If you are trying to grow your business, then marketing your business online means you can target the right people at the right time in the right location.
You can put your business in front of people searching with intent to buy, engage services, or learn more about your products or services, prompting them to complete whatever key actions you decide are the most important to you. This might be to purchase your product, sign up to your course, book a tour, fill out an enquiry form, or pick up the phone and call you.
Why advertise on Google?
Google is the world’s most visited website. In fact in February 2022 Google.com had 82.6 billion visits with people spending on average 11 minutes on the search engine! Google.co.nz had 15.9 million searches with people spending on average 6 minutes on the search engine 2.
Google dominates the online search industry, with more than 90% of the market share for search engines.
How do Google Ads work?
Google Ads are based on a per click cost basis – you don’t pay anything for impressions (someone seeing your ad), you only pay if someone clicks on your ad.
That cost per click is a real-time auction that is worked out every single time a search is made on Google. The auction takes into account your budget, ad quality and the impact of your ad extensions. If your ad quality and impact are high, you could win over a competitor with a higher budget, and you could pay less for your clicks. Pretty cool right?
The better your ad campaign – the more optimised, relevant and effective – the less you will pay for your clicks and the more often your ads will be shown.
Google rewards you for providing high quality, relevant content to its users.
Do Google Ads work?
YES! Well set up and regularly optimised Google Ad Campaigns are very effective and can grow your business exponentially.
The proof is in the pudding….take a look at one of our client’s numbers above!
After just 1 month of working with us on Google Ads, their conversions went up 400%, conversion rate up 327% and the cost per conversion went down 78% as well as cost per click decreasing by 9%.
I’ve heard people say, “Google Ads don’t work” and “I spent heaps on Google Ads but didn’t get any leads”.
My question to you is this. If your business is placed in front of people searching for your products or services, your ad copy is well written and engaging, and your landing page well designed with clear message and calls to action, why wouldn’t you get leads or sales?
Often the reasons to a poor Google Ad campaign experience are one of these:
- You are running a Smart Google Ad Campaign
- Your Google Ad campaign is not set up properly with Ad Extensions, Ad Groups and key integrations
- Your Google Ad campaign is not regularly and well optimised
- You are not tracking key conversions and actions
- Your landing page/website is not well designed
It takes two to tango
Your Google Ads campaign is not going to work all on its own. A well set up and consistently optimised ad campaign can get your message, products or videos in front of your key audience and encourage them to engage with your ad.
However, if your website landing page or product does not carry the same key messages clearly laid out with strong calls to action, then you might find those hard earned clients leave and go elsewhere.
For Search ads, your landing page should have the same message and terminology as your ads, and be structured to have the following points:
- Explain the problem your clients face
- Explain how your product or solution fixes that problem
- Provide testimonial proof
- Include strong calls to action
Your page should be able to answer the above points in just 7 seconds. Does your landing page pass the test?
Ensure your landing page includes:
- Headlines that carry key messages
- Bullet points
- Images, graphs, videos and other visuals
- Clear calls to action
- Testimonial proof
Most people do not read the text on your page, they will scroll down scanning titles, lists, images – and if these catch their attention, they’ll go back to the top of the page and scan some of the text.
Track your conversions and key actions
Your Google Ad campaign cannot perform at its best and you will not be able to accurately measure the success of your campaign, if you are not tracking your conversions and key actions.
If you have an online store, your most important conversions are sales. If you have a tour booking company, your most important conversions are bookings. If leads are your most important conversion, then you will need an enquiry form and to track submissions of it.
If phone calls are important to your business, you should have call forwarding set up so that you can track all phone calls made to your business from your Google Ad campaign. Call forwarding changes the phone number shown on your website to a unique number that is tracked through your campaign as a conversion. You’ll be able to see how many phone calls you answered, how many you missed and the length of your phone calls. Google can then treat this as a conversion and optimise for this action.
If you don’t want to use call forwarding you can still track clicks to your phone number, although this is less accurate. Clicks on your email address can be tracked in the same way as phone number clicks.
