Online marketing and Google Ads – the two go hand-in-hand.
When a prospective customer is looking for a product, restaurant, service, promotion, or anything from anywhere in the world, they’re likely going to search for it on Google first. That’s how Google Ads work: someone enters a search term and Google serves them a relevant ad for a product or service.
In the world of business, Google Ads can be a hugely successful tool for driving traffic, marketing your product, and getting sales.
If you’ve been ignoring the most popular (and effective) online advertising platform in the world, it’s time for you to take a second look.
In this blog we will show you some reasons why Google Ads will help you reach new customers and grow your business.
1. Google AdWords enables you to reach your customer when they want your stuff, no matter what
Any business, regardless of size, wants to be found on the first page of Google. Getting seen by customers at the exact time they are looking for your information, products, services, deals or location is intent marketing (marketing based on someone intending to find your products), and it’s profitable.
But as a small business hoping to organically get on the top ten search results, you have to recognize you’re competing with career-long, experienced, motivated SEO experts.
But with Google AdWords you can compete on the same level, no matter how long you’ve been around or your own expertise. You can get your message viewed by your market, exactly when they’re searching for your specific product, service or offers.
2. Google AdWords enables you to reach your local customer, reliably
AdWords gives you location targeting options. So, if you’re a locally based business, (such as a neighbourhood restaurant), a regional company (such as a bank), or even an e-commerce site (with, say, country shipping restrictions), you can geo-target to get seen by your consumer. And you’re not wasting ad rands on those who aren’t in your area.
AdWords enables you to easily target countries, areas within a country, and radius targeting (to show your ads to people within a certain distance to your business). You can exclude locations, too, even in your proximity targeting. Excluding locations brings your ROI up by lowering costs and targeting more precisely.
3. Google AdWords enables you to show your location to searchers
By using Google Places in conjunction with AdWords, you can show a map of your brick-and-mortar shop with your ads. The easier you make it for customers to find you, the more likely they’ll walk in.
4. Google AdWords enables you to show your contact information
You’ve probably seen ad extensions on ads everywhere, but you might not have known how they worked.
Ad extensions let businesses like yours enhance their Google AdWords with phone numbers, addresses, app downloads, site landing page links, reviews, previous page visits and lots more. They show up in blue and appear just below your ad description.
By including more contact information in your ads, ad extensions make it way easier for your potential customer to connect with you.
While ad extensions don’t cost anything more to include in your ad, you are charged the same for a click on them as you are for your headline. For example, if someone clicks on your phone number to call you directly from your ad extension, you’ll be billed for this paid conversion. (Yup, Google can track clicked phone calls on mobile, tablets and desktops.)
If you’re a restaurant, for example, you can show your local address and include links to specific menu pages, offers and other specific landing pages on your website.
5. Google AdWords enables you to allows you to target highly specific searches
Keywords, keywords, keywords. This is what Google AdWords is known for.
The more targeted your keywords (and keyword phrases) are the better Google will rank your ad. You’ll also reach a lot more consumers who want exactly what you have right now.
If you’re using Google AdWords directly, be sure to research through suggested keywords for every ad group you create. Some Google ad providers offer to do the hard work for you by choosing the most optimized, targeted keywords for your ad group campaigns. Use the opportunity to think like your customer, and choose words they’re searching for. You can set up different keywords for each of your ad group campaigns. And you can change your words at any time to keep optimizing your reach.
6. Google AdWords enables you to follow your customer with retargeting
You’ve seen it, I’m sure. You visit a site, stay on it for a while, and then leave. But then you keep seeing ads for the company, or even the product page you were on. That’s retargeting.
With Google AdWords, if an interested customer has visited your website, they get a cookie from a code you’ve put on the backend of your site. When they leave your site, you can target your ads to follow them on the Google Display Networks, or Google search.
You pay extra for it but it really does work to increase sales. Think about it… Those people were interested enough to come visit your site. You can get seen by them again – and then again and again – while your business is still on their mind.
Let’s say you have a baby products store. An interested parent-to-be clicks on your ad and visits your landing page for strollers. In doing so, their browser picks up your Google AdWords cookie. They leave to do some more shopping around.
And yet, when they visit (for instance) a popular parent blog site (which is part of the Google Display Network) they see your ad for strollers again. And again, when they go to YouTube
Google AdWords is consistently seen as one of the best ways to reach your prospective customer, drive traffic to your business, and ultimately increase sales. But there’s no point in starting a marketing strategy unless you know what you’re doing, so education is key.
