With over 3.5 billion searches per day, Google is by far one of the best opportunities to connect with a specific audience to try to sell your products or services or simply just raise awareness about your brand. This, however, is not as easy as it seems and the success of your efforts of advertising on Google heavily depends on how well you can optimize your ads within the Google Ads framework.
I’ve tried to compile the most comprehensive list possible to help you through the process and get you to the most optimized and effective google Ads in no time.
So without any further delay, let’s dive in deep.
Create a goal
Before you start Google advertising you should first set a goal and a set level of expectations that you want to achieve.
The reason why you’d want to set a goal and set expectations is that you’d want to know what you are going to be working towards and how the things you do all lead towards that goal or expectation.
Now it’s so obvious that you would want a return on investment off of Google Advertising so the type of goals that you should be setting shouldn’t be just that. It should be more specific and narrower than that, so you could work towards something specific.
For example:
“I could simply say I want to make more money. How do I make more money? I could grow the attention my business gets. How do I get attention for my business? I have to advertise in a certain market. Now that I have my market I have to evaluate what kind of market I am in and see what kind of traffic I am getting.
After I’ve evaluated and seen what works and what doesn’t now it’s time for me to see how Google can help me work with what I have in terms of my business and how it can reach out to the audience in the best way possible. Now that I’ve reached out to the audience the next thing I want is to take that attention and convert it into sales”
Another goal of yours might be wanting a certain product to sell more. I’ll have to do research again and evaluate. I find out the audience that I need because of that audience’s needs and likelihood that they will have the most demand for that specific product. This product is separate from what my business is as a whole, for example, a special item, and therefore I have to do a different type of advertising for this project”
Now you understand what I am leading into. In order to be successful in Google Ads, you’re going to have to determine what you’re looking for. The expectations you set for Google Ads and its performance will determine whether or not it will be worth it for you.
Research
It’s been emphasized to death but it’s very important that you know what you’re doing with Google Ads.
You have to do the research and know what works and what doesn’t work. It is vital to know the ins and outs of Google Ads by really understanding what the statistics actually mean, what it says about your business, how to work with the current systems that you have in place and how to take advantage of it.
You have to know how to market your products or services to your target audience, and how to set up a certain audience within your market. Knowing how certain audiences react, their interests, and their needs for your products or services are all key data points to have.
As far as advertising goes, if you’re not marketing to the right people then you’re not gonna get anywhere. Statistics and advertisement performance are not everything!
A lot of advertisers get excited because they see that their advertisements are performing well. They did their research on data alone and are not focusing on the bigger picture. They manage to get very low bids on this advertisement and it shows to a lot of people, yet what happens is no one in that audience is really ever going to be interested in their products or services. Maybe you didn’t advertise correctly or maybe it just wasn’t the right audience in the market.
This could also be because you made the wrong assumptions, leading to people even within your niche not having a need or want for your product because your product is simply not for them.
Another turnaround is that your product is for them, however, the way that you advertised it to them was not exactly in the best way possible. You might think that this might not be possible but it’s happened before. Huge corporate brands in the past decades are broke now simply because people no longer want their products or no longer have a need for them.
An example of this would be a telephone manufacturer. The majority of people stopped using telephones and instead of trying to advertise their products specifically for those who need a telephone they instead simply tried to attend to a dying market.
The take away from this is to do your research on how to work with Google Ads, how to make Google Ads work with your business, and do your research on your market. Combine those two into creating a set of advertisements that will lead to generating sales.
Remember the process
Remember the process of how a person from your audience will go from being a member of your audience to becoming a buyer.
First, they would need to know about your products or services and this is where advertising comes in. The point of advertising is to bring attention to your products or services. It’s to give an opportunity for members of your audience and market to learn more about your products or services and interact with your business.
After they know about your products or services what do they do then? The only reason why people buy things is they either have a want or a need for it. Depending on what kind of traffic you are getting, people may not want or need your products or services right now, but at least they will be aware that your products or services exist.
On the other end of the spectrum, people already have a need or want and they don’t know about your products or services. Either way, the end goal to both of these audiences is to generate interest.
