You’ve got a small business, and you want to continue to grow, so you know you should be placing ads, and with all the digital marketing offerings, where do you begin?
You’ve seen ads on your search engine results page when looking for various products, but did you know that Google Ad Manager provides options far beyond the basic text-based ads? You can micro-target your audience by geographic region and some demographics, making Google ads far more cost-effective than you may realize.
Getting started with Google ads doesn’t have to be scary. We’ll walk you through the process step-by-step, helping ensure you get the best possible results for your advertising dollars.
Let’s get started with the basics!
What Is Google Ad Manager?
Simply put: Google Ad Manager is a set of tools provided by Google to manage your advertising accounts and campaigns. These tools are regularly updated by Google, allowing businesses to continually refine their audience targeting and messaging.
Managing your ads across the wide world of the web can certainly seem like a daunting task. Which keywords should you target? Are there specific websites that you want to avoid when placing your ads? Do you have specific audience segments that are less-than-profitable and that you want to exclude? Should you focus only on a very targeted niche or geographic area?
Google Ads Manager is a relatively simple set of tools used to perform some quite complex operations. The single dashboard and login allow you to quickly view and consolidate billing, reporting, and access control to your ads.
Access control and billing can be particularly important for companies that are working with external creative agencies or building ads for several different departments.
Keeping these details separate and managing who can see them (internally and externally!) helps reduce confusion and maintain clear control of your ads at all times.
What Is the Difference Between Google Ads and Google Ads Manager?
In spite of the names being similar, the two products are on opposite sides of the same transaction; namely, placing advertisements and displaying advertisements on your website.
Google Ad Manager is purpose-built for marketers, allowing businesses to customize the types of ads that are displayed on their sites. Companies use it to drive new revenue by monetizing the traffic that comes to your website.
Google Ads are for businesses that want to promote their products. You can adjust campaigns, messaging, and more from within a consolidated dashboard. The Google Ads platform allows you to define and distribute well-timed ads with messages that are relevant to your audience at the moment.
This could mean delivering an ad for a local restaurant to a mobile device that is clearly in motion (in a vehicle!) around the dinner hour. Or showing an ad for a local jewelry store within a specified proximity to the location. This type of targeted and well-timed advertising can be extremely effective since you’re capturing prospects when they are in the mood to buy.
What Are the Three Types of Google Ads?
While the total number of Google Ads types is constantly changing as Google refines its offerings, there are three key types of Google Ads that small businesses utilize.
Display Ads
Using the Google Display Network, you can reach potential customers. Users see display ads when browsing the web, using apps, or watching videos outside of Google’s search engine results. Display ads can include text, images, and videos.
Search Ads
In contrast to social media, consumers tend to use search engines for specific purposes: searching for answers, finding solutions to their problems, or finding specific products. As a result, Google can be an effective marketing channel for a wide range of businesses!
Video Ads
YouTube, which Google owns, is also available through the Google Ads platform. In terms of traffic, YouTube is the most-visited site in the Google Display Network, even though it’s technically just one of the sites in the network.
The number of hours watched on YouTube each day is more than one billion. Aside from pre-roll ads that play before YouTube videos, banners and overlays are also available. As a result, there are many opportunities for potential customers to get engaged with your business.
Is It Worth It To Run Google Ads?
Businesses small, large, and everywhere in between can reach unlimited, targeted audiences through Google Ads for a cost-effective price! Your bids can be started, stopped, paused, or adjusted at any time.
One of the most widely used and popular search engines is Google, which is a part of our everyday lives. A marketing professional who is aiming to increase sales and brand awareness can use Google ads to reach over 3 billion users per day.
It is possible to reach a vast audience of active consumers through Google search by optimizing your products, services, and content for Google search. Here are some reasons why Google ads could be worth your money and time.
A Potential That Is Limitless
There are millions of new keywords added every day, not to mention all those that are available to bid on, making Google Ads a highly scalable marketing tool.
As a result, your target audience is virtually limitless. Your traffic can be greatly increased by adding new keywords if you’re ready to boost your traffic.
Increasing your daily spending on a PPC campaign that’s earning you money can bring in even more clicks.
A bidding system is used for Google Ads to rank keywords. Your position can be improved when you bid higher. By increasing your spend, you might jump from position four to position two.
Your ranking will determine how much traffic and clicks you receive, and the higher it is, the more money you will make.