With Google Analytics 4, you can now track other key actions such as video plays, file downloads and add to carts. While you may not optimise your ad campaign for these events, it is helpful to be able to track these and understand how your site visitors are interacting with your content.
Connect Google Tag Manager, Analytics, Business
As part of your Google Ad Campaign setup, you will need to ensure you have all the associated Google accounts set up and integrated.
Google Tag Manager is a tool to create and manage the codes required to track statistics and conversions on your website in one location. You’ll integrate Google Analytics here, along with your Facebook Pixel and other site tags.
Google Analytics provides statistics and reports to track how your users are interacting with your website and track your conversions.
Integrating these both into your ad campaign will allow you to measure your return on investment.
Google Business is key for local searches. A local search is a search term combined with a location, like “Christchurch pet trainer” or “hairdresser in Mangonui”.
Your Google Business Listing can be integrated with your Google Ads Campaign so that it shows your location or you can run a specific Local Campaign to advertise your business listing in the Maps results.
Google Smart Campaigns versus Expert Mode
No doubt if you have a Google Business Listing you’ll have seen the ads for free credit if you set up a Google Ad Campaign. This is certainly the easiest way to get into Google marketing since not everyone has the time to study and gain certifications in order to run a well oiled Google Ad marketing machine.
Unfortunately, it also means you are casting a very broad net with very little control over your ad campaign.
Think of a Smart Campaign like doing a flyer leaflet drop to everyone in Christchurch, hoping that some of those homes are interested in your product. Think of Expert Mode as doing that same flyer drop, but to homes that are specifically showing interest in your product, with the ability to further refine that down by age, gender, interests and filtering out those who aren’t as likely to convert.
Google Ad Campaigns are not set and forget
Your Google Ad campaign should be consistently monitored and optimised to ensure it becomes more and more targeted.
The better your campaign performs, the less you’ll pay per click, your ads will be shown more often, you’ll get a higher clickthrough rate, and a higher conversion rate.
Types of Google Ad Campaigns
Search Campaigns
These campaigns are textual and show when someone searches for relevant keywords in Google. They are ideal for increasing sales, leads, signups and other important website actions.
Shopping Campaigns
If you have an online store, then a Google Shopping Campaign will enable you to feature your products in Google Search and Google Shopping for relevant search queries. This ad type is to increase online product sales.
Display Campaigns
These campaigns are image based and are displayed on millions of websites along with Google-owned properties like YouTube and Gmail. These ads are great for retargeting campaigns, increasing brand awareness and increasing sales and leads.
Video Campaigns
Promote your business, products or services through video ads on YouTube and other websites. This ad type is ideal for increasing brand awareness and driving customers to purchase your products or services.
App Campaigns
If you have an app, then an App Campaign will allow you to advertise your app across Google Search, Google Play, YouTube and other platfroms. This campaign is ideal if you’d like to increase users to your app and drive installs.
Local Campaigns
These campaigns integrate with Google Business to promote your Business Listing in Maps. This campaign is ideal if you’d like to increase in-person store sales and visits.
The takeaway
Advertising your business with Google Ads allows you to target your ideal customers based on their intent to purchase your products or services. It is the ideal platform if you are looking to sell products, increase brand awareness or increase website traffic.
Taking the time to set up your account correctly in the beginning is essential to running an effective and measurable campaign. Consistent monitoring and optimisation will help to increase your marketing campaign effectiveness, reducing your cost per click and increasing your leads.
Want to find out more? Get in touch. Our team are Google Ads Certified and an Official Google Ads Partner.
1 Cite similarweb 27/03/2022 https://www.similarweb.com/website/google.com/#overview
2 Cite similarweb 27/03/2022 https://www.similarweb.com/website/google.co.nz/#overview
get in touch
Are you ready to smash some exciting goals? Or just need some help with your website, Google Ads or social media marketing? Let us know how we can help and we’ll be in touch.