From the advertisement that generated interest, they may click on your advertisement, which will send them to your website or landing page.
From there, the only thing left to do would be to create a call action for the interest that you generated through attention.
It is now in the hands of your business to convert that interest into a sale and this part of the transaction is called the call to action. The call to action is the part when you have to convince your client to buy your products or services.
From that call to action comes the end result which is the conversion and conversion is when the member of your audiences become your customers.
Remember this process and do your best to optimize each and every step in order for Google Ads to be worth it.
A Better Advertisement
In order to make Google worth it, you’re going to have to make a better advertisement.
In order to make the most out of the money that you are spending to put that ad out there, you should have an advertisement that will bring conversions once your audience starts interacting with it.
You can do this either by hiring a graphic designer, a copywriter, a website designer, or an SEO specialist that will help you take your advertisement to the next level. Another key point is remembering how people see your advertisement.
An example:
“I advertise a food delivery system and on Google search, my advertisement comes up for you through AdWords about my food delivery service. When you click that link you should be able to immediately carry out what you were intending to do”
The common mistake that a lot of advertisers make is that they don’t think and consider how people access these advertisements. You need to remember that there are a lot of devices that you could access Google from and each of these devices loads webpages differently and display your advertisements differently. According to research, the audience that is most likely to engage with you is on desktop however the audience that is most likely to do research or try to find your service is probably going to be on mobile.
The best thing to do is always generate interest rather than investing in getting people to immediately get your products or services. The reason for this is that you can advertise to these people again through a retargeting campaign. Once these people have clicked on your advertisement and they’ve seen what you have to offer that should lead to a conversion and therefore make you money.
There are three mediums that you can use to advertise with Google which are words, images, and videos. Adjust your advertisement for each of these mediums in order to get the best results out of Google Ads.
Set the Settings
Everybody likes to talk about keywords and topics. The general rule of thumb is that you should be as specific as possible when it comes down to creating your keywords.
You should also be very mindful of the location you’re advertising in and what business you are running because if you are not specific with your parameters, then google might end up wasting your money by showing advertisements to people who can never really interact with your business.
Let’s say you are running a local car dealership. You wouldn’t want to advertise your business to someone from another country or maybe within your country but far away from your location.
You might think that you do not need Google Ads if you’re running a local business, but considering how small that market is and how Google Ads are an auction system, you could potentially get a good deal on the bid auctions if you set it up just right.
Your main focus should also be on negative keywords. Negative keywords are keywords that people search for that you do not want your advertisement to show up on. If you think about it this could range from about how you don’t want your advertisement to appear on a controversial topic or unrelated topic.
A setting that is also used is called the Frequency Cap. A frequency cap is how many times your advertisement should be shown to one person. You should always put a reasonable cap on all your advertisements so that your ads don’t appear like spam. It saturates and cheapens your advertisement when it is seen again and again by the same people in a short period of time. A common suggestion is to keep the frequency capped at around 3-4 impressions a day. This is to ensure that the user is not annoyed by constantly seeing your advertisement.
The key takeaway here is specifically how you set up your keywords, parameters, and topics. They should be as concise as possible in order to narrow down to an audience that would most likely engage with your business and at the same time set up negative keywords so that Google does not end up wasting your money by showing an advertisement to people who would be unlikely to interact with your business.
Diversify
There are two types of traffic and users on the Internet that you should be focused on. This is cold traffic, which are people who are not interested in your product at all and there is hot traffic, which are people within your niche that, if they knew about your products or services and if convinced, would easily lead to a sale.
“An example of this would be for selling a lawnmower. Cold traffic would be someone who owns a swimming pool business while hot traffic would be someone who owns a gardening business. It’s obvious that you would advertise to the gardening business but what you should also do is advertise to the swimming pool business. Both of these people are potential customers and it would be beneficial if you were to advertise, and if you want to make the most out of the opportunities that Google advertisements provide, then you should know how to deal with both of these customers”
You would target the gardening business if you would want to directly sell the lawnmower. Your product is already something that’s directly related to their business. It’s something that business needs now.