As long as your budget permits, you can increase your bid as many times as you want to attract potential customers. The ability to compare PPC and organic search data can be obtained when you link your Google Ads account with your Google Analytics account.
By analyzing all these data, you will be able to spend your marketing budget more wisely and present it to upper management for approval so that the plan can be approved.
Precise Targeting of Niche and Local Markets
Local businesses with an online presence can use Google Ads to help reach out to potential new customers within their local communities.
In fact, research shows that over 70 percent of shoppers who search for local stores will go to those within five miles of their homes.
The internet is the most popular place to find out about local companies, with 97% of people learning more about them online. Including a clickable phone number, location extensions and address extensions will increase your Google Ads visibility.
The key to avoiding competing with national brands is to focus on your local market.
The keyword specificity of Google Ads is also an advantage for niche markets. Getting more specific with your targeting is the best way to get locals interested in your service or product. As a result, you can target your ads more effectively, resulting in more leads.
Control and Flexibility
You can pause and re-enable a Google Ads campaign at any time without incurring any penalties. You can better control your marketing spend because of this flexibility, and since there are no fixed terms or contracts, you won’t waste money.
Impressive Analytics and Performance Tracking
Additionally, Google Ads software offers valuable and insightful analytics. A successful digital marketing campaign requires you to test your ads and landing pages for maximum ROI.
In addition to showing you how your ads are performing, pay-per-click statistics also suggest improvements that could be made. Your ads’ average cost per click, position and conversion rate, among other things, are all presented in these reports.
Your cost-per-conversion (CPC), click-through rate (CTR), ad quality score, ad position ranking, and keyword search volume are displayed in the top right corner of the dashboard.
With it, you can easily see what’s working and what’s not.
Take Advantage of a Potential Customer’s Engagement
When you’re searching for a particular product or service, the most relevant ads and websites appear on the first page of Google SERPs. You start shopping after clicking on the first result that catches your eye.
Ads from Google appear before organic search results on the search result page, which is their biggest advantage. When your target audience is engaged and ready to act, you are reaching them at the right time.
You can target users based on specific search terms, location, age, and even interests and hobbies with Google Ads.
You can reach potential customers when they are looking for your products or services if you choose the right keywords and bid the right amount.
Equalize the Playing Field
Having the biggest budget doesn’t always mean winning, as is a common misconception.
Google prioritizes ads based on quality and relevance, just like organic search results. A relevant ad to the user query will result in a better user experience in Google’s eyes. The likelihood of a user sticking to Google as their search engine increases if they have a good experience.
As a result, Google places equal importance on ad quality and relevancy as it does on maximum bids per click. Therefore, high-quality, optimized ads do not have to be bid as high as ads that are poorly done, irrelevant, and low-quality.
Even small business owners with tiny marketing budgets can benefit from high-quality ads, even if certain relevant keywords are more expensive than others.
Spending Can Be Controlled Easily
Pay-per-click advertising allows you to define your spending easily by setting key parameters. When someone clicks on your ad, you’ll only be charged the amount you choose per click.
The Pros and Cons of Google Ads
For businesses, Google Ads is an excellent way to reach the right people with their products, services, and content.
Additionally, you only pay when someone clicks on your advertisement. There are many expensive and competitive keywords, and mastering the platform can be challenging.
Organic results are still preferred by buyers, but the best keywords are often expensive and competitive.
Here’s a list of pros and cons of using Google ads for your business.
Google Ads Pros:
- Google has virtually no limit to its reach; you can target pretty much anyone.
- The only time you pay for an advertisement is when it is clicked.
- Ads can always be relevant to the user if you take the right steps.
- In order to improve performance, you can use a lot of data from Google.
- If someone has already visited your website, you can remarket to them.
- You can always reach the right audience with your ads.
Google Ads Cons:
- For more success, you’d be better off hiring another full-time employee since there are so many tiny tools and settings on this platform to keep track of.
- There is a lot more trust in organic results than in advertisements.
- There is always a cost associated with the best keywords, and even with the best practices in place, they aren’t always converted into sales.
Get Started On Your Google Ads Journey!
Our goal at Rock Content is to make sure that businesses are able to make the best possible use of the advertising resources that they have at their disposal.
If you’re ready to begin your Google Ads journey, get in touch today and check out our Marketing Planning Bundle 2023, which will give you access to three clusters of marketing and sales resources. We can help you improve your action plan and set goals to help your business see results.
