A quick guide to Google Ads for small businesses

Your potential clients are online searching for your products and services. They want to find you but can't see your website through all the social media and internet noise. So how can you get noticed quickly? One answer is with a Google Ads campaign that can quickly scoot you above Google’s search results.

In this newsletter, we're going to cover the basics of Google Ads and why they could be a good idea for a business like yours.

What are Google Ads?

It starts with what people use search engines for, which is to find answers to questions - such as "what is the best iPhone?". Google’s ranking system utilises complex algorithms to return listings relevant to what people are looking for. At the very top of the search results are paid ads, and the way to get there is by using the Google Ads platform, which used to be called Google AdWords or Pay Per Click (PPC).

Google Ads are the search engine's advertising service. With it, your website can appear above the normal search results without waiting for it to work its way organically up the rankings.

Why use Google Ads?

While it is great to do well in organic search, making this happen can be a long-term project and there are many factors involved. The content must always be high quality, and you need to get lots of links pointing to you, among many other things. Google Ads turbo-charge your results and get you placed above the organic results, but only for as long as the ad is running.

How do Google Ads work?

The way it works is that a business may tell Google it wants to be in the top results for specific key phrases, the phrases people type when they're searching in Google. For example, you might want to rank highly every time someone types in "Personal accountant in London."

Google wants to get paid for this, so you set a price of, say £1 every time someone clicks on your advert. This means you only have to reach into your wallet when someone clicks on your ad. The cost per click depends on several factors, one of which is the competitiveness of the key phrases used which is determined by the level of traffic generated by each key phrase. Don’t worry about overspending, because Google lets you fix an average daily budget for your ad and it doesn’t go over this. The system is also flexible so you can change the budget at any point, depending on how things are going.

It is also worth pointing out that Google Ads is a bidding system. So if another London-based accountant comes along who is willing to pay £1.30 every time someone clicks on their ad for the same key phrases, then their ad will appear higher than yours in the search results.  

Who should be using Google Ads?

Any business looking for more clients can benefit from Google Ads, although a good website and relevant landing pages are crucial in order to convert the click into an enquiry or sale. Without these, money spent on Google Ads is likely to be wasted.

Google Ads works particularly well alongside other online marketing activities such as search engine optimisation (SEO). Whilst Google Ads help to gain immediate visibility, and therefore business, SEO aims to improve a website’s ranking organically, allowing for increased visibility without paid ads. Stay tuned for our newsletter on SEO later in the year.

What are the benefits of Google Ads?

Among the many benefits are:

• You have full control over how much money you spend on advertising every month
• The results are much more immediate compared to other online marketing activities such as search engine optimisation
• You can outrank the ads of your competitors (depending on your budget)
• You can test different versions of your ads to see which resonates the most with your target audience
• You can decide the time and day you want your ads to run
• You can choose which demographics to show your ads to, ensuring they are only seen by those most relevant to your products and services
   

Recap…Google Ads are ideal as a solution to generate more traffic to your website, hopefully resulting in more enquiries and, ultimately, sales. While they can be a worthwhile investment for any business looking to attract more clients, it is important for any business to also explore more medium to long-term solutions, such as search engine optimisation, as results with Google Ads require continued spend in order to be achieved.

PS: Google Ads are usually used in conjunction with landing pages. Your landing page is the
URL people will arrive at after clicking your ad. If you offer a good landing page experience, you are more likely to gain the enquiry or sale you are looking for. If not, you risk losing the potential client and paying for the click for no reason. We'll have more about this in our next newsletter.