance with ahead of the course, and an outline of the training day is then agreed between the company and your business.

This course covers the following topics:

• Introduction to GA4
• GA4 & GTM
• Setting up GA4
• GA4 Interface
• E-commerce in GA4
• Events & conversion tracking
• Reports
• Explore
• Advertising
• Developer Support

Cost: $70

Level: Beginner

Duration: Two-hours on demand video

This Udemy course is available on mobile and TV, and was created for people starting their careers in digital marketing. A certificate is awarded upon completion with students graduating with new skills in being able to analyze website and campaign performance.

This course covers the following topics:

• What is Google Analytics 4 and how it works02:31
• GA4 Data Model
• Creating a GA4 property
• Upgrading from Google Analytics to Google Analytics 4
• Overview of Google Analytics reports
• Understanding Acquisition Reports
• Campaign Tracking
• Campaign Builder
• Engagement Reports
• Active Users and Stickiness
• Retention Reports
• Analysis Hub Overview
• Exploration Analysis

Why we care. One of the most common complaints we saw when reviewing the answers to our GA4 readiness poll was that marketers don’t think Google has provided enough resources with regards to using the new analytics system. If you’re in this boat and are struggling with GA4, it’s essential you brush up on your knowledge so that you can continue to monitor the performance of your campaigns or else you won’t be able to accurately report your successes back to clients.

What’s the problem with GA4? Marketing Land course creator Colleen Harris told Search Engine Land that there are a lot of differences between UA and GA4, and marketers are finding the changes challenging. “There are a lot of new features in GA4 and workflow updates,” she explained. “This is also a time where most digital marketers are already trying to do so much with little time, and this is one more big thing.”

Harris added that the attribution changes within GA4 are currently posing the biggest issue to marketers. “Folks are used to getting a lot of data about the users and the reality of marketing is that we all will be getting less data and have to the same with it,” she continued.

Has Google not provided enough help? Marketers have complained that Google has not given them enough tools and resources to get their heads around GA4. However, Harris tells Search Engine Land that Google has done the best it can given the deadlines it had to meet and the large volume of people they were working with. She said: “All those UA codes come with every level of knowledge and skills, so trying to educate so many people at so many different levels is a feat.”

Why should marketers invest in GA4 training? Marketers need access to data behind their campaigns to monitor performance, create reports and make adjustments for improved ROI. So it’s essential that advertisers gain confidence in using GA4. “Data is going to flow and GA4 isn’t going to go away, so the more you stay away from it the harder it is to become comfortable with it,” said Harris.

In addition to needing to know the essentials, GA4 comes with a lot of benefits that could make a huge difference to your campaign. “The conversions path report is one of the best parts of GA4 that lets you start to understand the early, mid and late touch point before the conversions happen,” added Harris. “It opens up a lot in terms of understanding activity before the conversions.”

Deep dive: For free information and resources on how to us GA4, read the ‘Google Analytics 4 account training guide and support‘ guide.

Marketers haven’t had the easiest time migrating from Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4.

Some advertisers are so frustrated with the new tool, that they’ve even been holding funerals for UA in the hope that Google might get the message and make a sudden U-turn.

Search Engine Land recently ran a poll to find out how the industry is coping and to give marketers an opportunity to get their voices heard – and the feedback was interesting to say the least.

The enforced switchover is a historic transitional moment in digital marketing history, and we know it’s a big adjustment. But if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry. So with that in mind, we’ve put together a list of the funniest reactions we received to Google’s enforced GA4 switchover. Enjoy!

Short and sweet. Some marketers were able to summarise their experiences with GA4 in just a few words.

• “Mad! Mad! Mad!
• “Total cr*p!”
• “GA4 = LAME!”
• “One word (in fact two words): BS!”
• “What a Waste of our time.”
• GA4 UI team should be fired

“Google should be ashamed!” Marketers certainly know how to articulate their frustrations. They also know how to dish out some pretty epic one liners. We’re so glad we won’t be answering calls on the GA4 customer service desk on Monday.

