Making Sense of Online Marketing Options – Google Ads

by KVELL | Oct 10, 2019 | homepage | 0 comments

This week in our series Making Sense of Online Marketing Options, let’s discuss Google Ads.

More specifically I would like to cover paid search ads in general. This would include Google Ads and Bing Ads.

Google Ads are really great! It is the quickest way to be found when people search for something specific.

However paid search or PPC only really work well for certain types of products or services. So before you dive in setting up campaigns or pay a service provider to do it for you, let’s check what ideally works on PPC.

Ideal products or services:

• People are searching for them
• The right people are searching for them, with an intent to purchase

Are the people typically searching for a free solution or just for information?

IF they are just searching for free information you are going to get low quality leads and unlikely to get a return on your ad-spend.

Will your target audience search or are typically more low value customers searching?

For example I spoke recently to an international patent attorney in the USA, who specifically said he is looking for high tech companies with revenue of $100m plus. Doing a Google Ads campaign would bring many leads – but typically the wrong ones – he would be better off doing a laser targeted LinkedIn strategy.

Will your product/service pricing, margin or business model enable a good return on investment?

Google Ads is not cheap – you have to pay for every click to your website page, as well as for a service provider to continually optimize your campaign. Before you even start, work out how much you can afford to pay for a new customer, and critically question the service provider of that is a realistic expectation. You need to calculate how many leads it will take to turn into a customer, and how many clicks will turn into a lead. Then going forward, these numbers are critical to the success of a campaign. If your margins and transaction values are low, it is unlikely Google Ads or PPC will work for you.

You can also check if your successful competitors use PPC. This will give you some idea if a PPC campaign will work for you as well.

We have found Google Ads work very well for:

• Certain types of law services, such as Family Law, Divorce, Personal Injury and others
• Home services, such as plumbing, electrical, home renovations
• Some financial services
• Insurance, although click costs tend to be very high
• e-Commerce products that are likely searched for

Please note the above list covers some examples and is by NO means exhaustive!

If PPC is integrated with a content marketing strategy (we will cover this in detail later in the series) return on investment will drastically increase. This is especially true for high value purchases, where potential customers go through a research period. By retargeting these prospects not with more annoying ads but rather with valuable content, you not only stay top of mind, but also build trust. When they are then ready to make a decision they are more likely to contact you!

If you would like to find out more about Google Ads & PPC and whether it will work for your business or professional practice, please feel free to contact us!

Please let me know if there is anything specific you would like us to cover in this series.