When planning a digital marketing campaign for your business, there are several marketing channels that you can use to drive results.
But when it comes to paid advertising, Google Ads needs to be an essential part of your strategy.
The power of Google
Ads today.
Google Ads is Google’s proprietary online advertising platform and network.
How does google ads work?
Google Ads works on a simple “bid” basis.
Advertisers bid what they’re willing to pay each time a user clicks on one of their ads.
Google then displays the advertiser’s ad in the SERP or on the display network, based on a combination of quality score, bid, and click-through rates.
Google displays the winning bidder’s advertisement higher up in the SERP.
-
Searching for a specific
search term -
Viewing a website that
uses Google advertising -
Watching YouTube
videos -
Looking to buy a
specific product or
service
Google ads should be an integral part of your digital marketing strategy. If it’s not, you’re leaving a ton of money on the table. Google covers over 80% of search engine advertising, so if you want to bring in new customers (especially those who aren’t on social media), there’s no better platform.
How can Google
Ads impact your
business?
No matter what you’re selling, Google ads offer an opportunity to gain massive exposure for your business.
To understand what’s possible,
check out these statistics:
According to HubSpot, 5.8 billion Google searches take place per day.
Citing an eMarketer study, Forbes reports that Google's ad revenues will be $39.6 billion in 2020.
According to the same report, Google has 29.4% of the U.S. digital ad market. Facebook is the only other advertising platform with a double-digit market share.
Statista reports Google has an overall search market share of 86.86% in 2020.
Google is undoubtedly the best digital marketing platform for increasing your brand exposure and online footprint.
Another incredible benefit of using Google Ads is the ability to simultaneously target people at different levels of your sales funnel.
Nobody wants to pay for the same user to click to their site a handful of times, right? Well, the important thing to remember is if your customers are shopping around, Google Ads will ensure that you remain at the forefront of their thoughts.
Another Google Ads strategy is to target your competitors’ funnels! It’s an effective way to build targeted audiences from their own keywords. Using powerful tools like SEMRush, you can bid on the search terms your competitors rank for. Google makes it easy to dominate your niche if you know what you’re doing.
Also, Google Ads is driven by demand. If people don’t search for your keywords or click when they see your ads, you don’t pay a cent! So you can direct your resources exactly where customer demand is, ensuring that you run the right campaigns at the right time.
Where can you
advertise with
Google Ads?
One of the best aspects of Google Ads is the potential reach you’ll have. There are 5.8 billion Google searches every day. But Google’s Ad network extends even further.
When you use Google Ads, you can advertise on:
What customer
outcomes can
Google Ads deliver?
Google Ads can have an enormous positive impact on your business. Here’s what you can expect to achieve:
Although social media is a bit better for this,
Google Ads will have a significant impact
on your digital footprint.
Use landing pages to capture customer data or
bring visitors to your site so you can
retarget them later.
Another lesser-known possibility
that can have an impact.
Increased traffic to your website = increased
conversions! Google Ads helps you bring
more people to your site every day.
Learn how your paid campaigns are working alongside
your other marketing channels to deliver sales.
This is a great way to understand the value
of your Google Ads campaigns in relation to
SEO, email marketing, and social
media advertising.
Tons of people use Google to find businesses
in their area. It’s not typically an easy metric
to track, but you can use Google to track
correlations between your ad campaigns.
Other than Google Ads, what are your other digital marketing options?
Google Ads isn’t your only option when it comes to paid advertising online, but it is your only option when it comes to effective search engine marketing.
You might first consider advertising with other search engines, like Bing or Yahoo!
However, such is the market dominance of Google that you’d likely have lower conversion rates, less granular targeting options, and less traffic in comparison to what you’d get from Google, making it hard to sustain your business.
It’s always a great idea to expand beyond search engine advertising to other channels –– they all work together and feed off each other if used effectively. Social media, and Facebook in particular, should be the first place you look.
The way to get value from paid social media advertising is to understand what your objectives are. For example, when targeting customers using Google Ads, your typical visitor will have some degree of transactional intent. Therefore, you want your Google Ads to deliver at least a lead, and ideally sales.
On the other hand, social media advertising is more geared towards:
Building brand awareness
Content marketing
Growing your audience
Growing your email list
Increasing engagement
Highlighting your products and services, or anything innovative that you're doing
Although social media can benefit your business, these platforms are often unstable with the engagement that you get.