• “Did they find the software in a Christmas cracker? The biggest pile of sh*t I have ever seen. Unusable for scenario of casual small business owner with a simple question about their stats. I can only conclude that Google deliberately wanted to obfuscate people’s access to their own website data. If it doesn’t get better, considering removing from many customers’ sites because it is just pointless drag on speed stats.”
• “GA4 is potentially the worst product update ever from a pure usability perspective, and Google should be ashamed of its current state.”
• “Google trying to do tableau for dummies is not working on either level.”
• “Simply Put, GA4 Sucks. It is a pain in the a*s to use (NOT USABLE) requires much more time than previous version lacks the same visual impact as GA3 it is junk.”

Mind games. What if Google secretly designed GA4 with a hidden agenda; to get marketers to stop using its own tools and turn to its competition instead? Makes sense. Kinda. Well, not really.

• “This might be the least user-friendly product Google has ever produced. Almost like they don’t want people to use it.”

I’m outta here! A fantastic solution if you’re not a fan of GA4; turn on your Out Of Office, go on vacation and wait for all of this to blow over. Of course, it probably won’t. But definitely a great short-term option.

• “I have been dreading the arrival of this date so much that I booked a trip out of town. LOL. My hope is that by the time I return from vacation, Google will have changed their mind, and Universal Analytics will continue to exist.”

You can’t make me. Alternatively, if you’re not in a position to take a vacation right now, just close your eyes, pretend GA4 isn’t happening and do nothing. What could possibly go wrong?

• “Our marketing department doesn’t have the faintest idea how to follow complex directions. And most of them are out of the office for the next two weeks. So IT kicked the project over to our business insights department, who swiftly said, “We don’t have anything to do with Google Analytics anymore. Talk to Marketing. Now it looks like the project is mine. I’m a one-person department. I’m not gonna do sh*t. That’s my GA4-adjacent sob story.”

Why we care: We’re all in the same boat right now. After 11 years of relying so heavily on Universal Analytics, migrating over to GA4 is a daunting task. But unfortunately, we don’t have a choice (unless you want to consider a GA4 alternative). So we might as well get our heads down and try to figure it all out. But that doesn’t mean we can’t have a laugh along the way.

Universal Analytics, a platform beloved (or at least tolerated) by marketers, died today (July 1) after 11 years.

Although the digital marketing industry had been warned that Google was preparing to turn off its life support, the news has still somehow come as a shock to many.

Heartbroken marketers across the world have been flooding Twitter to pay their respects, with some even holding their own funerals.

Google Analytics was born in November 2005 after Urchin was acquired by Google and became a free service.

Seven years later, the search engine welcomed Universal Analytics into the world – a service that would go on to revolutionise the digital marketing industry.

The platform went on to grow from strength to strength and quickly became the most used web analytics service on Earth thanks to its many key benefits such as offline conversions and flexible session and campaign timeout settings.

Sadly, in March 2022, Google broke the hearts of advertisers in every corner of the globe when it announced that Universal Analytics would be departing our lives forever.

Russell Ketchum, director, product management at Google, fought back tears as he broke the jaw-dropping news:

• “Universal Analytics was built for a generation of online measurement that was anchored in the desktop web, independent sessions and more easily observable data from cookies.”
• “This measurement methodology is quickly becoming obsolete.”

Universal Analytics will be remembered for its user-friendly interface, easily accessible, up-to-date, accurate data, as well as its glorious reporting.

UA leaves behind Google Analytics 4, a replacement tool that marketers just seem to absolutely adore.

Share your stories, memories and the fun times you had with our departed friend by tweeting us @searchengineland.

Rest in peace, Universal Analytics. You were good to us.

Universal Analytics: 2012-2023.

Well, it’s finally happening – the dreaded Universal Analytics sunset has started.

Here in the United States, UA is still processing data, but we were greeted by an ominous message when we logged into our account this morning:

• “This property is scheduled to stop processing data very soon. Once this goes into effect, you’ll need a Google Analytics 4 property to measure website performance.”

