Being responsible for growing a small business with limited resources can be frustrating. With the seemingly overwhelming choice of channels available, it can be difficult deciding where you should allocate your marketing budget - and which channel will return the best return. Google Ads _(‘Adwords’) can often be seen as a privilege reserved for big businesses with deeper pockets but contrary to popular opinion, on average advertisers see a £2 return for every £1 spent.
The truth is that with 65% of the worlds search traffic initiated through Google search, the amount of potential for getting your business in front of potential buyers is unmatched by any other, traditional or modern, method of advertising. In this article, we’re going to clear the air and share with you exactly why Google Ads (PPC) can work wonders for your small business - when done correctly.
Reasons Why Google Advertising Works for Small Business
Google Ads Increase Brand Awareness
Getting your brand out there and making people aware of how you can uniquely solve their problems is one of the biggest challenges small businesses face. Regardless, if your business operates on a national or within a small, very specific local geography, advertising through Google can put you in front of the right people at the right time. That’s right - you can put your brand directly in front of potential customers within an actionable next step in as little as a few hours (Disclaimer: mastering Google Ads may take wee bit longer).
With Google Ads (‘Adwords’) the true power comes in giving you the ability to target specific geographic locations and consumer profiles. You can have a very narrow or broad target customer, Google helps you get in front of them and it helps you do it at the right time in the potential customers ‘buying cycle’.
Processing more than 3.5 billion searches every-single-day, Google advertising helps you instantly expose your brand to as many consumers as you want (of course, it’s advisable to make your ad targeting as specific as possible).
Google Advertising is Cost-Effective Marketing
As a small business, you don’t have the luxury of testing the waters in new ways - instead you need results for every pound you spend in marketing. Many of marketing channels available to small businesses are based on a fixed rate model, regardless of how many leads you do or don’t get (think local journals or online directory listings). On the other hand, Google Ads is different in that you only get charged when people click on your ads rather than by the amount of time it’s live or how many potential customers see it.
According to Google, the average business makes £2 for every £1 spent on Google Ads. Say again?
..the average business makes £2 for every £1 spent on Google ads..
Depending on how well you design your Google Ad, when done right, you’ll find that you’re only paying for qualified leads with the highest probably of converting into paying customers. As we mentioned above, to make the most of your Google advertising budget, be sure to build your campaigns as specific as possible (or work with someone who can help o). Targeting specific demographics, locations, user devices, interests and online activities - being specific with your targeting means that you don’t waste budget on drawing in the wrong types of leads and results in more qualified leads coming through to you and your sales team.
Google Ads Help You Learn More About Your Target Customers
Marketing is a data game - without campaign data you have no true way of knowing what’s working and what’s not - fundamentally, there’s no way to know how much budget you’re wasting. One of the best benefits of advertising on Google is the wealth of information they make available to you with various metrics. For each Google Ad, you can track everything from search phrases used by potential customers to the amount of time they spend on your landing page, essentially giving you a detailed snapshot and live pulse of each campaign you run and have run in the past.
This is information is priceless. Not only can you use it to continue to make your Google Ads run more performantly, but you can also use it to your advantage with other marketing channels like emails and social media. Helping you to understand your target audience, Google Advertising allows you to learn more about problems and needs so you can better meet them and increase conversion rates across all of your marketing efforts.
Google Advertising Removes the Need For Custom Design Work
Building an ad campaign from scratch outside of Google’s platform can be time consuming and tricky - everything from the look and feel to ad copy and placement can provide unlimited choices and perhaps an overwhelming choice for small businesses. Whilst having control over these aspects may be an opportunity for larger organisations, for smaller ones it means risk of making the wrong choice and risking marketing capital. With Google Ads, pretty much all of the design elements are taken out of your hands so you can focus on what’s most important - ad copy.
From an outsider’s perspective, this may seem like a negative as all ads can end up looking similar, it also forces you to think outside of the box and use creative ways to draw in your target audience. Google Ads have plenty of customisation features so you can give your campaign a unique feel that’s relevant to what you’re offering. This also frees up time so you can focus on other campaign factors such as targeting criteria (mentioned above) and landing page optimisations (CRO).
Google Ads Engage Customers at the Right Time
Due to the urgency of needing to see a quick return from ad spend, it’s important to remember that timing is everything. Getting your business in front of someone who is closer to actually buying a product or service is more valuable than getting in front of someone who is just starting to think about buying something. You need to find people that are ready to make a buying decision. Google is incredibly powerful for funnelling purchase-ready consumers to your ad campaign with the use of keywords that indicate buyer intent.
Though it may take a little trial and error, with practice, you’ll be able to easily narrow down which keywords have the highest conversion rates, ultimately helping you optimise your campaigns and increase your return-on-investment. In addition to helping you build a list of high conversion keywords; Google Ads can also be placed where they have the highest probably of being seen by your target customers. It’s a continual process, so the more comfortable you become with Google Ads, the more you can optimise your campaign and the more you can build up your usage of the Google Advertising Network (GDN) to encompass YouTube and other relevant websites listed under the GDN such as news websites, e-commerce stores and blogs. Because of the number of websites permitting your Google Ad to be shown, you can easily show your adverts on websites which already cater to your target audience saving more time and offering a cost-effective way of increasing your target audience.
