Predictive Google Ads – Tipps und Tricks

In recent years, advertising with Google Ads has become a significant challenge due to increasing competition, tracking restrictions, and constantly changing regulations. Therefore, marketing experts are searching for every little advantage to stand out and improve campaign performance. This is where predictive Google Ads play a significant role.

Google Ads and Predictive Analytics?

Predictive Google Ads are part of a larger topic: Predictive Marketing and Predictive Analytics. Nowadays, companies gather information about their customers and the market from countless sources. Data is collected, for example, from the website, newsletters, purchase histories, store visits, reports, etc. Predictive Marketing focuses on continuously collecting and analyzing this data to develop data-driven marketing strategies that predict customer behavior and preferences.

How is this done? Through a continuous and detailed process that begins and ends with data. This includes many steps, which can be summarized as:

Data Collection:

What data do we need and how do we collect it?

Data Analysis:

Cleaning data to ensure its reliability, and analyzing the data to determine customer characteristics and behavior patterns.

Customer Segmentation:

Dividing customers into different segments based on shared characteristics, behaviors, and business value.

Predictive Modeling:

Creating forecasts with clear structure and solid concept to predict future changes in customer behavior and interests.

Measurement and Optimization:

After conducting campaigns, reviewing and analyzing results, and repeating the process to refine each step based on new information.

The goal of the entire process is to perfectly optimize the marketing strategy to effectively and efficiently target each customer group throughout each phase of the customer lifecycle in the business funnel.
A good example of predictive marketing is personalized campaigns like birthday emails. However, any campaign that anticipates certain behaviors in the future based on past data, such as seasonal campaigns, is an example of predictive marketing.

Figure 1: Birthdays for personalized campaigns (www.campaignmonitor.com)

The aforementioned predictive Google Ads generally follow the same process and tactics to predict the performance of future campaigns. We would like to share some simple tips we apply at internetwarriors to implement this in our work.

New Companies:

Data is the core of predictive marketing. However, new companies or products may not have previous data that could help them in making predictions. Nevertheless, there are some tools that can help make an informed guess about the performance of your campaigns. In this article, we focus only on free and easy-to-use tools readily available in the Google Ads account.

Google Trends:

This tool by Google is excellent for getting an initial general idea of the level of interest in a particular product, area, industry, company, etc. It provides general data about seasonality and behavior changes over a specific period in the past.

Google Keyword Planner:

Similar to Google Trends, this tool shows how search volume for certain keywords develops and changes over time. However, it can also make predictions about the expected performance of certain campaigns using these keywords with specific goals, budgets, etc.

Google Performance Planner:

This tool requires some historical data. Depending on the campaign type and goals, it can provide performance predictions after a few weeks of runtime. The more data available, the better the predictions.

These three tools are just a small glimpse into the many tools that can help you predict the future when starting a new company or when still in the exploration phase. However, their accuracy should be taken with caution, as they tend to be generic and not focused on your own business and customers.

Established Companies:

The biggest advantage of an established company is having plenty of historical data and information about customers and their behavior. Such data can help determine the exact main and off-seasons, as well as predict the daily performance of your Google Ads campaigns, the number of conversions you should achieve on certain days, and whether you need to plan and allocate your budget differently.

Web Analytics:

Today, it is expected that anyone working with Google Ads already has a very strong web analytics structure. There are some free tools like the standard version of Google Analytics, as well as some paid ones tailored to your business needs. Any good web analytics tool and structure you have must serve your business needs and provide enough information to improve your main goals and KPIs.

It is important when analyzing web analytics data to look at the big picture like yearly seasonality, but also very detailed aspects of individual products or sectors. For instance, different products might have different seasonal periods compared to general business seasons.

Google Ads Script:

Google Ads Scripts can offer great possibilities for monitoring, automation, analysis, identifying market trends and issues, etc. You do need some programming experience to create them, but there are many pre-made reports that can help you accomplish your tasks effortlessly. The Black Friday Predictor by Jack Felstead is one of my personal favorites.

Figure 2: Conversion Rate trend from Black Friday Predictor (Jack Felstead)

It uses historical data from your Google Ads campaigns from the past two years to predict campaign performance in the upcoming days of the current year. So far, it has been quite accurate, but nothing can be 100% precise, as market behavior and Google Ads can change at any time due to many factors like changes in algorithms, economic situations, shifts in competition, etc.

AI Tools:

The AI revolution has the potential to be your biggest Google Ads asset. It can write ads, find keywords, analyze performance, and, of course, predict the future. A tool like ChatGPT can provide similar results to the analysis work with web analytics or the predictions of Google Ads Scripts, but instead of taking days, weeks (sometimes maybe months or years) to produce meaningful results, it can reduce the process to a few minutes if you provide it with a simple data source like an Excel sheet.

Conclusion - Predictive Google Ads for Your Strategy

In conclusion, predictive Google Ads and the associated marketing strategy are essential for success in today's digital advertising landscape. Both new and established companies can equally benefit from the tools and techniques presented. It is crucial to recognize the value of data and use it effectively for more precise predictions and targeted campaigns. The combination of traditional tools like Google Trends and Google Keyword Planner with advanced technologies such as AI and Google Ads Scripts offers a powerful platform to enhance campaign performance and optimize marketing efforts. It is important to constantly adapt to the dynamic nature of digital marketing and be prepared to incorporate new approaches to secure a competitive advantage.

We can support you in creating the right strategy and utilizing the tools that suit you best.

Contact us to effectively achieve your company's advertising goals and strengthen your presence in the digital space.