This warning started appearing on UA at around 7am EST, once again reminding marketers that they must migrate to Google Analytics 4 to maintain their website measurement.

Why we care. Today’s forced migration to GA4 is a historic transitional moment in digital marketing. Advertisers now have no choice but to use GA4 if they to track the performance of their websites and campaigns – unless they want to find an analytics alternative outside of Google of course.

How it works. Google has advised that today’s UA shutdown is being rolled out in stages which is why some marketers may still be able to access certain data. However, all properties that are still functioning are in a queue to be deleted, which will be happening on a rolling bases.

What has Google said? Google has been warning marketers that they need to migrate over to GA4 for more than a year. On Twitter and via a statement on the Analytics Help Center, Google said:

• “Today, we begin shutting down Universal Analytics as we welcome you to Google Analytics 4.
• “This will not happen overnight, so some Universal Analytics properties may continue to process data.
• “However, all properties have now been added to the queue, and those that have not completed the upgrade will Jumpstart on a rolling basis.”
• Google Analytics 4 is our next-generation measurement solution, and it has replaced Universal Analytics.”
• “Standard Universal Analytics properties have stopped processing new data. To maintain your website measurement, you’ll need a Google Analytics 4 property.
• “We strongly encourage you to make the switch to Google Analytics 4 as soon as possible. If you use Universal Analytics data in your Google Ads account, make sure you migrate your Universal Analytics property’s Google Ads links to your Google Analytics 4 property.

Timeline. The shutdown of Universal Analytics is being rolled out the following stages, with the final phase set for July 2023:

• March 2023: Google automatically created a GA4 property for marketers who didn’t opt out of the automatic property creation option. Where possible, existing site tags were used.
• July 2023: UA stops processing hits, including standard properties in accounts that also contain 360 properties. Marketers still have access to previously processed data in their UA property until July 2024.
• July 2024: All marketers, even those with 360 properties, will no longer have access to the UA user interface and API.

Deep dive: For more information on how to migrate to GA4, read Google’s ‘Learn how to make the switch‘ guide.

In just 48 hours we received around 400 responses to our poll question about Google Analytics 4.

With the standard version of Universal Analytics sunsetting tomorrow (July 1), we asked you:

What level of readiness are you (and/or your team) at when it comes to switching to GA4 from Universal Analytics?

Despite plenty of frustration:

• Almost a quarter of respondents said they have fully implemented and already are using GA4.
• Just over half said they had implemented it but were still learning how to use it.
• Almost 16% have it set up but have not started using it.

The takeaway from those statistics: more than 90% of our joint readership is aboard the GA4 train, for better or worse.

• Only 2.6% of respondents said they had no plans to use GA4.
• 4.6% have just not set it up yet.

Why we care. At first glance, this looks like a vote of confidence in Google’s analytics strategy. After all, there are plenty of alternatives to GA4. But it’s not that simple.

Rightly or wrongly, it’s possible to adopt a tool even though you really don’t like it.

“An unfinished product rushed to market.”

“It’s not that the masses aren’t ready for GA4, it’s that GA4 isn’t ready for the masses. The UI is terrible.”

“Terrible UI, terrible reporting.”

Selected comments from poll respondents.

We might need to wait a while to see if people can make GA4 work for them or if frustrations with it start to make the alternatives look more attractive.

YouTube is disabling videos for people using ad blockers as part of a new trial.

The social media platform is asking users to either turn ad blockers off or pay £11.99 a month for YouTube Premium if they want access to its extensive video library.

Why we care. If this trial is expanded to the general population, all YouTube users, who want to continue watching videos for free, will be forced into allowing ads to play. This is great news for marketers as it will increase reach for campaigns, which ultimately, could result in more conversions.

How it works. Right now, the trial is being tested on a small group of people around the world that have ad blockers enabled. When they sign in to watch content, all videos will be blocked unless they either change their settings to disallow ad blocker or they sign up for YouTube Premium.

