Google Pay-Per-Click

I have been involved in setting up and monitoring clients’ Google Ads for the past seven years. The first step in setting up a successful Google Ads campaign is to understand the product or service offered to evaluate the best course of action.

Are Google Ads Your Best Option for Marketing?

I use four determining factors when evaluating a prospective Google Ads campaign. These factors weigh into the decision on whether I would even recommend Google Ads as the best strategy for web marketing. It is not to say that it is impossible to run a successful Google Ads campaign if some of these factors aren’t optimal, it just makes it significantly harder to achieve success. Ideally, we want to engage in a Google Ads campaign that will be profitable and cost-effective. For us to achieve this, we need to closely examine these four important factors.

# 1: Are You Offering a Product or Service?

Services are much easier to market through Google Ads than products. People search for services naturally on the web, and the main tool, the search engine, makes them type queries predictably. Searches for services are almost always local, and this will give you an edge in achieving success with Google Ads. However, this is not to say that you can’t use Google Ads at all to market a product. Some qualifying conditions would make me say that yes, we can use Google Ads effectively to market your product: A) are people searching for this product online and B) is there a high enough value associated with this product to make it worth the cost per click (CPC)? Should the product have a low value and high competition,  we may not achieve any positive results with Google Ads even in the best circumstances.

#2: Is This Local or Nationwide in Nature?

The next question is, what is the scope of the product or service being offered? Local services have a higher likelihood of success compared to services offered on a national scale. A person searching for a local service has an immediate need that has to be filled immediately, too. An example of this would be searching for an HVAC specialist in San Francisco because they have a broken heater that needs fixing, pronto! This translates to a higher conversion rate on the whole.

Chances are, not everyone on Earth needs to see your ad. If your business provides a certain service to a definite service area, we must focus on your visibility in the target area. Google Ads work best when you are specific, and you are very specific about who you want to reach in the first place. The more you get specific, the higher your chances of success (i.e., country, state, cities, blocks, etc.) By using geotargeting, we can make your Google Ads campaign worth the cost per click every time. If your business is highly dependent on foot traffic and people going to your place of business, then it’s a no-brainer: we need to use geotargeting to bring in a flood of new and repeat customers.

# 3: Determine The Cost of What Is Being Offered:

The next question I would ask to determine the viability of a Google Ads campaign is the cost of the offered product or service. A low-cost product is almost doomed to fail from the start. Once the cost per click or CTR (click-through rate) is factored in, one realizes that it is not profitable to pay for the marketing of these types of items in this manner.

# 4: Budget of The Client:

Never has it been more true that you get what you pay for than with Google Ads. A low-budget client without the financial resources to sustain an ongoing Google Ads campaign will be less likely to achieve success than one with the budget to drive more traffic.

What are the Best Practices in Google Ads?

1. If you have experimented with running Google Ads before, be sure to reevaluate your strategy and budget. What worked well years ago may no longer work now. What worked when you started with digital marketing a decade ago will likely have evolved to something else. It is ideal to keep changing tack every year as you learn more about how Google Ads trends change. Google Ads trends will always be on the move as consumer behavior change over time, too.
2. Check how your previous campaigns have performed in the past year. Which ones did well, and which ones have constantly underperformed? Perhaps it’s time to eliminate campaigns that haven’t been performing well. This will spare your Google Ads budget from badly performing campaigns, and you can divert the same to better campaigns.
3. Always make it a point to review new Google Ads features so that you can optimize your ads better, and they’ll perform better in the end. Be sure to be knowledgeable about lead extensions, promotion extensions, gallery ads, etc. These new features can be constant game-changers, especially for new digital marketers.
4. Think about optimizing your ads for mobile. If sites are optimized wholly for mobile now, why not Google Ads? Google Ads should look good and look right on mobile.
5. Evaluate your account if you are getting clicks from voice searches. Voice searches are growing daily, but not all markets are receiving a large volume of voice searches all at the same time. But expect it because voice-assisted technology has been around for a long time, and there will be a big shift toward it before we know it.
6. Read your metrics and evaluate your campaign performance regularly. Learn from what you see and calibrate your next set of steps. The more adaptive you are in doing Google Ads, the better.
7. If you haven’t already, identify and fully understand the tendencies of your target audience. Be specific, and be comprehensive in studying your audience, too. The more familiar you are, the better the results.
8. Understand the intention behind keywords, and don’t bid on them just because of the high search volume.

Reach out today if you need help running very successful Google Ads campaigns.