Why use Google Ads?
When it comes to advertising in the modern age, we are spoiled for choice. However, this is where things can become challenging for businesses of all sizes. For example, it can be hard to figure out which online platforms you should focus on for the best possible results? How much should you invest? Which platforms are going to actually convert clicks into action, like purchases, bookings or subscriptions?
The clear leader of all online platforms is the search engine giant, Google, which controls over 90 per cent of the share of all queries conducted online. There are 3.5 billion Google search queries made every single day, equating to around 40,000 queries every single second. This kind of volume is an opportunity that cannot be ignored and choosing to use Google Ads is the best way you can take advantage of this consumer behaviour.
When it comes to implementing paid search campaign, Google has 73 per cent of the market share and 65 per cent of all small and mid-sized businesses have at least one campaign running. This means you are at a huge competitive disadvantage if you are not choosing to use Google Ads at all. When people actually conduct searches, almost half of them are going to click on the top three ads that appear. Meanwhile, around 35 per cent of people will purchase a product within five days of conducting a search around it.
If you have not considered Google Ads before, it is time to unlock the power of their digital marketing and advertising tools. And if you have dabbled in the past, we will help you understand how much more you can get out of this powerful kind of campaign.
What is the difference between Google Ads (paid advertising) and organic search results (SEO)?
The obvious difference is that Google Ads is a paid system, whereas you don’t have to pay for hitting organic results – unless you use an agency service like SEO. The costs of SEO come in when building up your keywords and phrases, creating a strong list of backlinks and developing and delivering fresh, original content on a regular basis. This is a lot of work and adds up in the end, no matter how you choose to use Google search as a marketing platform.
Google Ads effectively allows you to take a shortcut on these results by outbidding your competition on keywords that are utilised for search results. When you beat a competitor in your bid, you can be seen for keywords people search, putting you all the way up to the top of the rankings instantaneously. It’s worth noting, however, that the label ‘ad’ appears next to this listing.
How Google Ads works
Google Ads operates on an auction system so that every time a user conducts a search there are bids for keywords. The winners appear at the top of Google search results. The more popular the keyword, the more you are likely to pay.
For example, ordering pizza online is extremely popular, so search terms on Google Ads – like ‘pizza’, ‘online pizza’, ‘pizza near me’ and the like – are probably in high demand.
The quality of your Google Ads, your website and your product will also come into play and sometimes it is not just the advertiser with the deepest pockets that will win these auctions.
Why quality is imperative in Google AdWords
Let’s use an advertising example. A less-than-reputable pizza store spams keywords everywhere across their site but pays big money to Google for their position in rankings. This means that people are being directed to a low-quality site with low-quality content that might not be relevant to them. While the brand pays big money, that won’t do everything for their efforts. Google always wants to ensure traffic is being directed to relevant, valuable sources, so prioritising this brand (despite money paid for their Google Ads campaign) is not appealing to the search giant.
Simply put, money isn’t everything when it comes to Google Ads success. It’s just as important to ensure all elements of your landing page are of the highest possible quality before you even attempt to get started at this PPC method.
Essentially, each Google Ads advertiser is allocated a quality score from 1-10 by the search engine, which factors in expected click-through rates, the relevance of the ad to people using the engine, and the landing page experience. You can view your quality score in Google Ads and make adjustments as required to improve it.
Google makes no secret that quality score counts for its ads and provides all of the information you need to improve your site to rank better. When you are putting together the text for your ad(s), your expected click-through rate will receive a ranking of average, above average or below average. Let’s use the pizza example again. Here is an example of a highly relevant text that could be used in ads:
Tim’s Pizza, Parramatta, Sydney
Order pizza delivery to all suburbs in the Parramatta region of Sydney online. Phone number: XXXX
All of the relevant keywords are there – including location, a contact number, geographical location and special offers. It cuts straight to the point and anybody feeling a craving for pizza in Parramatta is more likely to be directed to this advertisement.