What has YouTube said? Oluwa Falodun, a spokesperson for Google, told The Verge in a statement:

• “Ad blocker detection is not new, and other publishers regularly ask viewers to disable ad blockers.”
• “We take disabling playback very seriously, and will only disable playback if viewers ignore repeated requests to allow ads on YouTube.”
• “In cases when viewers feel they have been falsely flagged as using an ad blocker, they can share this feedback by clicking on the link in the prompt.”
• “We want to inform viewers that ad blockers violate YouTube’s Terms of Service, and make it easier for them to allow ads on YouTube or try YouTube Premium for an ad free experience,” 

Why now? YouTube has said that it is taking these measures to ensure that its content creators are compensated for their work. “YouTube’s ad-supported model supports a diverse ecosystem of creators, and provides billions of people globally access to content for free with ads,” the company said in a statement.

Deep dive: For more information on YouTube’s ad policy, you can visit the YouTube Advertising hub.

I’ll be blunt. Google Analytics 4 has caused agencies and businesses plenty of headaches in the past year.

The only guarantee over the next few weeks is that it will get worse before it gets better. 

The sunsetting of Universal Analytics is tomorrow, July 1 (and may have already passed by the time you are reading this). 

Many businesses are in for a shock when they start looking at their GA4 reports as their source of truth if they haven’t already. Spoiler: most haven’t yet!

There’s no doubt that GA4 offers many new reports and insights that UA struggled with (user funnel reporting) or flat out couldn’t provide (hello, data-driven attribution and predictive analytics!).

But those accustomed to using UA reporting for several years must adapt very quickly.

Where did my reports go?

Although you can go deeper into Google Ads campaign metrics once you become comfortable, more custom reporting is required than exploring similar data in UA. 

In UA, there is a Google Ads tab in the acquisition reporting section which is easy to access. There’s a bit more of a workaround in GA4, with similar out-of-the-box reports hidden away as an acquisition card. 

But to take advantage of advanced GA4 Google Ads reporting, this will be managed in the new Explore section. Not a big deal to get your head around, but for those who aren’t on the platform each day, this could be a struggle to get up to speed with. 

For the more advanced PPC marketers and data analysts, we’ve encountered a few issues when linking up certain fields to our Looker Studio dashboards. 

Source/medium and ecommerce conversion rate data (among others) are not out-of-the-box metrics that can be synced across unless you’re comfortable creating custom fields. 

Thus, many advertisers who aren’t will bypass such metrics. 

Scheduled reports are also gone (as of typing), so those businesses that received their daily/weekly/monthly reports straight into their morning inboxes have to find another solution.

The good news here is that Google has released more and more out-of-the-box reporting in the past year, so they have listened to these concerns and are acting. 

If you are still struggling with replicating similar reports and dashboards, custom reports aren’t rocket science.

Freelancers or agency PPC pros can leverage that extra skill set of new report creation that in-house marketing teams took for granted for years. 

Another bow in their cap and a necessary learning curve if you want to benefit from the new reporting suite that GA4 has to offer. 

Where there is disruption, there is opportunity.

Not so fast

Those of us who are in Google Analytics a bit too much and staring at real-time reports for large parts of the day are in for disappointment.

There is a 24-48 hour delay on all other reports without the intervention of BigQuery. 

This will be a consequence of the move away from last click to data-driven attribution. 

We do see this issue within the Google Ads interface with its delayed conversion reporting.

But for marketing executives who want to see the early impact of their 24-hour flash sale or how the first day of their Black Friday sale is going (oh, how fun that will be when November rolls around), they will have to wait a bit longer. 

And even when reports start to pull through, we won’t see complete data because of time lag.

This may be a blessing in disguise for PPC marketers whose clients love a good old next-day, 24-hour report.

Focusing on new features in the new real-time report, such as user snapshots and comparisons, could be an effective distraction tactic. 

Alternatively, if the client needs reporting to be more instantaneous, then the solution is leveraging the streaming export within BigQuery. 

It will provide next-to-precise, real-time data, which you can populate through Looker Studio dashboards during those key sale periods and events.

Just one big event

As I’m sure you already know, GA4 is all about the event. 

