Are Google Ads worth it for small businesses?
This question pops up in the mind of every small business owner who is looking to grow their business with Google Ads.
The answer is yes, Google Ads work, especially for local businesses.
And the most straightforward reason is that millions of internet users, including yourself, use Google regularly to look for or buy products and services. And your business needs to be in front of a massive user base, specifically your consumers.
If you heard about Google Ads while exploring online marketing options for your business, you are likely to know a thing or two about it.
So let us start off with understanding how Google Ads work.
How does Google Ads Work?
Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords) works on a PPC or pay-per-click advertising model where you pay an amount to display an ad for your business to the consumers who make a relevant search on Google Search and Maps.
Based on the relevant search term and the targeted keyword, Google puts your content on top of organic results.
For any business that is looking to put forward a powerful ad in front of a huge consumer base, Google Ads is a key digital marketing tool.
While doing a search on Google, you might have come upon something like this:
Here are the primary objectives that Google asks about what you’re looking to achieve:
- More calls to your business.
- More visitors to your store.
- Direct to your landing page.
As you move further, you’ll decide the targeting of the audience based on location and how you want your ads to be displayed. Based on the information you give about your business (keywords are primarily used here) and images, Google will create your ad copy.
Next, you can choose your budget based on which Google will predict the success of your ad campaign, and then your ad will go live.
Based on the quality and relevancy of your ads, they will rank higher and display on the top of organic search results.
As more users click on your ad, your present budget will come to be fulfilled.
Can my business rank for a lesser bid?
The ads displayed to your target audience are based on keywords that are specific and relevant to the businesses that make bids on them. This is to maintain relevancy so that only the right audience ends up viewing them.
Now, Google values the relevancy of the keywords so your business can still rank higher than the business with more bids than yours.
The position of the ads to be displayed functions like an auction, where relevancy and other factors count as well, along with the number of bids. So yes, your business can rank with an even lower bid than your competitor.
However, a higher bid and the most relevant fit for the selected keywords wins the higher rank spot.
7 Powerful Benefits of Google Ads for Small Business
Here are some best benefits of Google Ads that you definitely need to include in your digital marketing strategy:
1. Google Ads helps you reach your customer
With Google Ads, you get a variety of targeting choices that makes it simple to target the perfect demographic for your local business.
These targeting options become quite effective if you operate a local business and want to target clients where your business is located.
If you want to target a particular local audience in mind, such as a city or region, you can benefit from displaying your advertising solely to consumers in that area. This is commonly known as “geo-targeting.”
It allows you to reach your target customers without spending ad dollars on those who are not in your region, and for any dollar spent outside that area, you can claim a refund.
You have a choice not only to specify your targeted area, but you can also to exclude regions from which you do not want to display your ads.
What you get out of this is- lower advertising costs and improved ROI.
For example, if you run a local garage door company, you would want to attract customers from your location only. Here, Google Ads can help you out by showing ads only to customers who are searching within your locality and are more likely to choose your business.
2. Generates higher return-on-investment
Unlike other online marketing strategies, you pay only for the ads people click on with Google Ads.
A well-executed and optimized ad campaign gives a higher return on your investment that may not be scaled with other digital marketing methods.
However, finding what works and what does not takes time, and you must choose which technique is best for you and your company. To gain a better image of what will provide the best outcomes, you must test and track your Google Ads campaigns on a regular basis. The platform is ideal for testing since it is incredibly transparent and provides all of the information you want.
Once you identify areas of your ads campaign that provide a strong ROI, you should spend your time and resources there. If a campaign or portions of a campaign are costing you money more than you get in return, you should discontinue them. Invest your funds in successful campaigns as well as future marketing initiatives.
3. Faster results than search engine optimization
SEO can’t be ignored for any digital marketing initiatives on search engines, but you should know that it takes time.
Months even before your business can see some results from search engine optimization.
Further, getting to the top with SEO online can be a difficult and time involving process as you have to face a lot of competitors, some of which have been executing SEO techniques successfully for a long time now.
Being a small business, you cannot spend so much time simply waiting for the results.
Here, Google Ads comes to your rescue, as you don’t have to wait to see the results. As soon as you create your campaigns and hit live, your website starts getting traffic.
McElligott Digital Marketing helps you create Google Ads campaigns that yield good QS (quality scores) that puts your content above the rest.
4. Build your brand awareness
A common mistake committed by marketers is that they don’t know the power of Google Ads in growing your brand awareness.
Most of them see it plainly as a tool for driving traffic. Whereas your ad campaigns can help your brand get recognized by your customers. While focussing on leads, sales, and reach achieved by Google Ads, marketers forget the brand-building potential of paid ads.
Since people spend longer hours today on the internet, your ads can be viewed many times by similar individuals. Even if they do not make an instant purchase, they will remember your brand and its offerings when they need your services in the future.
5. Flexible for small business
The flexibility of Google Ads in terms of the industry type and size and advertising budget makes it one of the best digital marketing tools.
Google Ads fits all kinds of companies- whether it be in the kind of industry or the size- a local business, medium, or large. It will only be just to call Google Ads a highly flexible and dynamic online marketing platform.
The flexibility extends beyond what you can expect- including your choice to start, pause, limit, or stop any of your ad campaigns anytime.
You can set your advertising budget for your ad campaigns based on the amount you have set out for your brand marketing.
With features like targeting based on demographics and geotargeting, you have the choice to target consumers based in different locations and using different electronic devices.
6. Full control of your budget
It’s unnerving to imagine a time when marketers were unable to keep the cost of their ad campaigns within the marketing budget.
Then marketing methods like distributing leaflets and placing hoardings are inefficient now.
Google Ads gives you complete control of how you spend your advertising budget. You can target focus keywords, calculate the number of ads, decide on demographics, and set daily ad budget limits. You can stop your ads anytime you want.
More importantly, you pay only when a user clicks on the ad, and that too within your prescribed location.
7. Leverage remarketing
Whether you know it or not, remarketing results in a considerable amount of conversions.
Google is the big game in the world of online ads. If you care about the facts, nearly 45% of the websites worldwide use the ad networks of Google, reports W3Techs.
With the help of cookies, Google helps businesses retarget users. This means that a consumer will see your ads more than one time if they have once visited your website.
To show ads only to the users who took some actions after visiting your website, you can tweak the settings to enable this.
For example, you can show T-shirt ads on the display network to the consumers who click on the apparel filter on your e-commerce site.
Get started with your Google Ads campaigns.
At McElligott Digital Marketing, we have helped a number of businesses grow their revenue with PPC campaigns.
PPC ad campaigns are totally worth it for the ROI and brand awareness they generate, provided your campaigns are managed meticulously.
If you’re thinking of getting started, we can help you take that one step toward your goals.
Book a call with us at 833-772-4897 for a free consultation.