Google Ads is a great online advertising channel that can be used by almost any business. Whether you have an e-commerce or a physical store, provide advice or services, information or are a not-for-profit organisation, with Google Ads you can bring your message in front of the right people. However, there are a few requirements you should consider before approaching a Google Ads agency and prepare your campaigns.
Do you have a website?
A well-structured, user friendly and well-designed website is the core requirement for running Google Ads. When a user clicks on an ad, they are sent to a page on your website that should give them information about the products or services they were looking for. A Facebook page or a PDF can’t be used as this is against Google’s advertising policies.
A website doesn’t need to be expensive or custom-designed but there are many do-it-yourself CMS (Content Management Systems) like WordPress, Wix or Squarespace that can be used to get started. However, we recommend having some help from a web designer and/or developer for more complex or custom features that might be required on your site.
A clear website structure is key, and we recommend mapping out your website pages and the expected user journey before start building the site. Ideally, you have separate pages for each product group or service type you offer. This helps website visitors to find out quickly what your business offers and direct users from ads to the page most relevant to them.
How can people interact with your business online?
An important part of your website is how people can interact with it. Ecommerce stores need to be easy to navigate, make products easily findable and have a seamless checkout experience. If your main goal is to generate sales, you want to make it as easy as possible for the customer to purchase your products.
If you provide services or high-price customised products that can’t be purchased online, there should be multiple options for customer to get in touch with you. The simplest way is to add a contact form to your pages but also provide an email address and phone number. People are different and while some want to get an answer straight away, others might not want to chat on the phone just yet.
What type of business do you have?
We haven’t found a business yet that cannot work with Google Ads, however, our experience shows that some types of business work better than others. The main criteria is how much of the business is done online versus offline and how much online activity we can track. If the product or service can be purchased or booked online or lead generation forms like contact forms are provided, Google Ads generally work well.
Google needs to ‘understand’ the full user journey from the first click on the ad to the final conversion (i.e. a purchase, form submission or phone call) to ensure the machine learning based system works properly. If you are a not-for-profit organisation you might even be eligible for a Google Grant account.
It can get a bit trickier with traditional B2B services like construction or manufacturing or expensive goods like cars. The reason is that purchase decisions in these industries are made over longer periods, sometimes months, and are often influenced by various other factors like word-of-mouth or existing professional networks. The initial contact between customer and provider might be through an ad but the sales process is often taken offline quickly making it hard to reverse track which ad was successful or not. Google Ad campaigns can still be used but fulfill rather a branding purpose than transactional role.
Do you know your budget?
Google Ads uses a pay-per-click (PPC) system to charge for its advertising services. This means that you pay every time someone clicks on your ad. Google campaign budgets are set per day and while there is no minimum budget required by Google, we recommend planning with at least $1,000/month to get started.
This comes down to approximately $33/day and can cover two small campaigns. The lower the daily budget, the longer it takes to collect data and optimise your campaigns. If a campaign generates only a handful clicks per day, there is no valid data to work out trends, identify top or low performers and test keywords and ads.
In addition to these media fees paid directly to Google, there are management fees to be paid to your Google Ads agency to set up, manage and optimise the campaigns.
It will save you a lot of budgeting headache if you have a clear plan of how much you can afford to spend on Google Ads and what expectations on return-on-investment (ROI) you have.
Conclusion
If you can tick all the above criteria and are ready to promote your business with Google Ads, get in touch with JK Digital to set up a free initial consultation.
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