Guide To Google Ads

A Guide To Google Ads

Everyday millions of searches are made on Google. And search results in Google will return both organic and paid results. In this article we will guide you through the Google ads platform, formerly known as google adwords, Google’s paid advertising service.  

Using google Ads means you don’t have to wait for your website to climb up those google rankings, you can simply circumvent the wait by paying to place your site at the top of Google’s returned search results. This can potentially be highly effective when you are first starting out. Of course, this does mean that your site or content will appear in Google’s search results marked as advertisements.

Should You Pay For Results?

The question you must ask yourself when making the decision to use google ads is whether you have the patience to build authority and the diligence to keep posting content. Organic growth is a serious hard slog, you must consistently come up with new blog ideas, consistently build content and consistently get your site backlinked. Organic growth is also extremely competitive, to truly get this right you will need to hire professionals with knowledge of how Google’s algorithm works.

If you decide that it is worth your while to go down the paid ads route, that the ROI is right and that your business will benefit from a immediate traffic to your site then the you can park the organic growth strategy and pay for ads which will appear just above Google’s organic results, i.e. right on the top of a google search results page.

The Adwords Auction

The most well known and oldest of Google’s Ad methods is the AdWords auction. This is essentially exactly what it says on the tin. With AdWords you essentially bid for the audience and position you want to receive, exactly like a traditional auction. The bid is the price you are willing to pay for each click you receive, in digital marketing jargon we call this pay per click PPC advertising.

If you end up being the highest bidder for the position you were bidding on you take the slot. Also worth noting that google will also only charge you price the second highest bidder placed. There is a whole branch of economics related to auction theory explaining why google does this, beyond the scope of this post but suffice to say when there is a major discrepancy between your bid and the second highest bidder this is an awesome feeling. You get a service you value at a slightly lower price than you value it at.

There is a kicker here. Google will not just allow anyone to bid for words it has a customer base too. Google will only allow you to appear on its paid advertisements if you can demonstrate that the content of your site is relevant to your target audience. You can’t completely ignore the metrics required for organic growth.

Considerations

With all of this considered there are a few things to bear in my when assessing whether the ROI on paid advertisement is worth it. It makes sense firstly to ensure that you have some sort of key metric on ad performance beyond simply traffic. Remember that google AdWords can be a highly expensive marketing method, and the more successful your ad is the more expensive it will be. You will want to ensure that there is some call to action that your new visitors are encouraged to complete so that you can truly measure performance. Whether this call of action be purchasing a product or leaving contact details for your business development team to contact it is absolutely vital that it is there other wise you will blow a load of cash get some traffic but not convert this to meaningful results.

Google allows you set a budget so that the amount you spend is limited, you will need to research typical cost for specific words, depends on your industry and time of year/place this can vary greatly. For instance, if you want to bid for the words strawberries and cream this will likely cost a lot more in the summer and then even more when Wimbledon is on.

Using Google’s Keyword Planner

One of the key elements of using google AdWords is making use of Google’s free keyword planner. This is an amazing tool which gives you a wealth of analytics related to specific words. The tool will allow you to check how often a word is being search using numerous filters around time and location and it will also show you the average price for the word in the time periods you specify. If you get to know your customers and get to know the engine you can look for words that have low average costs but high search rates. This is how you can outperform your competitors.

Targeting the right Audience

Make sure when you set up your campaigns using AdWords that you truly understand the customers that you are targeting. Top quality research and preparation here can go a long way. The Google Ads engine allows you target customers based on location, products, time, behaviour and a whole host of other demographics. The more you understand your target audience and the better you tailor your ads to them the conversions you will receive.

The other thing google will allow you to do is to rotate different ad campaigns with slightly different settings. Google will then provide you with analytics to compare which ad performed better, over time this should help give you a better understanding of how to maximise google AdWords use for your business.

Conclusion

To conclude Google Ads can be an effective way to market your business. Done properly you can save the time and resource you would otherwise have put into boosted your organic search engine placement.

The creation of original content showcasing your business for the individuality of the service or product you provide is now a key facet of an effective overall digital marketing strategy. Nowadays when we want something we tend to search google. The links that pop up are content which all of us now consume daily. The aim of an effective content creation strategy is to captivate your audience and build authority.

There is a broad and diverse range of things on the internet which constitute content. News articles, opinion pieces, blogs, how to video’s or even simply top-quality images. Top quality content now guides much of our decision making which includes importantly for businesses our purchase decisions. When we buy a new electronic goods for example many of us will go onto YouTube to look at reviews and comparisons.

Online content is now a large part of our lives. Most millennials now live and breathe this stuff. What we want to do as effective marketeers is leverage content that will attract new customers, keep these new customers engaged and then entice them with a fantastic range of services and offerings.

Why creating top quality content is important?

Content creation is now the daddy of digital marketing. It is used by everyone from politicians, to celebrities, to chefs, to fitness fanatics, to self help gurus, to NGO’s, to foreign governments, to businesses of all shapes and sized. Even the United Nations has taken to promoting itself using digital content.

From a business perspective the potential returns on investment from an effective content marketing strategy are huge.

• Content marketing is a low-cost marketing tool compared traditional methods.
• Business that use content marketing obtain 126% more lead as opposed to business which do not.
• As much as 61% of purchases made online now are the result of customers reading relevant content online.
• Companies that blog regularly have 3 times more traffic going to their website then companies that do not.

Creating top quality, engaging content now equates to business growth. If your business doesn’t have an effective content strategy it needs one.

Strategy

Developing a content creation strategy requires a plan and there are many things to consider in ensuring the plan is right for your business.

Who are you creating content for?

There are many different digital marketing channels to choose from for developing content and getting your brand out there. In choosing which one to you use you need to define who you are targeting your services and at where they are likely to be, if for instance you are selling healthcare supplements, Instagram would be great place to go as there are a lot of fitness fanatics, yogis and sportspeople on that platform.

What problem are you trying to solve?

Every product and service you sell is solving a problem or satisfying a need. Your content should educate your customers on how your service does this. Our business for instance is a digital marketing business aimed at solving the problem of getting your brand out there and bringing in customers. This blog is about how using online digital content creation can help bring in leads and prospects. A clear problem with content created to show how our services solve that problem.

Why are you unique amongst your competitors?

The internet is awash with content, to stand our in a crowded field you must demonstrate why you are unique. As with other forms of marketing this is all about creating a brand. You need to think about what you want your brand to represent and tailor content creation so that it is consistent with this message.

Which Format is right for you?

As alluded to earlier there are many different types of content. Whether videography or blogging is right for you depends on your product and the market you are marketing it to. If you are an education resource creating YouTube videos is a good place to start for as people typically use YouTube for this purpose and if you are selling to business, you probably want more in depth writing with white papers and blogs showing what you can do in the business services market. The format will also dictate which channels are best for your content strategy.

How are you going to manage content creation?

Finally, you will need to come up with a strategy of how you are going to manage your content strategy. If you are going to stick with a blogging strategy for instance you need to set up a regular schedule of how often you are going to publish and what types of articles you are going to include. You will need to be consistent with this for two reasons. Number one search engines reward consistency and number two regularly creating content build authority with your brand and keeps customers coming back.

Conclusion

Content creation is a marketing tool that has the potential to massively increase returns on investment to your business. Once you have an effective strategy and process in place for content creation you will see a steady inflow of prospects. If used effectively it will turn your brand into an authority in your market.

If you need help with your business Content Marketing, please get in touch so that we can assist you further