Google Ads For Manufacturers: Complete Guide

Google Ads is an indispensable digital marketing tool for manufacturing businesses working to enhance their brand’s online visibility and generate qualified leads. For manufacturers, leveraging Google Ads effectively can significantly boost brand awareness, increase website traffic and ultimately drive sales. 

Navigating the intricacies of Google Ads requires a strategic approach tailored to the unique needs of the industry. In this comprehensive guide, we'll explore the top tips and best practices specifically designed to help manufacturers maximize the impact of their Google Ads campaigns.

Before diving into the specifics of Google Ads optimization, it's essential to gain a clear understanding of the digital landscape where manufacturers operate.

The manufacturing industry is highly competitive, with companies vying for attention in a crowded marketplace. Moreover, the buying journey is often long. It involves extensive customer research and consideration, making it crucial for manufacturers to engage potential customers at every stage of the decision-making process.

Additionally, it’s important to understand what advertising capabilities are available on the Google Ads platform.

Google Ads allows advertisers to select different campaign objectives, conversion tracking metrics and ad types. For example, selecting a “brand awareness” campaign objective will help the platform optimize your ads towards that goal while selecting a “leads” campaign objective will signal the platform to optimize for that goal. Advertisers are also able to target specific audiences, build and import custom audience lists from CRMs or retargeting tracking, set budgets, create ad schedules and more within the platform.

With so many different platform settings to consider, it’s easy to get overwhelmed even before the ad creation step. Google Ads offers free account performance consultations with a Google representative to help guide and optimize campaign performance. Keep in mind that often these reps are disconnected from your manufacturer’s unique advertising goals and may offer advice that better serves Google Ads rather than your business’s budget.

For this reason, it’s best to hire a paid advertising specialist who understands how to make the platform perform best within your business’s budget. Consulting Google Ads’ in-platform tools like Keyword Planner and Performance Planner can also give you a personalized forecast of how your campaign is projected to perform and what adjustments you can make to improve your return on investment.

After identifying the goal of your campaign (ie leads, brand awareness, website traffic..etc), the next step is to choose the type of campaign that will best deliver your desired results.

Google Ads offers the following campaign types:

• Display
• Search
• YouTube/Video
• Demand Gen
• In-App
• Shopping
• Local
• Performance Max
• Smart

Each of these campaign types will serve your ads in different locations on the internet and offer you or your paid advertising specialist different options for campaign setup and ad creation.

When choosing a campaign type, knowing where your manufacturer’s ideal audience spends the most time and money online will narrow your choices. Similarly, knowing the strengths of each campaign type will help you match the best one with your business’s overall campaign objective. Here is an article from Google about the different campaign types.

Now, let’s explore a few best practices that manufacturers should follow to create a high-performing Google Ads campaign.

Keywords form the foundation of any successful Google Ads campaign. For manufacturers, selecting the right, high-volume keywords is paramount to reaching a relevant audience.

Begin by conducting thorough keyword research to identify terms and phrases that align with your products and target market. Focus on long-tail keywords that reflect specific product attributes, benefits or use cases, as these are more likely to attract qualified leads with high purchase intent.

Here are a few tools to utilize when conducting keyword research:

• Google Ads Keyword Planner
• Answer the Public
• Google Search Console

Remember, just because a keyword is high-volume doesn’t mean it will automatically serve your manufacturer’s campaign goals well. Identifying the user’s intent behind searching for a high-volume keyword will go a long way in choosing high-volume and highly effective keywords.

For example: if your manufacturing business is running a campaign to drive more traffic to its website, targeting keywords like “what is manufacturing” or “how to start a  manufacturing business” might not be the best choice (unless you have blogs written about those specific topics) since those keywords are higher in the sales funnel and may not result in meaningful actions taken on the site.

Targeting keywords like “X product manufacturers near me” or “affordable manufacturers” would be better choices because they indicate higher user intent which can result in more time spent on the website and more valuable actions taken.

