Google Search Ads instantly target customers actively searching for what YOU offer.
Instead of casting a wide net, Google Search Ads put your business directly in front of people actively searching for what you offer. Think of it as skipping the long sales funnel and picking the ‘low hanging fruit’ – customers ready to buy! As a business owner, the thought of digital marketing these days can be overwhelming. And don’t worry – we get it, and understand why. Imagine having access to a platform that processes over 3.5 billion searches per day, and uses powerful machine learning technology leveraging data signals to ensure you reach the right potential customers at the right time. Seems crazy, but marketing has come so incredibly far since static billboards and print ads – and paid search services have come even further, even in the last couple of years. Google is #1 for network advertising reach – and as 95% of people don’t go past ‘page one’ of Google, our goal is to have your ads visible as often as possible (to the right people, at the right time) without compromising ROI. So what’s all the fuss about, why use Google Ads? Let’s get into the nitty gritty and talk about the 3 core benefits of paid search advertising services.
“Not only do they really know their trade, they are also great at keeping us informed and involved in any strategic changes as well as taking a clever approach to implementing changes. .”
DEAN GRAHAM | UNO FURNITURE
Your ads will appear on Google straight away
Hands up if you’re a business owner wanting a solution now. Not in months or weeks. Now. We’re going to take the hunch you’re one of those people – as 99% of potential clients we speak to say just that. As soon as we take your Search campaigns live, your ads can start to show on ‘page one’ of Google. Our experts will continue to optimise your campaigns so that your ads will show as often as possible, increasing brand exposure and attracting prospective customers to visit your website.
But even though you’re on page one – what’s the likelihood of those who click your ad turning into a paying customer? Great question – keep reading.
Your ads will show to those actually looking for your product or service
Let’s think about sales funnels and strategy for a bit. Google Search Ads sit at the bottom of the funnel capturing what marketers refer to as ‘the low hanging fruit’ – those that are literally looking for what you sell or provide.
Say you’re a company that sells bikes for young children. A potential customer wanting to purchase a kids bike may go to Google on their mobile, desktop or tablet and type in the words ‘kids bikes nz’ or ‘trikes for 3 year olds’. Our job is to make sure your Search ads are triggered by those ‘keywords’ or phrases – essentially words that show some form of intent to purchase and are highly relevant to your business. Additionally, we can make sure your ads only show to prospective customers in certain locations (if you only service Auckland for example), only show your ads at certain times if you want and see how you compare to your competitors within the ad auction (we’ll explain the auction process in more detail soon).
All of these features help us deliver well qualified, prospective customers to your website – not just any ‘Joe Blogs’.
You control how much you spend and directly see the ROI
This one is a biggie. In the past, it was pretty tough for marketers to directly attribute ad dollars spent to actual sales. Think traditional channels like TV, print, radio – there was (and still is) so much gray. With paid search services such as Google Search ads, it’s fully transparent and all measurable, meaning you can directly see the return on investment on a particular campaign. Not only in terms of sales or leads, but also how many site visitors came in from the ad and the subsequent actions taken.
As you’ll know, being in tight control of your marketing budget is important for any business – small or large. So the fact you can fully control how much you spend each month is a massive draw card for Google Search ads. Within the realm of Google products, this campaign type is also referred to as paid search or ppc which stands for pay-per-click advertising. This means you only pay Google when someone clicks on your ad! Part of our job is to try and keep the cost-per-click as low as we can so your budget goes further.
How do Google Search ads work and how will they add value to your business?
First off, let’s tie what you’ve just read – the 3 main benefits of Google Search ads – together. As soon as we take your campaigns live, your ads will start showing to anyone showing true intent to purchase your product or use your service (filtering out anyone irrelevant) and you’ll only pay if they click on the ad. Let’s dive a little deeper now into how Google Ads actually works and get you excited about what value it’ll add to your business!
How Google Search ads work
Is Google Search the right campaign type for your business?
Complement your Google Search Ads with Performance Max
How Google Search ads work
You might be thinking, hang on a sec Conversion Marketing, haven’t you already explained this? Well, we’ve explained the benefits – the ‘why’, but for the analytical minds amongst us, lets understand the ‘how’ – it’s quite fascinating really. When a potential customer starts a relevant Google search, there are literally millions of things at work in the background that help Google determine whether your ad should show or not. Think of a Search campaign as a live auction – like buying a house, except this time it’s for online ads and the auctioneer (Google) has a massive algorithmic advantage to determine who should ‘win’. Google leverages machine learning to provide the most relevant results to satisfy user intent – that’s its #1 job, just think, if it didn’t provide good answers, no one would use it!
To be more specific, Google uses 70 million data signals within 100 milliseconds in order to give someone an answer – it looks at demographics such as age, gender, income and parental status, the area you live in, recent searches (for anything), video views, app downloads, whether someone is more likely to buy high end brands over mid-low end ones given their past purchases, whether they’re a movie buff, a frequent traveler, a foodie, corporate decision maker, technophile or shopaholic – the list is almost endless!
Combine this with the signals we have already spoken about (things we can control for you such as budget, keywords, ad copy, location etc) and you can see how valuable this platform is to most businesses. Even though it seems incredibly complex, try to think about it in terms of flexibility instead – we can make this platform work as hard for your business as possible – even weeding out those who are higher up the funnel in the information gathering or awareness phase (if you didn’t want to target these people). For example, someone searching for ‘how to choose the right bike for a 3 year old’. We can also exclude those looking for free or irrelevant products/services, using the example in the section above it would be searches such as ‘free kids bikes’, or ‘adult bikes’, ‘mountain bikes’ etc given that’s not the target market. It’s about quality over quantity – having the most keywords in your account doesn’t mean anything, it’s about how relevant those keywords are and ensuring the total budget you have works as hard for you in the ad auction as possible.