For example, a topic that’s trending worldwide (like an election) has the power to take over peoples’ social media feeds. Your visibility can drop overnight. And even though your ad spend won’t be as high, your business won’t be growing either.
In contrast, since search engines are driven by user intent, outside of seasonal trends and demand changes (which you can plan for), you’ll have a more stable traffic baseline.
Another challenge with social
media advertising is that it
requires all your other marketing
touchpoints to be excellent.
For example, you could spend thousands of dollars building brand awareness and growing your social media audience. Still, if none of that eventually turns into revenue, your business might be struggling.
In contrast, if you’re using Google Ads specifically to generate sales, you can quickly take action based on visitor engagement and conversions.
19 reasons
you MUST use
Google Ads
Now that we’ve gone through an overview of Google Ads, let’s explore the 19 reasons why this platform needs to be included in your paid marketing strategy.
reasons
1Easy to set up and manage
2Run a variety of campaign types
3Massive captive audience
4Easy to measure and optimize Performance
5Build and protect your brand and business
6Increase your chances of a conversion
7An edge over competitors only doing SEO
8Run a variety of campaign types
9Improve your SEO performance
10Google Ads campaigns are easily scalable
11Flexibility and control
12Traffic faster and easier than SEO
13Can help you dominate SERPs
14Make ad more engaging than most search results
15Google Ads traffic often converts better than organic traffic. But why?
16Campaigns complement other marketing channels and activity
17Direct competitor benchmarking
18Easy to steal customers from your competitors!
19Easy for you to track your brand growth and marketing progress
Google Ads campaigns are easy to
set up and manage
When you first get started with Google Ads, you’ll need to take a little time to familiarize yourself with the platform. If you’re new to marketing, you might also need to familiarize yourself with terms like Ad Rank and Quality Score. You can learn everything you need to know with Google’s Google Ads Setup Checklist.
Google Ads
Once you are confident in what you’re doing, you’ll find it easy to set up and manage your Google Ads campaigns.
Take some time to
- set your daily budget
- maximum bids
- set the times you’d like your adverts to show
It’s a good idea to focus exclusively on the Google Search Network when you’re starting out. Otherwise, your ad spend could spiral out of control.
Look to focus on your best-converting adverts as soon as you can and learn from them to improve your campaign’s overall performance.
Google’s account manager calls. They can be useful for learning more about how Google Ads works, but they’ll often end with you increasing your budget and spending more on your ad campaigns!
As much as Google does try and help you, remember their first concern is their revenue!
You can use Google Ads to run a
variety of campaign types
Remember earlier when we explored where you can advertise
with Google Ads? You can manage all of that activity from the
same Google Ads account!
It is recommended that you set up each campaign individually in Google Ads. This will make it easier for you to track the success of keyword and ad groups. For example, if you can specifically see the performance of your Search Network vs. Display Network ads, rather than one combined figure, you’ll be in a far better position to optimize your marketing. Combining these types of campaigns gives you what we call “dirty data” this means your data is all mixed up and it’s hard to tell where it’s coming from and to make meaningful adjustments.
Spend some time learning about Google Ads campaign types and how to use them to hit your goals.
You don’t want to be wasting your money on an app or video campaign when a shopping campaign is what you need!
You have a massive captive
audience
Google grants you access to the most prominent captive
audience in the world.
Your advertisements will only be displayed when people search for your specific keywords. As such, you’ll only spend advertising dollars on customers who’ve shown an interest in your products and brand!
Don’t forget that in addition to Google’s 5.8 billion searches every day you’ll also have exposure to the rest of the Google Ad Network which includes:
Google Display Network, across two million websites.
YouTube, where over one billion hours of video is watched every day.
Google Play Store, from where over 250 million downloads take place per day.
In all, you probably have the opportunity to show your business, products, and services to well over half the world’s population thanks to Google!
It's easy to measure and optimize
performance
In addition to giving you incredible exposure, the Google Ads platform has one of the best and most intuitive dashboards of any service on the planet.
- see how each of your campaigns are performing
- identify areas where you could benefit from increasing your ad spend
- identify areas where you should save your
cash and redirect your spending elsewhere
You should treat your Google Ads campaign like an ongoing A/B test.
