Why Your Google Ads Strategy May Actually Be Costing You More Than You Think

With that said, Google can be intimidating. Many believe that Google Ads require significant financial backing. However, we’re here to tell you that you can cost-effectively run Google Ads. 

Whether you’re a business that hasn’t run paid advertising or wants to cut down on its marketing spend. There are ways to optimize your ad strategy, and you don’t have to sacrifice showing up on Google Ads to stay within your budget. 

Below we’ll discuss ways to optimize your Google Ads strategy because it may be costing more than you think, and it doesn’t have to! 

Table of Contents

• What are Google Ads? 
• Why Advertise on Google?
• Benefits of Google Ads 
• Google Ad Strategies To Get the Most Out of Your Budget  

What are Google Ads? 

Let’s start with a brief overview of what Google Ads is. Google Ads is a paid advertising platform. It’s a pay-per-click (PPC) strategy where the advertiser pays per click or impression on an ad. 

Through Google ads, your business will show up on Google’s search engine results page (SERPs) when customers are looking for services similar to yours. Advertisers use Google ads to boost website traffic, receive more phone calls, and increase in-store visits. Google ads are beneficial because your business will show up when your audience is looking for you. 

Google ads drive qualified traffic to your website and reach customers who are a good fit for your business. Additionally, you can run Google ads on mobile and desktop to enhance your reach. 

With Google ads, advertisers can set a monthly cap when running ads to pause or stop advertising at any point within that time period. Google also analyzes and improves ads to reach more people and hit your monthly goals as you run your ads.

Why Advertise on Google?

Did you know that Google processes over 8.5 billion searches per day? It’s the most used search engine to date. Google is so well-liked that it even has its own verb – “To Google.” 

Every day, people use Google to answer simple questions like “Where to get my car washed?” and “How to tie a tie?”

So we know Google is a well-liked platform, so what about Google Ads? Is it effective? What are the benefits? We’ll answer these questions shortly, but first, let’s consider a few statistics (source): 

• More than 80% of global businesses trust Google Ads for PPC campaigns
• The average Google Ads CTR for ads placed at the first position is 7.94%
• People are four times more likely to click ads on Google (63%) than on any other advertisement network

Benefits of Google Ads 

We’ve discussed what Google Ads are and their importance. Now, let’s break down the benefits starting with Google’s massive reach. 

Reach & Relevancy 

Google is the leading search engine. It dominates the market and has a vast customer base. As a result, businesses that advertise with Google see massive traffic every day. 

However, Google didn’t earn its customers or market dominance for nothing; users love Google because of its relevance. The company’s search engine algorithm produces relevant search results and ads so that users continue to come back and use Google as their first choice search engine. 

Google consistently displaying relevant content and ads are great for advertisers! The people seeing their ads and clicking on them are more likely to take action because they were actively searching for the product or service before visiting your ad. 

Audience Insights 

Google has a range of targeting capabilities and audience demographics so that each business can personalize its strategy. There’s also the potential to learn more about your audience to continue to refine your strategy. 

Learning about your audience through advertising methods like social media can be challenging. Your audience may not be looking for products or services on social media accounts like Instagram. Instead, they may be looking for photos of their friends and family. 

By advertising on Google, there’s a better chance that your target audience is listening because they were actively looking for your content, product, or service. 

Additionally, Google compiles information on your audience and their habits. So, by advertising on Google, you can learn more about your customers, like their: 

• Location
• Preferred Device
• Times of Day they like to search
• Optimal Keywords

By understanding your audience, you can refine your strategy to be more targeted and reach people who are actively interested in your business. When advertising to the right audience, you can increase website traffic and leads.

Control & Transparency 

With Google ads, advertisers have complete control of their campaigns and the budget they set for them. A big benefit of Google Ads is that advertisers can set a max budget, so while Google is serving your ads, it will keep your budget in mind. 

With control comes transparency; Google provides an easily accessible and understandable analytics page. With Google Analytics, you can see how your campaigns are performing. You’ll be able to see information like ad clicks, visitors, and the cost per click. 

With access to campaign performance, you can see how your advertising performs. If your ads are performing well, you can increase your budget, and if they’re not, you can decrease your budget or tweak the way you’re advertising.

The availability of analytics makes Google Ads one of the most transparent and easily understandable sites for its advertisers.

Google Ads do more than drive traffic to your website and help you show up on the search engine results page (SERP). It allows you to build brand awareness. Google Ads is one of the most powerful advertising tools because millions of searches happen on the internet every day. 

One of the best things about Google Ads is the user’s intent. With advertising on Google Ads, you know your audience’s intent. You know they’re looking for a business, product, or service similar to yours. 