We say goodbye to UA’s page hits, ecommerce hits, social interactions hits, etc. and say hello, exclusively, to an event-based world. 

Events represent a fundamental data model difference between UA and GA4 properties. With that, we’ll miss a fundamental UA metric in pageviews. Sessions are king here. 

The death of the pageview means that other key UA metrics, such as bounce rate, will be calculated differently. 

UA bounce rate is when a session only has one page view, while GA4 bounce rate is the inverse of an engagement rate (new metric to GA4). 

So year-on-year comparisons are next to pointless, given they are worked out completely differently (which many people won’t know). 

These metrics are key to many businesses. To make the most of GA4, focus on similar or alternative metrics that are unique to the platform (e.g., engagement rate). 

By aligning these metrics with your objectives and identifying their value, you can shift the goalposts in your favor. 

This approach allows you to leverage the power of GA4 to your advantage rather than letting it become a stumbling block.

Drive that data

Data-driven attribution is the new default attribution model within GA4. 

This will cause disruptions (due to slower standard report generation) and discrepancies in channel reporting.

But in the grand scheme of things, it is absolutely the more accurate method of disseminating credit for conversions. 

Data-driven attribution is not perfect. (It is still a bit too “black box” and reliant on trusting Google for my liking). 

However, it is a much better reflection of the complex user journey spread across multiple digital touchpoints than the last click could handle.

Although data-driven attribution is new to Google Analytics, it’s not new to Google. 

It has been the default attribution model in Google Ads for at least the past year and has been around for years. 

Google Ads and GA4 data-driven attribution differ because Google Ads will only attribute across different Google channels, while GA4 will expand across all channels. 

At the very least, businesses will be familiar with how this works and why they get the odd conversion that comes through, which isn’t a whole number. (I still get asked this regularly.)

Embracing the learning curve

There’s no denying that once we all get used to GA4 and accept UA in its new role as the ghost of data past, we will be all the better for it. 

GA4 is a much more sophisticated, data-driven, privacy-centric tool than UA, and it’s long overdue. 

Because the jump from Google’s third web analytics iteration to its fourth was much larger than any of its preceding migrations, the pain points will be harder and learning curves will be more exaggerated. 

Patience is required and businesses will need to rise from the inertia of past reporting to move ahead and embrace this new dawn of data analysis. 

PPC marketers will need to guide and educate them along the way. Persist through continuous emails from company executives demanding to know why page views are down and why bounce rate has increased so much. 

Like you are showing your mom or dad how to use a smartphone for the first time and explaining to them that 5G doesn’t control minds, move forward and show them the promised land of GA4. They will love you for it and never look back.

PPC advertising can be a game-changing tool for small businesses looking to kickstart sales or increase brand awareness. Unfortunately, it’s also extremely easy to overspend if you aren’t careful. 

When your budget is tight, it’s crucial that you set yourself up for success when creating a PPC account.

Just a couple of bad months of PPC spending can be the difference between growing or shutting your doors forever. 

So, before you start throwing money at Google Ads or Microsoft Advertising, read these five essential tips for PPC bidding on a budget.

1. Set clear goals and base the account around them

One of the best things about PPC advertising is that there are ways to meet any business’s goals.

You can choose from many different campaign types and bidding options, and there’s numerous Google platforms you can advertise on. 

When your budget limits you, it’s paramount that you figure out what your primary objective is and create campaigns that help you achieve that goal

Are you looking to build more awareness for your brand? Display and YouTube are great options to do just that. 

Maybe you’re an ecommerce company looking to drive more purchases and revenue. Then consider search and shopping campaigns. 

These campaigns work best when they’re working together and driving a full-funnel strategy. But when the budget is tight, it’s time to cut out the secondary strategies and focus on driving results. 

2. Make your campaigns simple and specific

When creating your PPC campaigns, it’s important to be specific. 

You want your ads to be as relevant as possible to users’ search queries.

It’s important to structure your campaigns and ad groups so that your ads cater to the keywords you’ve chosen.

Let’s use an apparel company as an example. They sell all types of clothing, but want to focus on T-shirts and denim pants. 

