Google Ads, also referred to as Google AdWords or simply AdWords, are an efficient way to advertise your business goals on the web, allowing you to reach thousands of potential customers at any time of day or night. With the right strategy in place, your Google Ads can drive relevant traffic to your site at little to no cost per click. However, if you’re not careful, they can also cost you quite a bit of money without delivering any results. Running a business takes more than just great products or services and having the right market. You need to get people talking about your business, too, and there’s no better way to do that than with Google AdWords and other digital marketing options. Whether you want to create awareness around your business, generate leads and appointments or sell more products or services, google ads can help you move forward in your efforts. Here’s how they can help you advance your business goals.
Step 1: Understanding Google AdWords
Google AdWords offers businesses a way to pay to have their site come up when people are searching for keywords on Google, Yahoo, and Bing. It’s a smart way to spend marketing dollars as it provides the opportunity to reach specific potential customers with very targeted messaging. Here are six things you need to know about Google Adpos:
1) There are two basic types of PPC advertising; lead generation and branding campaigns. With lead gen, the goal is for website visitors (leads) to take some sort of online action in order for your company to make money – such as fill out an email form or call in for a free consultation. With branding campaigns, the goal is typically created exposure and awareness around the product or service itself by driving traffic back to your website.
Step 2: Setting up Google AdWords Campaign
If your marketing plan includes Google AdWords, then following the below steps will get you set up and ready to go. Google AdWords is what allows companies to advertise on the internet through their paid search engine listings. This system sets up a budget limit, so a company cannot spend more than they have budgeted in any given time. A credit card or valid checking account will be needed to use this service because it is billed automatically based off of how much a company spends each day. Once created, campaigns must be optimized for quality score which determines how often an ad will appear on the screen during someone’s search. When optimizing for quality score, keep these points in mind: make sure you are bidding high enough to show your ads; include negative keywords that you don’t want people searching for; monitor performance statistics such as clicks per keyword, conversion rates, etc.; and finally stop the campaign when it starts costing too much money.
Step 3: Marketing with Google Ads
This strategy is an inexpensive way to market to an engaged and established audience. You can set up these campaigns in just a few minutes and let them run automatically. Once setup, Google will optimize your campaign for the best results based on how people are searching. You will still need to monitor the campaign by keeping track of what phrases are driving traffic and deciding how much you want to pay for those clicks. With Google Ads, you don’t have to commit a huge amount of money up front to test out a new marketing idea or reach more people in a specific area. And because there are different levels of involvement, this strategy works well for companies with any budget – large or small. If you’re not sure where to start, check out Google’s Help Center for some helpful information about setting up your first campaign!
Step 4: Creating the Right Target Audience
This is an important point for all businesses, because the success of any marketing campaign is contingent on knowing who to target and how to do it. Picking the right audience is difficult, but here are a few ways that people have created their target audiences:
-Observe trends: Find what people in the marketplace are most interested in. For example, if makeup tutorials are popular on YouTube, they may also be popular with young girls who like make up. If a sporting event occurs and is live-streamed through ESPN, then sports fanatics may be potential consumers of this product too.
– Use interest groups: Find the groups that best fit your targeted customer’s demographics based on age range and geographic location.
Step 5: Using Negative Keywords
– Google Ads has created a handful of keywords in their Keywords Tool that are used to filter out irrelevant searches. When putting these words in the Exclude box, any impressions from these searches will be filtered out. This is a great way to spend less money on clicks if the corresponding search result does not matter or does not have anything to do with your company’s product or service.
– Since there are an overwhelming number of keywords, it’s imperative to be selective about which ones you include as exclusions and which ones you include as negative keywords for filtering purposes. The best option for this would be including negative keyword phrases that are similar to what you’re advertising. For example, if your company sells golf clubs, then something like golf balls could be added as a negative keyword. The more specific the better!
Step 6: Optimizing Your PPC Campaigns
Google ads lets you use key words and phrases to target potential customers. Ads are automatically shown when a customer searches for keywords that match the product or service you are offering. Since search engine users have an idea about what they’re looking for before they search, it is in your best interest to bid on these keywords and capitalize on this opportunity. Google ad allows the person viewing the ad to click through from where they saw your advertisement, if interested. You are then charged a fee when someone clicks on the ad to go directly to that link.
The success of Google’s Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaign relies heavily on how well its advertising system understands each person’s search request.
Step 7: Generating Leads from Your PPC Campaigns
No matter what the goal of your campaign is, it’s important to know the answers to these two questions: Is my campaign delivering what I want it to? And are my conversion rates and bidding competitive? If you don’t answer these two fundamental questions, then continue on with your campaign until they are answered. It’s also worth knowing that even when a campaign is delivering well, it might be more expensive than expected.
Conclusion
Running google ads is not just about creating awareness. The real point of advertising is to drive people to buy your products or services, whether that’s a product on the Google Store or a visit to your website. A profitable campaign can be the difference between success and failure, so it’s vital to make sure everything is thought out in detail before launching an ad. Thankfully, this process can be broken down into manageable steps: defining keywords, selecting placements and formats, writing great ads and crafting an effective landing page. You’ll need patience and perseverance as well as persistence in order for your ad campaign to succeed but it will be worth it if you follow these steps.
