Google Ads is the platform on which you can create and manage advertisements on Google’s channels. This includes Search Engine Advertising (SEA), YouTube ads, display ads and more.
This is an extremely useful tool for venue organisers. As you can imagine, your target audience uses Google as a search engine frequently to find upcoming events they are interested in. SEA, which enables you to show ads on the Google search results page, is then a valuable channel for many event organisers. Beyond this, YouTube and display ads allow you to reach your audiences on high-traffic sources.
Set up your Google Ads account
First and foremost, you’ll need to create a Google Ads account. You can use the sign-up guide provided by Google’s help center for this.
It’s also useful to connect Google Analytics with Google Ads, so you can view more in-depth the performance of your Google Ads conversion, and re-engage users based on their behaviour in your ticket shop. Follow this article from Google Ads to read more on this.
What can you do in Google Ads?
You’ve now set up Google Ads. Great! The next step would be to set up a Google Ads campaign. Of course, Google has a great step-by-step guide to setting up a campaign.
A few tips from us:
First ask yourself, what do you want to achieve from this campaign? Do you want to sell tickets? Or promote your brand?
Set smart keywords/key phrases for your search ad campaign that relate to your venue and what your audiences want. Of course, you can choose keywords that are popular like Billie Eilish, but you will then be competing with giant event businesses, and you’ll need to pay more to get clicks for this keyword.
With online tracking setup in your Stager ticket shop, you can set up remarketing campaigns in Google Ads that target those who have already visited your ticket shop or website. This means you are directly targeting people who have shown an interest in your venue or a certain event, which makes them more likely to buy a ticket.
When making a campaign in Google Ads, you can create an audience segment that includes your website visitors. You can do this by following this guide from Google.
After making this audience segment, you’ll need to add a conversion ID to Stager, via Google Tag Manager. If you are using client-side tracking with the Afdeling Online container, then you can follow the steps outlined on this page. If you are using server-side tracking, then we recommend you follow the steps outlined by TAGGRS on their help center here.
If you want further help in setting up Google Ads campaigns and more online marketing initiatives, we suggest you reach out to Afdeling Online, a marketing agency with many cultural organisations as clients, and our partner in online marketing.