If one ad for a keyword is working, but the other isn’t, change it. Keep optimizing and evolving to supercharge your performance!
By working with metrics like Quality Score, you can easily see what you need to do to improve, too. For example, the Google Ads platform will tell you if users don’t find your ad or landing page relevant. You can then make the necessary changes and track the improvement in your Quality Score.
Using this metric can also be particularly important as a low Quality Score can mean your ads don’t show at all!
Google Ads can help you build and
protect your brand and business
Branded paid search can be a controversial topic, but it’s something you should be aware of.
Here’s a case study for branded ad campaigns –
https://www.ppchero.com/what-happened-when-we-paused-ppc-brand-campaigns/
Using Google Ads, you can bid on your own brand/business name to ensure that you appear in searches for your name and your competitors do not appear above you. This also allows you to dominate the SERP. The psychological effect of seeing your brand appear multiple times in the SERP is profound. This increases organic and paid click through and conversion rates.
rank for your business name is beneficial because:
You might share your business name with another brand or with something
completely unrelated.
Your competitors can also bid on your brand keywords as a means of targeting your
customers.
As such, you can use Google Ads to both build and protect your brand by guaranteeing you appear in searches when people are looking for you.
If people search for you and can’t find you, their first assumption will probably be that you’ve gone out of business, so they’ll use your competitor instead.
You can use remarketing lists to
increase your chances of a conversion
Google Ads Remarketing helps you reconnect with users who have previously visited your website or used your app.
With Google Ads, you can create remarketing lists to then advertise to people strategically. This is great for brand building and reminding people to come back and complete their purchase. It’s never been easier to get distracted online, so stay top-of-mind by reminding your customers about your products at every opportunity.
You can manage your Google Ads remarketing campaigns within your dashboard and even decide which segments of your audience you remarket to and which ones you don’t. This can help you optimize your campaigns and overall ad spend even further.
Google Ads gives you an edge over
competitors only doing SEO
If you bid high enough, your Google Ads will typically appear at the top of the search results.
Bidding lower on keywords can result in ads appearing at the bottom. Meanwhile, Google shopping ads can appear at the top of the SERP or on the side. It all depends on which placement Google deems to be more effective for that specific user!
When your ads appear at the top of the page, they’re more prominent than organic search results and users are more likely to click on them.
Clickthrough rates increase dramatically the higher your ad shows.
If your competitors are only investing in organic SEO, using Google Ads gives you an edge by helping you get a more significant presence in search results, without the long-term investment! People still talk about the top position or first page in organic search, but what value is the top organic ranking if your ads push it off the page?
Intelligent use of Google Ads data can
help improve your SEO performance
Besides giving you an edge over competitors who are only doing organic SEO, you can use data from your Google Ads campaigns to boost your SEO performance.
let’s say you’re just getting started with digital marketing, and you don’t have any organic presence at all.
Using data from your Google Ads campaign, you can see which keywords are the most effective at attracting visitors and which ones convert.
Therefore, when looking to build your organic search presence, you can focus on keywords that you know are relevant to your audience, helping you make money.
It is not merely a case of “if you use Google Ads, your SEO will automatically improve.” Increasing traffic to the page also helps with your SEO results.
When people talk about Google Ads being beneficial to SEO, this is what they mean. The benefit is in how you use the data and what you learn to be strategic with your approach to earning organic traffic. It is not merely a case of “if you use Google Ads, your SEO will automatically improve.”
Google Ads campaigns are
easily scalable
Google Ads campaigns are easy to scale in various ways.
Let’s start by considering scalability in terms of your advertising budget. You don’t need thousands of dollars to run a Google Ads campaign. In fact, Google Ads doesn’t stipulate a minimum daily spend! However, you need to be realistic and accept that spending $5 per day will probably not deliver the business growth you’re looking for.
However, by carefully choosing low competition and inexpensive keywords, you can build up your Google Ads presence slowly but surely.
Then, when you have the budget to enhance your presence, you can spend more or target a broader set of keywords.
It’s also worth thinking about scalability in terms of the service itself.
In contrast, with Google Ads, you can quickly scale your campaigns across the Google Ad Network whenever you need to. Start with Google Search Ads on a small budget and scale your activity across the Display Network and YouTube all within the same platform when you’re ready!
