Is Google Ads Right for My Business?

Who should advertise with Google Ads?

Short answer… Everyone. If your business is eligible for traditional media advertising (ie: print) then Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords) is absolutely something you should investigate and is often much easier to attribute sales to. Search engine marketing through Google Ads can reach everyone for any purpose whether you’re looking to sell a product, sell a service, or collect leads. People are searching for your product or service every day. If you’re not there to grab your customers’ attention with an ad, your competitor might be.

What should I advertise on Google Ads?

If you have an extensive product catalog and don’t know where to start, take a step back and consider the following:

• Think about how someone might search for your products.
• Could your product be a solution to a problem they might search?
• Can you direct them to a product category as opposed to a specific item?

If you have a small budget, start with your major product categories or services and see how those perform.

What should I consider before advertising on Google Ads?

There really is a lot to consider with starting a brand new Google Ads campaign. A good place to start is to pick out a few actions on your website that you want your customer to take from your ads. Those actions will become your conversions and factor into your ROI (return on investment). Keep these in mind when you set up your ads so you can make sure there is a clear path to those actions from the web page you are sending your searchers to. In some cases, it may be necessary to direct those ads to pages set up specifically for search advertising to ensure you’re getting those conversions.

Keyword research and selection for Google Ads is imperative to getting in front of the right people. The keywords (search terms) you decide to include in your campaign can be determined using the same logic as described earlier: think about how your potential customers might search for your product or service. You will also want to think about related terms that could be used (synonyms, general descriptors). Make your keywords specific enough for your ad to show for relevant searches, but broad enough to bring in searchers that don’t already know your business. Google Ads offers a tool to assist with this selection process called Keyword Planner. It won’t do all the work for you, but it can get you thinking about related search terms based on your website URL or a few starting keywords.

Another major consideration is budget. How much are you willing to spend each month? You can go about this one of two ways.

1. Determine how much you’re willing to spend for a lead or purchase and work your way backwards to how much you’re willing to spend per click. Or,
2. Use a tool such as the Google Ads Keyword Planner to determine an estimated spend per month. A combination of these two methods is usually best. While the planner can give you estimates based on historical search data, only you can determine if the results are worth the investment. Reporting on ‘impression share’ once the campaign is deployed will be imperative to determine if your budget is competitive enough.

Getting started with Google Ads can be time-consuming and tedious. Put your investment in experienced hands and contact us to effectively manage your search engine marketing.