Whether you’re a new business, a well-established business, large or small – at some point everyone who oversees digital marketing will think, are these google ads actually worth it? Google is a cornerstone of digital marketing as it owns platforms like Google Analytics, Google’s own search engine, Youtube and of course, Google ads. It’s hard to escape the reality that google ads will likely need to feature in your digital marketing plan because of it. But make sure to read on before you waste money on ads that will never work!
When to use Google Ads
A big problem people have is turning on google ads without any prior research and just hoping those will work. It may take a bit more time, but doing a little bit of checking before putting out a campaign with save you loads of money (and stress!). Use a free tool by Google called Google Trends and search for keywords relating to your products/service and make sure the location is set to your selling location (usually United Kingdom) and then look over the past 12 months or over the past year. From here you can see a chart with dips and peaks showing when people have been searching for that term over that time period.
If you can see a peak for when people search for your products, maybe save your campaign budget for those times of year to make sure you are in front on people at a key time. For example, a gift shop would want to advertise over October – December for the Christmas gifting period.
Or, if you do well enough organically in those times then find times of year that have a dip and plan campaigns to run then. It may be a bit harder to get conversions but you will likely find your competitors are running less ads in those times so it may be a cheaper cost per click.
Why Google Ads are Important (Google Ads or Facebook Ads)
The two most popular forms of advertising platforms are Facebook/Instagram and Google. These two have very different intentions for ads. With Facebook/Instagram ads you are targeting your audience (or retargeting your current visitors) with the hope of catching them at the right time with an interest in your product/service. With Google ads, half of the work is done for you – they are already searching Google and trying to find the product/service you offer, you just have to show them why they should trust you with their business.
Because of this, Google ads will bring in visitors that are more likely to convert as they are already interested in what you offer as a business.
Where Google Ads Appear
You can choose from the type of google ad campaign you want to make, whether it’s search (people actively searching for selected keywords/phrases), display (shown on websites with google ads embedded, you can choose what type of websites you want to appear on ), shopping (people actively searching for selected products) or youtube (people searching for keywords or topics on youtube see your video ad).
Picking the right type of campaign is crucial to whether the campaign is worth it.
If you’re worried about your google ads setup or are trying google ads for the first time why not book in a FREE 121 with a digital marketing expert or check out our google ads management.