Because Google Ads is a pay-per-click platform, you only have to pay for the ads that people click on. Once you optimize your Google ads campaign, you can get a high return on investment and convert many of these searches to leads and then customers.

Google Ad Strategies To Get the Most Out of Your Budget   

Typically, businesses are intimidated by the cost of Google ads. This intimidation could be because they’re new to digital advertising. Or they are under the assumption that they need a sizeable advertising budget to see a return on investment. However, according to Google, if you’re new to Google Ads, you should start by setting an average of $10 to $50 per day to see how your advertising will perform. 

$10 to $50 is doable with the right planning! 

Keep in mind that while setting up a Google ads campaign can be relatively easy, it’s also easy to do it incorrectly. If you’ve tried to advertise on Google and your ads underperformed – that’s OK! 

There are numerous reasons why your Google Ads could be underperforming. Thankfully, there are ways to optimize your advertising to increase performance while saving money. 

Here are a few ways to improve your Google Ads, increase traffic to your website, and convert leads into sales without overspending on advertising.

Factor in Location

How are you currently spending your budget? 

We recommend you look at your audience, specifically the location targeting. One way to optimize your Google Ads and lower costs is to target geographically. 

When creating a Google Ads campaign, the geo-targeting defaults to “All Locations.” While some ad strategies benefit from targeting the entire world, it’s important to be targeted with your advertising budget when you’re looking to lower costs. 

You want to target the specific locations that would be interested in your business, product, or service. 

Google offers a highly customizable location targeting option to target people in your area or people who are more likely to need your services.  

Bid on specific keywords

Reflect on the keywords you’re using. 

Are they broad match keywords like “Marketing Services?” Or are you using more specific keywords, like “Digital Marketing Services?”

Broad match keywords allow you to reach the widest audience possible and drive a large volume of traffic to your website. If you’re using more broad keywords, look to narrow them down and make them more precise. 

While using specific keywords will have a lower search volume, it will be more targeted. 

We recommend that if you have a limited budget, invest funds in keywords that are targeted and will help you sell. Stay away from broad match keywords with a high search volume. While you will reach many people, you risk the potential of driving up spending and yielding less qualified traffic. 

By choosing more specific keywords, you can be more targeted and more intentional with your digital advertising budget.

Take a Look at Your Landing Pages 

You can invest hundreds of dollars into your Google Ads campaign and still not see the return on investment you want. One of the reasons your ads aren’t converting could be your landing page. 

Ask yourself, what’s the customer experience? Where are you sending these leads? Would you engage with your website if you were a customer?  

Take time to create a user-friendly landing page that makes sense and is engageable for your customers. Google will send you leads, and if you create your landing page with customers in mind, only then will you see conversions. 

So here are a few things to ensure you have on your landing page for a better converting landing page. 

1. Have a Call to Action
2. Ensure that your landing page makes sense and relates to the ad the user clicked on
3. Look at your site load speed

If you wouldn’t want to click on it, your audience probably won’t either.  

Streamline the Buyer’s Journey 

When you invest in Google Ads, Google will invest in you by sharing your content with users looking for your product or service, but then what? 

How do you define success once that lead is on your website? Is it through signing up for a newsletter? Buying something? Scheduling a call? 

There are so many steps between a user doing a Google search and ending up on your page. First, they have to need your product or service, Google it, choose your ad over every other option on the search engine results page, look at your content, and then what? 

Does your landing page direct the customer on what they should do next? Pinpoint what your business considers a conversion, and ensure that you’re setting the stage for your customers to take that next step.

By being more direct about your targeting, the buyer’s journey, your keywords, etc., you’re ensuring that the money you invest in Google Ads produces the return on investment you want.  

Google Ads is one of the best digital advertising platforms and an ideal strategy for businesses to implement. While it is a pay-per-click platform, there are ways to optimize Google Ads to lower costs and still benefit from Google’s return on investment. 

While Google ads are easy to set up, they can be costly, especially when comparing yourself to big businesses with large marketing budgets. 

To get the best experience out of Google, you need to know how to use it and optimize it for your business and its needs. This all starts with learning how to use the product and understanding your business and its goals. 

We’ve published tons of information on Google ads, what to know and how to optimize them: 

• Why You Should Be Testing Your Google Ads 
• Ad- Tracking: The Three Main Types & How to do it Effectively 
• Looking for a Way to Get the Most Out of Your Google Ads? 

If you’re interested in taking the next step in your digital marketing journey, schedule a conversation with our CEO & Founder, Mike Wisby.