What is pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and why is it important?
Let’s take a step back and look at the Google Ads auction process again. Pay-per-click advertising is a common practice on Google Ads where you are literally paying a certain amount for each person that clicks on your listing and goes through to your website. Depending on your business type and size, you need to determine whether you have enough budget to implement a successful PPC campaign. If you are a small player in a large and popular industry with big competition, it might be hard to match their bids for ads, no matter what your quality score is. In that case, it might be better to focus on SEO instead of Google Ads.
Make use of the free Google Keyword Planner
This will help you to find the right longtail phrases that you can use as phrases in your campaign. An example of longtail keywords (again using the pizza example) would be ‘pizza delivered in Parramatta’ or ‘order pizza online Parramatta’.
Set a daily budget for Google Ads, so you are only spending what you can afford
As your Google Ads become successful and you get more traffic and sales, you can always scale and grow this budget in the future to deliver even better results.
Understand how people are looking for businesses like yours
While mobile devices are highly popular today, there are many services where people are more likely to be seeking out your site using a desktop or laptop computer. That way you can gear your advertising towards the right devices and the right people.
Review your ads often
Google will give you advice and tips daily on how to optimise your content and you can always create more ad variations and mix up where they are appearing (including which Google partner sites) to find the best possible combinations that will make your PPC campaigns more successful.
Landing pages and how they can boost leads
Successful Google Ads campaigns require a two-pronged approach. While Google Ads will bring the right traffic to your site, you also need to ensure you have strong landing pages that are going to encourage and target new people to your site to take some form of action (convert).
Have clearly set goals and ambitions for your ads
Before you even build your landing pages, ensure that you have strategised the exact goals your business has. Are you looking to build a large database of leads? Are you looking to generate more sales? Are you looking to build more appointments? It is vital you have this clearly defined so that your landing page is highly honed in on these goals and objectives.
Keep your ads/pages simple
You are likely only going to have a small window to impress your visitors and they are not going to stick around if they are met with a wall of text or an overly complicated page. It is imperative that your landing pages are mobile and tablet friendly as well.
Test everything
You can tweak and change elements of your landing pages to suit your ads, and do A/B testing to see which options are working the best. This will ensure you are getting the highest volume of conversions. When it comes to testing, it is also critical that you ensure that there are no broken elements on your site like dead or non-directing links.
Powerful data helps you understand your audience, industry and competition
One of the best elements of using Google Ads is the sheer volume of free resources available to marketing teams. You can really get as much as you want out of Google Ads for free with a wealth of training and education courses as well as powerful data analysing tools and metrics to help you get the most out of your campaigns.
Built into Google Ads itself is a range of tools that you can use to optimise your content including:
- Ad Performance Overview
- Campaign Performance Overview and;
- Keyword Performance Overview
These deliver powerful metrics on your Google Ads campaigns, and data that you can use to shape and improve your future ones dynamically to ensure you are getting the most bang for your buck.
You can also install Google Tags (snippets of code or tracking pixels) on your website or app which will collect ads data for you and provide free event tracking. This then allows you to set up effective ads or remarketing campaigns on the Display Network and collect and use website traffic data to easily build successful ad campaigns without any knowledge of coding required.
Google Tag Manager and this data work effectively on its own, but it becomes especially powerful when it used in tandem with ads and Google Analytics, which provides a raft of tools to better understand your audience and potential customers. From there, you can build Google Ads and Display Network-optimised campaigns that are more likely to be effective.
When you combine it with Google Tags, this will operate automatically in the background, collecting and analysing data that can then be used to create customised reports, graphs and metrics. It helps you understand what your customers like, how they behave, how you can improve your operations better and constantly improve the performance of not only your Google Ads but your website and your overall business operations.
Why use Google Ads? It’s an easy way to dominate online
We can hear you asking: “How can I start Google Ads for my company?” We have you covered and ready to go. Contact our ads experts at Edge Marketing now.