I want my ads to be as relevant to the user’s search as possible, so I create campaigns and ad groups based on the type of clothing:

• Campaign: T-shirts
  • Ad Group: T-shirts
  • Ad Group: Women’s T-shirts
  • Ad Group: Men’s T-shirt
  • Ad Group: Kid’s T-shirt
• Campaign: Denim Pants
  • Ad Group: Denim Pants
  • Ad Group: Women’s Denim Pants
  • Ad Group: Men’s Denim Pants
  • Ad Group: Kid’s Denim Pants

Setting up your campaigns this way accomplishes two things: 

The first is that it’s incredibly simple and easy to understand. If I look at the performance data for all of these ad groups, I can very easily tell: 

• Which types of products are performing well (T-shirts or denim pants).
• Which demographic our product is most popular with (women, men, kids etc). 

This makes optimization much easier than if all of these products were lumped into one or two ad groups.

The second is that each ad group listed above will have keywords and ads specific to their category. 

So, if someone searches for “kid’s T-shirts,” the ad that will show to them will be about kid’s T-shirts and direct them to a landing page with kid’s T-shirts. 

If we just had one ad group for T-shirts, our ads would have to be much more generic and would be less likely to lead to a purchase.

3. Use long-tail keywords

PPC advertising is an auction-based platform, where advertisers bid to show their ads on searches for specified keywords and the ad space goes to the highest bidder. 

Like real-life auctions, winning is much easier when you have a lot of money. Go figure! 

So, if you have less money than other people at the auction, how do you win? Simple, you go for the prizes that fewer people are bidding on. 

In paid search, we call these long-tail keywords: keywords that have more qualifying words and have lower search volume. Let’s look at an example:

Close your eyes and imagine that you own a business specializing in creating custom stickers. OK, open your eyes so you can continue reading, but don’t stop imagining. 

You want to generate more sales through paid advertising, but you only have $1,500 monthly to devote to it. 

You do a bit of keyword research with Google’s Keyword Planner, and here’s what you find:

You’re first thought is, “let’s see how many people search for stickers every month.” 

And wow, 165,000 is a lot of people! 

But, to show up at the top of the page for that search, you may need to pay as much as $8.29 for one click. With a $1,500 budget, that’s only 180 clicks to try and get your brand out there. 

If you’d choose to get more specific with your keyword choices and focus on bumper stickers, then the average monthly search volume drops significantly – but so does the estimated cost per bid. 

With a $4.49 cost per click, you can generate 334 clicks with your budget. That’s nearly double the clicks just by being a bit more specific with your keywords.

Taking it one step further with “custom bumper stickers” and “design your own bumper stickers” will lower the monthly searches even more, but their intent is much more specific. 

If someone searches for “bumper stickers,” they could mean they want to create a custom bumper sticker.

But they could also just be looking to purchase a specific bumper or they could be researching the origin of bumper stickers. 

On the other hand, the intent of “design your own bumper stickers” couldn’t be clearer. 

Bidding on long-tail keywords saves you money and increases your chance of conversion.

4. Keep your location targeting limited

Location targeting is an easily overlooked but important factor when trying to succeed on a limited budget, especially if you’re an online business. 

If you have the capability to serve customers across the United States or another country, you may be tempted to do so. 

However, unless your business is in a niche market, your budget may not be large enough to serve the entire country. 

Instead, you’d be better served to put that budget toward your highest-performing markets.

Let’s revisit my sticker company from earlier. For the sake of the example, let’s imagine this company is based in Seattle and ships all across the U.S. 

Search volume for sticker-related keywords is way too much for my $1,500 per month to cover, so I want to get more strategic in where I show my ads. 

Looking at shipping costs alone, it’s much cheaper for me to ship my products to the west coast than shipping to the east coast. 

As a Washington-based company, I also have more brand awareness in my area and customers are more likely to know me and do business with me than someone based in Florida. 

So, to save me some money and increase the chances of conversions, I’m going to set up my campaigns to show to customers in the western U.S.