Is Google Search the right campaign type for your business?
It depends entirely on your digital marketing strategy. If you’re wanting to focus on capturing those showing intent to purchase or contact you, then this campaign type will work perfectly with your goal. Google Search works with almost all business models but especially those focused on lead generation and e-commerce. If you’re wanting to target other stages of the marketing funnel such as brand awareness, Google Display Ads or Performance Max (see section below) will be a better fit. It may also be a case that we recommend doing both to achieve your overall goal.
It’s important to remember the entire point of paid search advertising services is to ensure it’s completely tailored to your business – from the initial onboarding process right through to optimisation of your account. We’re a Google Ads Agency that focuses on providing custom goals and custom solutions – we work with you, and want to empower you and give you skills and insights to make better marketing decisions.
Complement your Google Search Ads with Performance Max
Performance Max is Google’s new “all-in-one” campaign type, it shows ads on Google Search, Display, YouTube, Gmail, Maps, and Discover Feed placements and has also replaced Google Shopping campaigns altogether.
The pros are that it’s able to leverage machine learning to find new audiences and figure out the best split of channels (adding more people to your sales funnel as it’s targeting different stages), as well as using more targeted creative (tests different combinations of headlines, descriptions, images, videos and more), to get the most conversions possible. The potential downside is that we don’t have as much control over it as with other campaign types, and it requires good conversion tracking and (depending on the industry) much higher budgets than other campaign types. However we have seen some impressive results from the format so please get in touch if you are interested in seeing how this campaign type can add further value to your business.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who do I pay?
You pay Google directly from a credit card connected to your Google Ads account. If we are assisting you with your Campaigns, you would also pay Conversion Marketing separately to create, optimise, manage, strategise and report on your Campaigns.
Will my ads always be at the top?
Not always. There are different strategies we can use to help make this happen if it’s something you’d like to focus on – but usually an ad will show anywhere within the top 4 results depending on budget, keywords, ad rank and many other factors taken into consideration during the live auction process.
How long does it take before I see results?
It depends on what your goal is, however within 2 months we will know whether a strategy is working or not. You’ll see data such as impressions and clicks/site traffic soon after going live, but in terms of sales/leads, it will take awhile for the algorithms to figure this out and really get going. Google Ads is the perfect example of AI working together with a human brain – it’s the two things together that make it work well. You really need someone who understands your business and objectives and who can create the synergy with machine learning to generate great results.
How do I measure my return on investment?
For e-commerce clients, we measure this by dividing the total value of sales generated from Google Ads by the total cost of those ads. For clients focused on lead generation, we look at total leads received, the cost to get those leads and ideally if you have a value assigned to your leads we will factor that in as well to give you an accurate ROI figure.
How much do I pay per click?
As you determine what you want your daily budget to be, we can either control the cost per click (i.e. cost per website visitor) for you or use one of Google’s automated bidding strategies (which is what we would recommend given it can analyse data signals more effectively this way). We then optimise your account to try and get that cost per click as low as we can.
Why can’t I see my ads?
Google is very smart – depending on the data signals Google gets from you, you may not actually be the target market, your IP address may have been blocked (done at our end via your Google Analytics account), your budget may have run out, or your search impression share may be quite low.
How do the ads come up?
Google uses a live auction process factoring in millions of data signals to determine what ads will show. Your keywords, budget, ad rank and many other factors are also taken into consideration. Please refer to our section above called ‘How Google Ads work’ to find out more!
Can I advertise against a competitor?
If it’s not trademarked, and you feel comfortable doing so, we can do this (just remember it will likely cause them to react in turn – if they’re not already doing so). A lot of businesses do choose to do this!
What is Search Impression Share?
It’s the percentage of times your ads were eligible to show for potential searches based on the keywords in your account. Eligibility is based on your current ads targeting settings, bids and quality. Impression share data is updated daily.
“Friendly, personal and know what they’re doing – you can’t ask for more than that. Jill and the CM team have been amazing.”
“I have done three courses with Conversion Marketing. These have helped me a lot getting my business back on its feet.
I found the content taught highly relevant, accessible and applicable. Through one of the ‘Google Ads’ courses, I was able to generate a sale which was the best outcome I could ask for.”
“Professional, expert and honest. It’s been a fabulous experience working with Monique. She takes the time to understand our needs and provides solutions tailored to Work! Big thank you.”
“Thanks Ellen for the virtual meeting on Friday. You make something that I find very boring more easy to understand. Your passion and knowledge through research of our products is refreshing and has enabled me to confidently trust your advice on our direction moving forward.”
“Excellent knowledgeable team who provided experts in each area of training and valuable insights into our business.”
“I’ve been working with conversion marketing for around half a year now. I’ve been so impressed with the quality of service that they provide. We have had Blair looking after us and he has made it such a good experience. I highly recommend Conversion Marketing for any business that wants to do digital marketing better.”
“I’m really thrilled with the results Jill, Jamie, Jono and the team @ Conversion Marketing have achieved for Uno Furniture since taking over our Digital Marketing.
Not only do they really know their trade, they are also great at keeping us informed and involved in any strategic changes as well as taking a clever approach to implementing changes. Thanks a million.”
Where to from here?
Whether you want to optimise your current digital strategy or looking for “outside of the box” ideas, we can advise you about the fastest and most cost effective way to grow your business.
Get in touch by calling us on 0800 2666 245 or feel free to fill in our form and we’ll be in touch with you soon.
Check out our other Google Ad services
Reach your ideal target audience at scale, digitally for a greater ROI.
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Build your brand and reach the right audience by harnessing the power of Google Display Ads.
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Extend your brand reach and engagement through YouTube
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Measure your Conversions and what’s happening on your site with Google Analytics.