Google Ads
With over 267 million unique visitors and a worldwide market share of almost 86%, Google is the most powerful search engine in the world. Google Ads was rolled out two years after Google.com was founded. As an advertising platform, it has evolved from Google Adwords from its inception to a recent rebrand in 2018, renaming the platform to Google Ads.
Given Google’s enormous reach, the chances are that you have seen and probably clicked on a Google ad, and so have your potential customers. In this guide, you will discover how to use Google Ads and how to optimise your campaigns to achieve the best results. Let’s get started!
What are Google Ads?
Google Ads is a paid advertising platform that falls under the pay-per-click advertising model. Google Ads are a powerful way to send high-quality traffic to your website, prompting your advertisements to appear at the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs) when the user searches for a product or service similar to the one you are offering. Google Ads helps boost your website traffic, get more phone calls, and increase your website conversions.
Google Ads give you, the advertiser, the ability to create and serve well-targeted ads to users across multiple devices such as mobile, tablet, and desktop. Ads can be created in many different formats spanning across other channels including YouTube, Google Display Network, and Google Shopping Ads. This allows you to reach your target audience where it makes the most sense for them to come across your ad, at a time where they are most likely to engage with it.
Google Ads will also help you analyse your advertising campaigns to increase your performance metrics over time and ultimately aid your business in reaching its marketing goals. In addition to helping you analyse performance, Google is not budget restrictive and allows you to tailor your advertising to suit your budget. Google Ads lets you stay within your monthly budget, and you can stop your campaigns at any time.
How do Google Ads work?
Google Ads operates an auction based bidding system whereby advertisers tell Google the maximum amount they are willing to pay for a click. The amount they actually pay, however, will be just over the next highest bidder which is just how traditional auction bidding works.
To illustrate the auction system we have put together an example. Let's assume there are three ad placements, and four advertisers are competing for those placements. The table shows the maximum price each advertiser is willing to pay for a click, and what amount they pay for the click.
If you want to learn exactly how the Google ads auction works take a look out our details Google ads auction process infographic.
How can Google Ad help you advance your business goals?
There are a number of reasons why Google ads can help advance your business goals. We’ve shortlisted the top 4 reasons for using Google Ads to support your business.
Massive reach
As the world's most frequently used search engine, Google receives over 6 billion search queries per day, giving you direct access to a substantial amount of internet users across the world. Coupled with the fact that Google Ads has been developed for almost 20 years, you can be sure that the platform will serve you well in helping you reach your paid advertising goals.
Return on investment
Google suggest that advertisers make $8 for every $1 they spend on Google Ads which translates to a 200% return on advertising spend. This is without a doubt the main reason why you should be considering Google advertising.
Stay competitive
Another reason you should be advertising on Google is to keep your business competitive within its markets. More than 7 million advertisers use Google Ads to promote their business online, which means even if you are optimising your businesses SEO you still run the risk of losing out to your competitors as Google Ads are placed above organic search results.
Harness intent
Advertising on Google Ads means your business will be reaching high intent audiences that are most likely to convert into customers. Unlike social media, whereby users are not actively searching for a product or service but still being advertised to, Google Ads are only shown to users actively searching for products and services related to yours.
How to Run Effective Google Ad Campaigns
Running effective Google Ad campaigns requires knowledgeable and creative ideas. It’s not always a case of pushing £10,000 into Google Ads expecting to get a return on your ad spend. Rather, advertisers need to do their homework to set their campaigns up for success.
Understand your goals
Before you begin to invest in any type of paid advertising, it’s important to identify what success looks like for your business. Google Ads can be highly targeted or as broad as you make them, so having a predefined goal will help you mitigate any wasted ad spend.
If you’re on a small budget and aren’t sure where to get started then start by tailoring your Google Ad campaigns around high intent keywords that you believe have the highest chance of generating a lead, or revenue, for your business.
Build quality landing pages
So many advertisers make the mistake of directing traffic to the home page of their website, with little or no thought into how to get the user to take the desired action, such as a newsletter sign up. If you want to increase your conversion rate, you must build highly targeted, user-friendly landing pages with a clearly defined action you want users to take.
Adopt a test and learn approach
You should never set up and forget your paid advertising campaigns. Once you start, that’s only the beginning. You’ll need to constantly make adjustments to your targeting, advertising copy, landing page designs, and keyword bidding based on the data you are collecting, and the objectives you are trying to meet.
Make sure that you are constantly testing something in your account. However small or large it may be, by using data and analytics you can make data-driven decisions and provide actionable insights to increase your business performance.
How Clear Click Can Help
Wondering if Clear Click might be the digital marketing partner your business needs? Our experienced paid search team integrates strong data-driven strategies that help our clients identify growth opportunities and reduce the risk of wasting ad spend. If you want to start reaching your ideal customers and position your brand in the top search results then contact us today!