Google Ads measures
everything for you
One of the biggest mistakes people make with any advertising is to focus solely on the outcome. Within Google Ads, this would mean looking at what you’re spending versus your revenue.
Yes, revenue is absolutely essential for the success of your business.
However, Google Ads helps you focus on a much broader set of metrics, allowing you to drill down and understand precisely how people interact with your website.
Understanding the reasons why people who stay on your site for longer periods don’t convert, for example, can be hugely powerful when it comes to optimizing your campaigns and your website’s user experience.
Along with knowing how much money you’re making, understanding what’s happening before a conversion happens or a customer leaves will help you supercharge your campaigns and fuel business growth.
Understanding the reasons why people who stay on your site for longer periods don’t convert, for example, can be hugely powerful when it comes to optimizing your campaigns and your website’s user experience.
Along with knowing how much money you’re making, understanding what’s happening before a conversion happens or a customer leaves will help you supercharge your campaigns and fuel business growth.
Google Ads gives
you flexibility and control
Who are your customers?
Not all your customers will be the same age, use the same devices, or
even be in the same country.
The beauty of using Google Ads is that you have the flexibility to tailor your campaigns and spending to maximize your return on investment from each ad group.
If spending less for a click from the U.K. makes you the same amount of money as a more expensive click from Australia, you can do this.
If you’re a beginner with Google Ads, you shouldn’t spend too much time on this aspect straight away. Still, over time you can go into great detail and finely tune every part of your campaign.
Why spend more to grow your business than you need to?
Google Ads gets you traffic
faster and easier than SEO
SEO can deliver exceptional long-term value. However, if you’re looking to kickstart your business here and now, Google Ads is the way to go.
SEO tends to be a long and arduous process.
If you have a new website, you’re potentially looking at between six and 12 months of work before establishing a presence in organic search. That’s a lot of work, and potentially a significant spend to get yourself noticed.
In contrast, with Google Ads, you can be visible and get traffic from Google within a couple of hours.
It’s as simple as setting up your account, choosing your keywords, and finalizing your campaign and budget!
Another factor to consider is Google’s organic search algorithm updates. You’re at the mercy of these whenever they happen. If your site doesn’t meet a specific criterion, you could see your organic search traffic disappear overnight. While you’ll need to manage your Google Ads presence and activity carefully, you have far less to lose.
Long-term, using Google Ads
can help you dominate SERPs
Many businesses follow a marketing strategy that reduces their Google Ads spending as their organic SEO presence increases. This isn’t necessarily the wrong approach. Still, by bolstering your growing organic search presence with a continued commitment to Google Ads, you can truly dominate the search results and lock out your competition.
SEO presence
INCREASES
Google Ads Spending
DECREASES
Well, remember what we said earlier about using Google Ads to make sure you appear above your competitors? If you achieve a top position for an organic search and switch off your ads, your competitors can bid on that term and users will see their advert above your ranking.
By leaving your Google Ads campaign live, you might be able to achieve the top ad and top organic ranking.
This could mean that a search for your brand or a specific keyword will present users with a full screen of your business links! Seeing your business multiple times within the SERP will have a profound effect on your results, giving you more prominence and increasing both organic and paid CTR’s and CVR’s.
Google Ads formats make an ad
more engaging than most
search results
What do you notice about the Google ads and the organic search results? As well as the Ads being at the top, the big thing that probably stood out is how much additional information was contained within the Ad.
If you’re using Google Ads,
you can take advantage of Google’s rich ad features to make your
listing stand out even more
A more engaging listing
More clicks
More revenue for your business
If you’re using Google Ads, you can take advantage of Google’s rich
ad features to make your listing stand out even more. A more
engaging listing means more clicks, and if your website is in good
shape, more revenue for your business.
If you’re using Google Ads,
you can take advantage of Google’s rich ad features to make your
listing stand out even more
If you’re using Google Ads, you can take advantage of Google’s rich
ad features to make your listing stand out even more. A more
engaging listing means more clicks, and if your website is in good
shape, more revenue for your business.
As well as having more space to display information about your business, your advert can include things like your phone number, site links, testimonials, information about your location, your opening hours, and much more!