5. Don’t set it and forget it

Over the years, Google has made it exponentially easier to set up a campaign with automated bidding and auto-apply recommendations.

Advertisers can have a decent amount of success with no further work needed – this is a good thing!

Using Google Ads shouldn’t be so confusing and complicated that you need to be a marketing professional to manage it. 

However, you’re leaving money on the table if you set up your campaigns and let them run with zero ongoing management.

Once your campaigns start running and gathering data, you should, at the very least, check in on:

• How much your campaigns are spending compared to your monthly budget.
• Which keywords are performing well and which are not. 

Removing non-performing keywords is an incredibly simple way to continually improve performance over time.

Small budget, big results

PPC advertising can be a valuable tool for small businesses with limited budgets, but it requires careful planning and execution to avoid overspending. 

By implementing these tips, small businesses can maximize their chances of success while ensuring their budget is utilized wisely. 

With ongoing management, PPC can be a game-changing tool for driving growth and achieving your business objectives.

Google is broadly rolling out brand exclusions in Performance Max and broad match brand restrictions in Search to all advertisers.

Following successful pilots for both, the search engine announced that the move would help marketers with guiding Google AI and where their campaigns appear online.

Up until now, both features were only available in beta.

Why we care: Brand restrictions with broad match will help marketers increase the reach of their campaigns, while brand restrictions give marketers control over their Performance Max campaigns. By using these settings, advertisers can increase the reach of their campaigns and take steps to stop their ads from serving branded queries they may wish to avoid on Search.

What has Google said? A Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land:

• “[Advertisers can] expand the reach of your brand campaigns with new brand restrictions for broad match. Broad match gives you the most relevant reach and conversions within your performance goals.”
• “In the past, it may have been difficult to use broad match in campaigns with specific brand needs. That’s why we’re rolling out brand restrictions. This new feature will help you get the additional reach of broad match, while ensuring it is only matching to relevant brand traffic that you’ve specified.”

Why now? The general rollout comes just two weeks after Google started testing its automatically created assets feature on Performance Max campaigns. Google launched the pilot after receiving feedback from marketers who wanted more control when it comes to brand traffic. Google decided to expand the initiative following a successful trial.

Go deeper: You can read Google’s Brand Settings for Search and Performance Max guide for more information.

Facebook has updated its resource explaining how it ranks content across its website, including Feed, Stories and Reels.

Meta has also announced new tools and features for improved transparency on the social network, which will better assist marketers.

Why we care. Marketers and advertisers need a strong understanding of how Facebook ranks content in order for them to make informed decisions about their campaigns to achieve maximum visibility and engagement.

What’s new? Meta published a number of new features designed to provide greater clarity on its ranking factors via its digital newsroom:

• System Cards: Facebook has created 14 system cards to help marketers understand how Facebook uses AI to rank content and create feeds that are tailored to individuals. The cards also explain how individuals can control what they see.
• ‘Why Am I Seeing This?’: Meta is expanding this feature to Facebook Reels in the coming weeks. It enables people to understand how their previous activity on the site has influenced what content AI is currently deeming relevant to them and subsequently serving on their accounts.
• ‘Show more, show less’: Facebook plans to make this feature, which is currently available on all posts in Feeds, Videos and Reels via the three-dot-menu, more prominent.
• Meta’s Content Library and API: Facebook plans to roll out a new suite of tools for researchers called Meta’s Content Library and API in the next few weeks. The new library is set to include data from public posts, pages, groups, and events on the social networking site.