While on the other hand, for the swimming pool business you wouldn’t want to straight-up offer your lawnmower, but instead mention to the business that you have a lawnmower for sale.
In business, these are called hot offers and cold offers. A hot offer is an immediate call to action while a cold offer is a more simple introduction to your product.
You’ll notice this immediately like how some advertisements would start off with a blog post explaining themselves and then going more into their products or services.
You may have clicked out of that article, but after a few weeks, the next step for them would be to create a retargeting campaign geared towards people who showed initial interest, as you did by reading the blog in the first place.
That’s the strategy that a lot of businesses use. Introduce your products or services, create a need by educating people on why they would need them or how great the products or services are. If it does not directly lead to a sale then retarget that person again until it generates a sale.
So in summary, if you want to make the most out of Google Ads with this tip you have to attack both sides of the traffic.
Reviewing the metrics
There are many things that Google provides that are used in order to track the success or the performance of your advertisements.
You have the impressions, which are simply when someone sees your advertisement and does not interact with it. There is also the click-through rate or CTR, which is when somebody clicks your advertisement, and lastly. the conversion rate which Google tracks by seeing someone interact with your advertisement and purchases your products or services. When they reach a certain page and it was accessed from the advertisement, then Google will count that as a conversion.
Now the most important metric when using Google Ads is the Quality Score. The Quality Score indicates how well-tuned your advertisement is and how well it is doing considering how much you’re paying for it and how much engagement you’re getting from it.
In order to boost your Quality Score, you’re going to have to experiment and find the best recipe for keywords of topics and a good call to action in order for your advertisement to perform at its best. Getting good metrics and understanding these metrics will help make Google Ads worth it.
Re-strategize
So at this point, you’ve already got advertisements up and it’s already running and you’ve noticed that you have a great click-through rate but you don’t have a high conversion rate.
What this means is that the advertisement is working, but your business is not. The same could also be true for the opposite, your sales are increasing but you have a low-quality score for your advertisement. In that case, maybe it’s not your business anymore and it’s more to do with your advertisement’s settings.
It may be fine since you’re making money but remember that your paying for advertising so you should expect it to do well and achieve the goals that you’ve set out at the beginning of the process.
If your current setup is working and it’s making money, then that’s good, but at the same time you should be looking at how it’s working and your setup should constantly be revised so that you can keep up with the changes in your market.
Retargeting
Studies have shown that the audience that is most likely to engage with your business, are those who are already aware of your business or those whose attention you have already acquired. Advertisements that are geared toward those specific audiences are called retargeting campaigns.
As the name suggests, retargeting campaigns are solely focused on people who have engaged with your content recently and who have possibly shown interest in your products or services.
The point of your retargeting campaign is to build off the momentum gained from getting someone’s attention. Getting this part right is crucial because remember, this is the audience that is most likely to buy your products or services.
The reason why it works so well is that it keeps your business at the forefront of your audience’s minds. It leaves with them a constant impression that relates to your business with a certain need and when that need arises, the first place that they would look to is your business, since it is something that they are already familiar with.
To make Google Ads worth it, do retargeting campaigns.
Focus on the results
When all is said and done the most important factor related to your business is your return of investment. Return of Investment or ROI is a term used to describe the percentage of the money you made back, compared to the money you’ve spent. The end goal of all advertisements is to make your business more successful by generating more attention and more sales.
Not everything on Google is going to make you money, but just because the campaign doesn’t make you money does not mean that it is a failure.
Earlier you created an objective for each campaign that you put out and the prime metric which you should use to measure success is whether or not the campaign managed to fulfill that objective.
There are going to be times where it fails to make money in the short run, but instead, it could make more money in the long run.
An example of this kind of advertising is billboards. The reason why companies pay for billboards is not to lead directly into sales. If they wanted to directly go to sales they would simply just use a more engaging method with their audience. The reason why companies use billboards is to generate interest and brand awareness.
Conclusion
So at the end of the day what makes Google Ads worth it is that it helps you achieve a certain goal that you have in mind for your business to achieve in order to become more successful while increasing your sales and by getting more people to buy your products or services.
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