In advertising, do you want to spend your dollars casting a broad net and hoping to for potential customers? Or do you want to use your advertising budget to target a specific audience who are already potential customers? Today Google Search Advertising allows companies to do just that.
With Google Search Advertising, companies pay for an ad to appear on Google Search or it’s partner websites when someone searches for a term that the company has selected as relevant to the product or service it is promoting.
Unlike other forms of traditional advertising like newspaper ads or billboards, Google Search Advertising reaches people when they are searching for a specific product or service. At Riley & You, we help you spend your advertising dollars to target the consumers you want to reach, a specific subset of the population actively seeking your product or service. People searching for a product or service online are most likely closer in the buying cycle than those passing a billboard on the interstate. We skip the step of convincing people they need your product and jump to why they should purchase what they already want from you.
Why It Works
Google Search Advertising has several benefits for companies that advertise in this way. The first is an extremely targeted approach to finding the best potential customers.
- Geography – We can locate potential buyers down to the zip code. We can select if we want your ad to appear just to people searching from the area or include those searching about that area.
- Keywords – We create a detailed and specific list of keywords that include hundreds, even thousands of word combinations that the customer you are seeking might be searching online.
- Ads are Targeted – Key search words are put into groups so that our ad copy is relevant to a specific audience. For example, we can break keywords down to ten ad groups with 100 words in each group. Then we can create targeted ads for each of those ad groups. So people searching for refrigerators see an ad about refrigerators and not washing machines or even general kitchen appliances.
- Landing Pages – The landing pages that potential customers see after clicking your ad are specific to the product or service in the ad and eliminate unnecessary searching on the website.
A second benefit of Google Search Advertising is adjustable bidding. This allows advertisers to put their dollars where they will be most effective by using settings that further target potential customers.
- Set Bids for Keywords – Google allows advertisers to set specific bids for each keyword. We can pay more for keywords that drive to a higher margin product and less for others. We can pay more for keywords that have higher competition so we get more ad impressions, but less for keywords where the competition is low.
- Set Bids for Devices – We can choose to pay more or less per click depending on the type of device one is searching on (desktop, tablet, mobile).
- Set Bids for Geography – We can set our bidding based on different geographic areas which would allow us to pay more for people closer to a store and less for people that are further away and therefore less likely to convert.
Just like the Internet is constantly changing, Google Advertising allows its clients to adapt to the ever-changing environment.
- Keyword Adjustments – We have the ability to add or pause keywords at any point during the campaign. Google provides tools that allow us to monitor keyword performance and seek new opportunities. Within minutes, we can adjust as needed.
- Ad Adjustments – Google allows the same during campaign changes for ads. We are constantly running A/B tests for our ads and adjusting copy for the lesser performing ads.
- Expand Geography – If we find that our geography is too wide or too narrow during the campaign, we can quickly adjust it.
- Budget Changes – Google allows us to change your campaign budget, which is regulated by a daily budget. This helps maximize your resources when the campaign is active and increase the budget of your most successful campaigns.
Finally, everything that is done in Google Advertising can be tracked instantly.
- Google AdWords Data – Within the Google AdWords platform, we can access a wealth of data that Google is tracking from the campaign. We know how many times each ad has been seen, how often keywords are searched, and what our cost per click is along with our click-through rate. We can also see data specific for time of day, geography, and even devices.
- Google Analytics – Tying our Google Search Campaigns to your Google Analytics account allows us to track the activity of potential customers once they have clicked an ad and end up on your website. This allows us to access all kinds of information including how long the customer was on the site, how many pages per visit were viewed, and the bounce rate of people who left the site after seeing the landing page. We can even set up goal tracking, which notifies us when certain goals are achieved.
- Conversion Tracking – With some campaigns, we have the ability to add conversion tracking codes to specific website pages, such as a thank you or check out page. Then it sends a message to Google AdWords. This lets us know which keywords and ads are driving the most conversions, and we can calculate cost per conversion.
If you haven’t tried Google AdWords before or you’ve tried it but didn’t find success, now is the time to take advantage of this wonderful tool and utilize it to its fullest capacity. Let Riley & You help your company find success online by increasing website traffic, driving sales, and generating leads with a strategic and targeted Google Search Marketing Plan that is customized to your needs.