System cards

Facebook’s new system cards are the biggest update to its resource center. This system consists of 14 cards:

• Feed: Facebook uses AI to calculate a relevance score for about 500 posts and then ranks them in descending order. The system is built to show a variety of content in the feed, meaning a user shouldn’t see multiple video posts in a row.
• Feed Ranked Comments: AI ranks comments in order of what it deems will be most relevant to each user. It does this by examining factors such as how popular other comments are and whether they have been published by someone in their network.
• Feed Recommendations: AI will determine what content users are most likely to engage with by looking at factors such as groups they have recently joined and posts they have liked. It then uses this information to decide what content (e.g., posts, reels, live videos) to recommend.
• Reels: AI selects what reels are served and in what order by determining what a user is most likely to be interested in. It makes these predictions by examining factors such as accounts the user has followed, liked or recently engaged with.
• Stories: The AI system automatically shows Stories from people or pages by predicting what a user most likely to be interested in. The system also applies rules to make sure users are served a balanced mix of content in Stories.
• People You May Know: AI tried to determine people who may be of interest by looking at factors such as people who are friends with a user’s friends or people that are in the same groups as the user.
• Video: When users view and interact with Facebook Video, one of the underlying AI systems delivers a range of video types that may match their preferences. This content is found in the Video tab. It might include reels, music, gaming or shows. This is content users may be interested in from creators that they may not follow.
• Marketplace: When a user views and interacts with Facebook, including Facebook Marketplace feed, one of the underlying AI systems recommends relevant Marketplace listings. For example, users can see items for sale in categories such as home goods, pet supplies and sporting goods. Users’ feeds might also include other recommendations, such as sellers and content that they may be interested in.
• Notifications: AI chooses what notifications to send and ranks notifications in order of what it deems will be most relevant to the user. Meanwhile, previously viewed notifications are displayed in the order in which they were received.
• Search: AI awards each potential search result a score relating to how relevant that content is to a user by examining factors such as content type. It will then serve users the results in order of relevancy based on this scoring
• Groups Feed: AI automatically determines which posts appear in the Groups feed, and in what order, by scoring content by relevancy.
• Individual Group Feed: AI predicts what content users are most likely to engage with and then ranks it according to relevancy in their individual group feed. Relevancy factors include what and whom users have recently followed, liked or engaged with.
• Suggested Group: Facebook’s AI will look at factors such as groups a user’s friends are members of and related topics to products a user may have recently engaged with, then use this data to identify other groups that may be of interest.
• Pages You May Like: AI will suggest pages to follow based on pages a user’s friends have recently liked or pages that might relate to products and posts the user has recently engaged with.

Meta’s Content Library and API

Another big update to Facebook’s resource center is Meta’s new Content Library and API. The database is set to include data from:

• Public posts
• Pages
• Groups
• Events

People will be able to use the library to search, explore and filter on a graphical user interface or through a programmatic API.

However, under current guidelines, this tool has been set up specifically for researchers from qualified academic and research institutions pursuing scientific or public interest research topics. In order to gain access to this data, researchers will need to apply.

Personalizing the user experience

Facebook confirmed that in addition to providing greater transparency into its ranking factors, it also wanted to give users the tools to take back control of the content they see – for example, the ‘Why Am I Seeing This?” feature.

These tools give Facebook users the ability to shape their own experiences, and choose what what they do and don’t want to see. People can make changes by visiting their Feed Preferences on Facebook as well as through Settings.

What has Facebook said? Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of Global Affairs, shared details on the Meta digital newsroom about how AI is ranking content and how it’ll be easier for users to control what they see moving forward. He said:

• “[Our AI] systems make it more likely that the posts you see are relevant and interesting to you. We’re also making it clearer how you can better control what you see on our apps, as well as testing new controls and making others more accessible. And we’re giving more detailed information for experts so they can better understand and analyze our systems.”
• “Our AI systems predict how valuable a piece of content might be to you, so we can show it to you sooner. For example, sharing a post is often an indicator that you found that post to be interesting, so predicting that you will share a post is one factor our systems take into account.”
• “As you might imagine, no single prediction is a perfect gauge of whether a post is valuable to you. So we use a wide variety of predictions in combination to get as close as possible to the right content, including some based on behavior and some based on user feedback received through surveys.”
• “We hope by introducing these products to researchers early in the development process, we can receive constructive feedback to ensure we’re building the best possible tools to meet their needs”.

Deep dive: You can find a more detailed explanation of the AI behind content recommendations on the Meta AI blog. For more information on how AI uses signals to make predictions, you can visit Meta’s  Transparency Center.