How Long Does It Take for Google Ads to Work?

Online advertising is easy. You just place an ad on Google and start generating leads instantly, right? Well, not exactly. It sure would be nice if you got strong Google ads results and Google ads leads right away but it rarely works that way.

You might be able to shortcut the time if you’re selling products in a competitive space and you want to do deep discounts – like 75% off. Otherwise, it typically takes time.

So, how long does it take before you start seeing the kind of Google ads results you want? It depends on the kind of results you want. You may see increased traffic fairly quickly, but we think the Google ads results you want are conversions. That could mean generating leads by getting people to give you their email address, fill out a form, or request more information. It might mean clicking through to make a purchase.

If you’re striving for conversions – and you should be – the answer to how long it takes to see results is a bit more complicated.

Here’s the short answer to the question: It will likely take three months to start seeing Google ads results but can take a year or more of consistent advertising to get the results you want.

Why does it take this much time? There are a few reasons.

It’s about More than Just Your Ad

Google’s in the business of serving up the most relevant content it can when people search. Search engines take more than just bid price into account.

Google knows that if your ads perform well, you’re more likely to continue doing business with them. So, they’re going to favor the ads with higher conversion rates. It’s smart business. They also know that the more relevant ads are to searcher intent, the happier its users are and less likely to go to a competing search engine.

For you, that means until your ads start converting, you may not get the top spot even if you bid the same amount (or more) than a competitor. Here’s why.

Ad Rank

Google Ads assigns an ad rank for each ad in the auction. One of the biggest ranking factors the algorithm examines is the quality of your ad and your landing page. In other words, where does someone go after they click your ad?

Quality Score

This quality score takes into account the keywords in your ad, the likelihood someone will click on your ad, and the quality of your website when they do click. Your website’s authority, backlinks, content, and search engine page rankings all play a role in your quality score.

Starting Up

It also usually takes a little bit of time to dial everything in. There’s the time it takes to create the optimal keyword and long-tail keyword lists, find semantic matches for searcher intent, and find out the right bid amounts that return the greatest ROI.

Once you’ve got everything ready to go, there’s still an approval process by Google. They’re checking to make sure your ads aren’t “spammy,” misleading, or offensive. Its algorithm needs to ensure it’s relevant to the keywords you’ve chosen and the landing page matches the ad.

Google is expected to do $39.5 billion in ad revenue in 2020. That’s a lot of ads. Even with automation, it may take a minute for them to approve your ad. If you follow their guidelines, most ads are approved within 24-48 hours.

Optimizing Your Ads

Here’s one of the great things about PPC advertising. You can create diverse sets of ad campaigns and ad copy. You can customize your content for different target customers or search intent. Then, you can A/B test things to refine which ads you serve.

Over time, your campaign will perform better and better as more data is gathered. By month three, you should have enough information about how your customers responded to your ad sets to determine which ads perform best for which audiences. Here’s another cool thing: this can all happen automatically behind-the-scenes. Marketing automation can handle the testing, evaluate the results, and continuously optimize your campaign.

Data Analysis

Working with a PPC agency, your account manager will monitor the key metrics to find the sweet spot for the best Google ads results for generating leads. This includes an analysis of:

• CPC (Cost Per Click)
• CTR (Click Through Rate)
• ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)

People often underestimate the amount of time it takes to create the ads, do adequate testing, and then optimize the performance.

Digital marketing has grown up over the years. In the early days, it was all about clicks. Now it’s about conversions. Ads are only successful if they motivate people to take the action you want. Lots of clicks without lots of conversations means you’re wasting lots of money.

The Best News of All

Whether you’re shooting for Google ads leads or direct sales, it takes a strategic approach to get the Google ads results you want. However, here’s the best news of all: it works. When done right, and given the time to work, Google ads can yield impressive results and help your business grow.