Are Google Ads worth it? A question as old as Google Ads itself. Pay-per-click (PPC), Google AdWords, Paid Search; whatever you call it, you can’t ignore it.
Firstly, what are Google Ads?
PPC ads appear in Google search results pages and are a very effective way to deliver traffic with buying intent to your site. Those results with the [Ad] mark that appear at the top of search results pages are all ads being paid for by businesses:
The businesses above have picked specific keywords, here the phrase “buy furniture online”, to actively bid on to get traffic from searches for that phrase. These businesses are probably bidding on hundreds of similar keywords. But the best part is that they only pay when someone clicks on their ad, hence the name: Pay-Per-Click (PPC).
Google Ads is one the quickest ways to get customers ready to buy to land on your site. It’s also a way to take traffic from your competitors. If you see your competitors above you on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP), then you can potentially outbid them and take their traffic. We’ll dig into that more later.
When you combine a strong PPC strategy with an SEO-optimized webstore, you’ll find yourself sitting on top of the paid and organic rankings. Read our complete guide to SEO for e-commerce for more detailed organic tactics.
But back to paid tactics. In this blog post, we’ll look at 6 reasons why PPC ads are worth it if you want to grow your small business and what you can do next.
1. Get customers when they want to buy
By setting your campaigns to target the right keywords, you can get customers to your site at the precise moment that they want to purchase. Finding keywords and phrases with high buyer intent and optimizing your ads around those is how you get this quality traffic.
Take the “buy furniture online” search above. Everyone searching for those terms is looking for somewhere to buy furniture online. If your store stocks these items then this would be a high quality target phrase for you.
Using ad copy that incorporates the search term into the ad is a sure-fire way to get those customers to click on your ad.
2. Learn more about your audience
The clicks and impressions on your ads represent the actions of real people. That means you can see what drives customers in your industry to click and buy. Google Ads gives you a wealth of information about the audiences you’ve reached so you can extract information like what age, gender, device used, and more.
Insights from your ad campaigns can also help you shape your webstore according to your customers’ needs. Do they mostly shop on mobile? Better make sure your site is mobile optimized and fast.
Maybe your audience keeps searching for a product that you don’t stock? Could be an opportunity to expand your offering.
3. Send customers to specific pages
Google Ads lets you send people who click on your ads to wherever on your site you want. Sure, you can send everyone to your home page, and that may be the best place for some ads.
But for specific searches for certain products, you can send them right to the category or product page. You could get granular and match up the copy of your landing page to the ad that brings them there, resulting in a seamless transition from search to site.
Google wants to send searchers to their final destination if possible. By specifying the location, you can increase your ad rank and quality score.
4. You won’t spend more than you want to
You have full control over what you spend on Google Ads. If you only have $500 to spend on campaigns every month, you can set that as your monthly limit across your campaigns.
Once you have your products or services that you want to sell, some relevant ad copy, and the link you want to send them to, you can start running paid search ads.
Since the advertiser pays only when someone clicks on an ad, you can also be sure your money is being used to drive real customers to visit your webstore. New Google Ads users can also get $500 in free ad credit when they spend $500.
5. Your competitors are probably using Google Ads
If you search for whatever product/industry you sell in your area, then you’re likely to see some of your competitors on top of the page bidding on keywords. With Google Ads, you can take those spaces and outbid the competition.
What’s more, you can even steal traffic that is actively looking for your competitor. Since you can bid on keywords, you can bid on the name of your competitor and take their customers. It’s a bit cut-throat, but is a widely used tactic.
In the example above, searching for the work management platform Asana results in some other competitors flooding the search results pages. It’s legal and effective. Here, Monday.com has even beaten Asana for ad rank for their own brand name and now appears in the first spot.
6. Track results and get quick data
Google Ads is one of the best digital marketing strategies for getting results quickly. Whether you’re running text ads or dynamic ads, Google will give you all the information you need to optimize your campaigns and tell how your currency ones are performing.
Google also assigned a quality score to your ads so you know how your ads stack up with the competition. A higher quality score means that your ad is very relevant to someone searching for that particular keyword.
A good quality score will also help to keep your cost per click low.
Want help with your Google Ads?
PPC ads and Google Ads can be very effective for small businesses to drive customers with buying intent to your webstore. However, most independent businesses don’t know where to start.
That’s where we come in. WebSell has a dedicated Paid Search marketing team that can get your campaigns up and running. We’ll develop your target keyword list, create your ads, and fully manage your campaigns for you.
Find out more about our Paid Search service or read a PPC advertising success story from one of our retailers. Here’s some positive feedback from some of our Google Ads customers:
And check out these stats from our 2022 campaigns for our retailers:
What’s next?
Drop us an email to discuss your Google Ads campaign options, or contact us via the usual channels.
Google Ads can get complicated, but we’re here to help. If you like the sound of getting $10 for every $1 spent, reach out to our team today.
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