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Google Ads – previously known as Google AdWords – is the search engine’s own Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising platform. It’s responsible for over 97% of Google’s revenue, and it’s been a real game-changer for users who want to get quick, easy exposure for their company online.
Businesses use the program to bid for advertising space above the organic listings. Via their Ads account, they can tell Google to display their ads for keywords that are relevant to their products or services, then use these ads to direct potential customers back to a particular page on their website.
They do not need to pay to appear in the search results, but they will be charged a fee every time a user clicks on their link.
As you can imagine, Google Ads provides marketing-savvy organisations with a quick, easy and incredibly effective way of boosting their website traffic and generating more leads or enquiries. The only downside is, these companies need to pay for the privilege – and costs can escalate pretty quickly if the account isn’t being managed correctly.
Many people think that Google Ads is only suitable for larger companies with big budgets. Trust us – that’s not true.
If you’re in a particularly competitive industry sector, you may need to pay a higher price for ad clicks, because there will be a higher demand for ad space. But we believe that every company can benefit from running a paid search campaign, as long as their account is well-optimised, and they are making the right first impression on the people who are finding their ads.
A successful PPC campaign relies on two things:
There are certain tools and settings you can use within Google Ads to maximise your chances of appearing in search whilst paying as little as possible for the exposure.
Here, we’ve listed five tactics that will help you manage your click spend budget and ensure you’re getting the best possible return on investment from your marketing efforts.
Keyword selection is an essential part of the process because the key phrases you choose to appear for will ultimately determine who is going to see your ad.
To find the right keywords for your campaign, you’ll first need to think about your user’s intent. Will they be looking for information on a specific topic, perhaps to research a purchase? Or do they want to buy something online? The intentions behind the search will affect the queries they use.
Next, use Google’s Keyword Planner tool to determine how many people are searching for a particular keyword on a monthly basis. The software can be used to generate ideas for your campaign, but crucially, it will also call upon an archive of search data to give you each term’s monthly search volume.
If the search volume is low, your ad will be seen by fewer people. But by the same token, if the key phrase is specific to what you’re offering, you may have a better chance of converting the user into a paying customer.
Pro Tip: Use exact match keywords.
Exact match keyword targeting enables you to reach customers who are searching with a specific keyword (or a close variant of it).
When you set your keywords to ‘exact match’ in Google Ads, you’re making sure that your ads are only appearing for searches that are 100% relevant to the search term you have chosen. You won’t reach as many people using this keyword strategy, but you will only pay for clicks that are more likely to convert into real business. It’s a much more cost-effective way of managing a campaign if money is tight.
If you only supply your products or services to a particular town, county or region, make sure this is reflected in your targeting settings.
You can tell the platform to only display your ads if the user is based in a place that’s of interest to you. This stops you from wasting your click budget on people who live in areas that you don’t currently service.
In the same way that you can restrict where your ads are shown, you can also make sure they are only displayed at certain times of the day.
If you’re a B2B provider that receives most of your enquiries between 9am and 5pm, you can ask Google to list your ad during these times. If you’re an online retailer, and you know that most of your customers are going to be searching for your products after normal working hours, you can change your settings so that your ads only appear in the evening.
And if you have no idea when your customers would normally be searching for companies like yours, you can experiment by testing different ad schedules, then monitoring the data to see which approach has generated the most clicks.
The copy used within your ad is what’s going to hook your customers in and convince them to click through to your site. It needs to pack a punch, sure – but it also needs to meet Google Ads’ guidelines if it’s going to be considered for inclusion in the listings.
You can find lots of information on how to write winning PPC ad copy here, but in a nutshell, you need to make sure your content highlights what makes you unique; contains one of your targeted keywords; and tells your audience exactly what they need to do in order to either get in touch with you or complete their purchase (depending on your goals for the campaign).
Thanks to Google’s recently expanded text ads, you now have even more space to fill. You can also add a range of ad extensions to your listing to make it really stand out. Click here for a closer look at the different types of ad extensions now available from Google Ads.
The best way to prevent overspending is to set an average daily budget for each Google Ads campaign. It’s important to choose a budget that’s sustainable and affordable for your business – but you’ll also need to consider whether this amount will be enough to get you enough clicks to make the campaign viable.
It’s a tough balancing act. If you’re struggling to work out how much you should be spending for the best ROI, we’d recommend asking a specialist PPC manager for help.
Need further help?
The tips listed above should go some way to helping you achieve a better return from your Google Ads campaign. However, there’s so much involved in running a successful PPC account, it would be impossible for us to list all our recommendations in one blog post!
For more advice and expert guidance, contact the team here at ClickSlice. We’ll use our decades of combined experience in using Google Ads to produce a campaign that delivers on all fronts.
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