The best thing about these features? You’ll often get a conversion like a phone call or a visit to your location without having to pay for a click!
Google Ads traffic often converts better
than organic traffic. But why?
When using Google Analytics, it’s common to see Google Ads traffic delivering a higher percentage of conversions than organic traffic.
There are a couple of big reasons for this.
First, unless you have several highly ranked keywords, you likely get much more data from your Google Ads campaigns than you do from organic search metrics and user behavior. Because of how quickly you get feedback, you have a far greater opportunity to optimize your campaigns and continually make improvements that your customers love.
Second, one of the quirks of organic search is that your website can show up for a wide variety of keywords. Sometimes, this will mean you get traffic from keyword searches that aren’t necessarily relevant to your business. Naturally, this traffic will convert at a very low rate.
In contrast, with Google Ads, not only can you choose the keywords you want to appear for, you can tell Google you don’t want to appear for specific searches or keyword terms.
This means that you’ll only appear for searches that are super-relevant to your business, products, and services.
Ranking highly for relevant terms and targeting customers with the intent of finding and buying from you leads to a higher conversion rate.
Google Ads campaigns
complement other marketing
channels and activity
Google Ads isn’t something you should treat as a standalone marketing channel. Marketing channels are most effective when used simultaneously.
Instead, you should see Google Ads as a tool to complement your other marketing activities.
Remarketing allows you to re-engage with people who’ve already visited your website but didn’t make a purchase.
We’ve already spoken at length about using Google Ads to complement your organic search presence. However, Google Ads also works in conjunction with social media and email marketing, so you can effectively target people who’ve already shown interest in your brand and taken steps toward making a purchase.
Look at Google Ads as being a crucial part of your overall sales funnel.
If you don’t remarket to people, how will you bring them back to your site? Don’t just wait around hoping that they’ll return. You can use Google Ads as a crucial part of your strategy to guide customers back to your store!
Google Ads gives you direct
competitor benchmarking
Unsurprisingly, Google Ads won’t show you your competitor’s budgets or give you insights into their overall ad spend.
However, you do get enough data that you can start to work this out for yourself.
Using Google Ads’ “Auction Insights” features, you can quickly analyze which websites compete for visibility for the same keywords as you. You can also learn how often you outrank your competitors and your average position for adverts.
Using Google Ads’ “Auction Insights” features, you can quickly analyze which websites compete for visibility for the same keywords as you.
Using Google Ads’ “Auction Insights” features, you can quickly analyze which websites compete for visibility for the same keywords as you.
You also know how much you spend on clicks and what your budget is.
With all this information, you can then work out your competitors’ ad spending, both on specific clicks and potentially on their Google Ads campaign overall.
This intelligence can then help you make informed budgeting decisions.
That way, you can make the most of your marketing strategy. If you know you have higher budgets, you can even push your competitors out of the space by increasing your bids!
Google Ads makes it easy to
steal customers from your
competitors!
Remember what we said earlier about protecting your brand and locking in your rankings for keywords? As well as protecting yourself against these tactics, you can also implement them yourself against your competitors.
Do you feel like you offer a fantastic alternative product or service to competitors?
Bid on their brand term and tell the world!
Do you have keyword data that tells you all the terms for which your competitors have position one organic rankings?
Why not bid on them to gain visibility and attract new customers?
Thanks to the flexibility of Google Ads, it’s easy to do this!
Google Ads makes it easy for
you to track your brand growth
and marketing progress
Overall, the availability and range of data you’ll see in your Google Ads dashboard means you can easily track growth and how your marketing campaigns are progressing. In the long-term, you’ll also become adept at identifying trends so you can pre-plan changes to your budget and proactively rather than reactively manage your ad campaigns.
If you're not using
Google Ads, you're
missing out!
When it comes to Google Ads, many businesses question whether they can afford the investment.
However, the real question businesses should be asking is whether they can afford not to have the exposure Google Ads offers.
Sure, there are some challenges when it comes to running Google ads, like ensuring your website is set up to deliver a good user experience that encourages users to convert, but these are things you’d always be looking to optimize anyway.
If you’re not using Google Ads, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to build your brand, win more customers, and grow your business.
With social media advertising, you’re limited to advertising on that specific platform. You’ll also need a budget for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and anywhere else you want to advertise.