10 Dec Are Google Ads Worth It For Your Small Business?
Small businesses need all the help they can get in order to compete in today’s challenging economy. Unfortunately, a small business typically has a small budget to devote to advertising. Fortunately, Google Ads can help your business (depending upon its nature) increase its foot traffic, leads and conversions – all at a reasonable cost!
Formerly called Google AdWords, Google Ads is one of the most popular pay-per-click (PPC) advertising platforms. Google Ads is online advertising that allows you to target the type of customers you want, reaching them right when they’re searching for your products or services.
As Christina Perricone of HubSpot explains it, “PPC is a form of advertising that allows you to pay a fee to have your website on the search engine result page (SERP) when someone types in specific keywords or phrases to the search engine. The SERP will display the ads you create to direct visitors to your site, and the fee you pay is based on whether people click your ad.”
And as Krista Lawson of BreaktheWeb puts it, “Basically, you choose targeted keywords and bid on them, based on the amount of money you’re willing to spend per click. You choose keywords that are specific words or phrases that are often used in search queries related to your product or service.
“When a user performs a search that contains your keywords, your ads will appear above organic search results on search engine results pages. This greatly increases your potential for attracting new customers based on the search terms and keywords they enter into Google search.”
Advantages of Using Google Ads
Cost – Google Ads can be cost-effective, especially for small businesses with limited budgets. You can use a pay-per-performance model, and you can set daily and monthly budgets. You can also use long-tail and local keywords to avoid competing with larger businesses.
Reach – Google is the leading search engine, with a large audience that you can reach with Google Ads. You can target your ads based on geography, which can be especially helpful for local businesses.
Results – Google Ads can provide faster results than SEO. You can track your results and optimize your campaigns to improve your ROI.
Flexibility – Google Ads are flexible, allowing you to start, stop, pause, or adjust your bids at any time.
Analytics – Google Ads provides detailed analytics about your campaigns, user base and keywords.
How Big of a Budget Should You Plan for Google Ads?
According to Google, plan for at least $1,500 per month to optimize your ads in a timely manner. Depending on your industry, you might pay less or more per click. For example, according to England-based Google Ads expert Claire Jarrett, you’d pay a higher cost per click if you wanted to acquire prospects for your law firm, clients in healthcare, or accounting leads.
However, Google Ads costs are lower for other industries. For example, if you plan to advertise a restaurant, you’d probably pay around $1.77 for each click. If you wanted to get plumbing leads, you’d also pay less (depending on the competition in your area).
The average conversion rate for Google Ads across all industries is 2.85%, but conversion rates can vary significantly depending on the industry and campaign goals.
How to Get the Most From Google Ads
Assuming you want your ads to drive traffic to your website, having a landing page on your site is essential. If you’re unfamiliar with that term, a landing page is a standalone webpage designed to focus on a single goal – such as capturing leads or driving a sale – where visitors “land” after clicking on a link from an ad, email, or other online source. The landing page typically features a clear call-to-action to encourage those who arrive to take a specific action, like signing up for a newsletter or making a purchase. Unlike a regular website page, it is optimized to convert visitors into customers by presenting a focused message and minimizing such visual distractions as navigation menus.
So what should a landing page look like, and what are the elements it should include? Our blog post – “How to Build a Successful Landing Page” – covers this topic in detail.
Of course, knowing your marketing objective will allow you to create the optimum strategy for creating and targeting your Google Ads. The following is from Google itself! We’ve condensed its tips to advertising with Google Ads, but you can click this link to read them in their entirety.
Focus on your advertising goals – Before building your Ads campaign, decide what your marketing objectives are. Deciding what you want before you create your campaign rather than after it’s already built will ensure that your targeting, budget and formats are optimally effective and will help you set realistic goals for what you get out of each of these campaign settings.
Understand your audience – Think about their specific needs and the questions they might have, and address their questions and needs with your product information, ad text and other assets.
Use locating targeting when applicable – Use the advanced location options during and after campaign creation for optimal location targeting and improved campaign performance.
Target for relevance – Content targeting, such as use of keyword, placement, and/or topic targeting, allows you to show ads alongside relevant content that your customers and potential customers are viewing.
Observe to optimize – Take advantage of the observation setting, where applicable. The observation setting won’t affect who can see your ads or where they appear, but it does allow you to monitor how ads are performing for your selected placements, topics, or audiences while your campaign is running.
Bid with purpose – Use Smart Bidding when useful and applicable. For Search Campaigns, Smart bids are set in real-time at the search term level, and for other campaign types, dozens of signals are used to set the optimal bid.
So, Are Google Ads Worth it for Your Small Business?
“Google Ads are worth it because they provide a cost-effective way for businesses of all sizes to reach a virtually unlimited, targeted audience,” Lawson writes. “They’re extremely flexible and you can start, stop, pause, or even adjust your bids at any time.
“The pay-per-performance pricing model is a tremendous advantage for small businesses with a tight marketing budget. And, having the ability to focus on long-tail, niche, and local keywords allows you to avoid competing with big brands that have huge advertising budgets.
“Although these niche and local keywords may not receive as many clicks as broader terms, they’re much more effective for driving conversions, and that’s what really matters at the end of the day.”
However, as you’ve probably been able to tell, Google Ads require a good deal of knowledge about selecting the right keywords – not to mention the considerable investment in time required. We assume you’re too busy running your business to make running Google Ads your second career. Of course, that’s what Virtual Stacks Systems is here for! We’ll handle every aspect of your Google Ads campaign, and send you regular performance reports – as well as make any necessary adjustments to improve audience reach.
Our full-service digital marketing agency can also take care of your website design and redesign, social media marketing services, PPC advertising and much more! Every small business is unique, and so are our solutions! Contact us today to learn more and get started!