What are Google Ads?
You’ve probably heard of them but might not be really clear on what they are.
So overall, Google Ads is a way to boost traffic to your website through targeted advertising. Now, Google has 91% of the market share as of January 2022. The other portions of the market share were, of course, Microsoft, Bing, DuckDuckGo, and some of the other smaller ones. But the majority of searches and advertising happen through Google.
Google managed to get into our phones a couple of years ago. It used to be Safari, which was the default, especially with Apple, but Google then made a deal with Apple so that it could be Chrome. They’ve done all these things over the years to ensure that they get the most traffic to their website.
What does it mean for you as a small business owner?
Well, it means you can use Google. When people, as I would say, have intent-based searches, like bottom-of-the-funnel intent-based searches, they go to Google. Again, that’s shifting, so don’t take what I’m saying as gospel, as it’s still the majority, but it’s shifting. My younger demographic is going more for TikTok and Pinterest because they don’t quite trust the search engine. So it really does depend on who your avatar is, but for most service-based businesses, it’s still Google.
By Definition:
Google Ads is an online advertising platform developed by Google where advertisers can bid on their service offerings, products, and videos. It’s what we call pay-per-click or cost-per-click pricing. So you pay for each click, not per impression, and you can get really good results from it.
The Benefits:
1. Drive more traffic to your website
So what happens is that you get your ad out there; this usually appears when people search for optometrists in Kelowna. They see your ad, and they’re then going to click on your website. And so the benefit of advertising is to drive more traffic to your website. If your website doesn’t convert, though, then you’ll have a problem.
Not sure if your website converts? Let our team help! We can work from scratch or with your current site and design something that not only exudes authority but is also optimized for search engines, enabling the right conversions.
2. Very cost-effective compared to radio, TV, billboards, or anything like that.
You only pay when someone clicks. Now, granted, sometimes a click can be as high as $100 if you’re in the personal injury space, but my optometrists in Squamish, BC, cost anywhere from $3–$5 a click. So it can be very, very effective.
3. Hyper-Targeted Advertising
4. Track Results
Not sure how tracking works?
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Google Ads vs Traditional Ads
Cost
So for my optometrist, he spends $500 a month on ads on Google. A radio placement that he didn’t see the return on, I want to say, was like $3,000 or $4,000. TV, don’t even go down that rabbit hole; add another zero. He did see a return on investment for the local newspaper, but for billboards, he was looking at a couple of thousand dollars for two weeks, and that primarily would have been on the Squamish reserve. So, of course, high volume with high traffic equals high dollars to invest. So the biggest thing when it comes to Google is cost.
Flexibility
You can also control it on a day-to-day basis. You can turn it off and turn it back on—it’s not something we recommend, but you can do it. You can get things going really, really quickly with Google Ads; in under a week, you have your campaign going.
If you’re hiring an agency or doing it yourself, you can do it in a couple of hours and have everything tracked and targeted. So instead of just doing that brand awareness targeting, you can actually only target and spend your money on the people who are looking for your services, which helps keep your overall advertising budget under control.
And since there’s no long-term commitment with Google Ads, you can adjust it, you can tweak it, and there’s no big, huge, long creative process. There is no long approval process; you can literally do it in a couple of hours just to get going.
Measurability
You can measure Google ads. You can’t measure the billboard; you can kind of measure the TVs as we did, but for the most part, you can definitely generate a return on investment and see how many by tracking every single lead that comes in and saying where they came from, both from a first touch point and a last touch point, whether it’s Google ads or social ads, so we can do that kind of stuff.
There are a lot of powerful things that happen in the world of Google.
So hopefully that gives you an idea of why you would want to do Google ads. And in the next couple of videos, I’m going to go into a little bit more detail about Google ads themselves and go from there.
Deploying Google Ads but wondering how long it takes for them to work?
Check out this article that explores why it takes time and provides insights on how to optimize your ads for the best results. Don't miss it!