Leveraging keyword research tools and knowledge of your manufacturing business’s ideal audience will generate a high-performing list of keywords that will serve your campaign’s goals well.

Once you've identified your target keywords, it's time to craft a compelling ad that entices users to click.

What constitutes a compelling ad will differ depending on your chosen campaign type. A YouTube/Video campaign will require a different set of creative best practices than a Display campaign. However, there are universal guidelines to follow when creating a compelling ad regardless of campaign type:

• Highlight the unique features and benefits of your manufacturing business.
• Address pain points or challenges that your manufacturer’s target audience may be facing and how your business can solve them.
• Incorporate relevant keywords into headlines and descriptions to improve ad relevance and quality score.
• Use creative elements within videos and images that speak directly to your target audience and that they can easily see themselves within.

Don’t forget to create different size (or video length) ads so that Google can show the ads in multiple different placements for maximum reach.

Ad extensions are powerful tools that allow you to enhance your manufacturing ads with additional information and features. For manufacturers, relevant ad extensions may include site link extensions directing users to specific product pages, callout extensions highlighting key product attributes or benefits and structured snippets showcasing different product categories or applications.

By leveraging ad extensions effectively, you can provide users with more comprehensive information, make clicks easier and more enticing and increase the likelihood of conversion.

Geotargeting enables you to display your manufacturing ads to users based on their geographic location, allowing you to reach potential customers in specific regions or markets.

For manufacturers targeting local or regional markets, geotargeting can be particularly effective in driving foot traffic to physical stores or attracting leads within a defined service area. Refine your geotargeting settings based on factors such as location demographics, proximity to distribution centers and market demand.

Make sure to personalize each region’s ad copy and creative so that the ads speak directly to that area’s manufacturing needs and buyer demographics.

A well-optimized landing page is essential for converting clicks into conversions. Ensure that your landing pages are closely aligned with your ad messaging and offer a seamless user experience.

Highlight key product features, benefits and specifications, accompanied by compelling visuals that showcase your in action. Incorporate clear calls to action prompting users to take the next step, whether it's requesting a quote, downloading a product brochure or contacting a sales representative.

Attaching a landing page to your ads rather than a page of your website allows for a more seamless user experience, superior tracking and bot filtering.

Continuous campaign monitoring and optimization are critical for maximizing the effectiveness of your Google Ads campaigns.

Regularly review key performance metrics such as click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate and cost per acquisition (CPA) to identify areas for improvement. A|B test different ad creatives, targeting options and bidding strategies to determine what combination resonates most with your target audience and provides the most impactful reach. By analyzing data and iterating your approach, you can refine your campaigns over time and achieve better results.

Remarketing (sometimes called retargeting) allows you to re-engage users who have previously visited your website but did not complete a desired action, such as making a purchase or requesting more information. For manufacturers, remarketing can be a valuable tactic for staying top-of-mind with potential customers as they continue their lengthy research and evaluation process.

Segment your remarketing audiences based on factors such as pages visited, products viewed or stage in the sales funnel and tailor your ads’ messaging accordingly to encourage return visits and conversions.

Finally, manufacturers need to ensure compliance with industry regulations and guidelines when running Google Ads campaigns. Depending on the specific products being advertised, certain restrictions or limitations may apply, particularly regarding claims related to performance, safety or environmental impact. Familiarize yourself with relevant regulations such as those set forth by regulatory bodies like OSHA or ASTM, and ensure that your ad content adheres to legal and ethical standards.

Google Ads has its own set of advertising policies that affect which destination links can be attached to ads, copy formatting (ie punctuation marks and capitalization), sensitive demographic targeting and ad file and dimension size. Familiarize yourself with Google Ads ad policies here before creating a campaign.

Stay focused on delivering compelling messaging, providing value to your audience and continuously refining your campaign approach based on data and insights. With the right strategy and execution, Google Ads can catalyze success in the competitive world of marketing.

Venveo specializes in building growth-oriented marketing strategies for companies. Check out our digital marketing services for manufacturing companies or contact us to learn more about how we can help grow your manufacturing business online.