In our last article we talked about how to get your small business website to show up in Google’s local search results. In this article we are going to talk about how to advertise on Google. If you do not know the difference between Google’s Paid, Organic, and Local search results then start here.
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Step 1: Signup for a Google Adwords Account
If you do not already have one, the first step to advertise on Google is to visit
Google Adwords and signup. Signing up for the account is free, you only pay when you start running ads. Also if you have bought any products from GoDaddy, you likely have a $100 adwords credit. To activate that just click on your my accounts link in Godaddy and scroll down to the bottom where it says “free advertising credits”.
Step 2: Decide what you want to advertise on Google and what success looks like
The next step is to decide what the goal is with your ads. For example, a likely goal of a dentist who was advertising their site via Adwords would be to get new patients. Perhaps, even more targeted, a specific type of patient. Success in this example might be new patient appointments.
Keywords are the words and phrases that people search on Google. In order for your ads to show up in Google’s search results, you have to specify what keywords you want to trigger your ad. When coming up with your keyword list, its best to start broad, and then narrow down later. Also keep in mind that you want to think like a customer thinks, which means avoiding things like industry jargon and other terms a customer wouldn’t use.
Once you have come up with some ideas then login to your Adwords account, goto “Tools and Analysis” and click on “Keyword Tool”. Type in the keyword that you are interested in potentially advertising for and then adwords will come back with the approximate number of searches per month for that keyword. If you click on the “keyword suggestions” tab at the top of the results, it also gives you a list of related keywords that you might want to consider advertising for along with the traffic estimates for those terms.
Step 4: Setting Up Your Campaign
Next click the campaigns link from the top menu and then select create new campaign. This takes you to your campaign setup page where you have the below options:
Campaign Name: I recommend starting with 1 campaign, but you may run additional campaigns in the future to target different products and or services. With this in mind, give the campaign a name that is representative of the ads you will be running.
Campaign Type: All Google paid search campaigns run on both Google’s search and display ad network by default. For beginners I recommend changing this setting to “search network only” because it is more targeted.
Locations: If you are a local business, you will likely also want to use the location settings option on this page. This makes it so your ads only show when someone searches Google within a specified distance of your place of business. Use the “radius targeting” option here by clicking on “let me choose” under locations, and then “advanced search”.
Budget: Next you need to set your default bid (the amount you want to pay per click on one of your ads) and maximum daily budget. There is a great article and infographic from Chris Soames over at Smart Insights which outlines the average conversion rates from google paid search by industry. Overall the average is around 5%. Armed with this information and an approximate estimate of how much a conversion is worth to us, you can get a general idea of how much you can afford to spend. Going back to our example of the dentist, lets say that he or she can afford to pay around $50 to acquire a new client. Taking the average conversion rate from Google paid search of around 5% we know that the dentist is going to have to get around 20 people to click on his ad in order to get 1 new patient. By dividing $50 by 20 we come to a good level to start with of $2.50 a click that the dentist can afford to pay. This would be a good default bid to start with in this example.
Ad Extensions: Lastly you want to setup ad extensions, which allow for things like your address, phone number, and additional links to your site. If you have setup a Google Plus Page for your business you can also show your business’s Google Plus star rating in your add. Adding extensions makes your ad bigger in Google’s search results and allows customers to click to call you from their mobile phones, two things which can dramatically increase your conversion rates. They also do not cost anything extra, so in most cases they are a smart idea to include.
Step 5: Write Your ads.
Now that you have your keyword ideas you can think about the type of ads that you may want to write.
There is a great post from Google here about how to write effective ad copy. I recommend reading the full post but the summary is:
The headline should grabs users’ attention and make them aware of your offering.
Description line 1 should spark users’ interest in your offering.
Description line 2 should develop a desire to obtain your product or service.
And finally, the Display URL should consolidate a user’s decision to take action.
There are some more great tips from Saad Kamal over at search engine journal here. Once your ads start to run you will be able to see which ads are performing the best and optimize your ads accordingly. With this in mind you should come up with 3 or so ads (click the “ads” “then new ad” button), which google will automatically rotate for you so you can see which one performs the best.
Step 6: Turn Your Campaign Live, Evaluate, and Optimize
Now its time to turn your campaign live. I recommend letting the campaign run for around a week before you make any changes, so you will have some good baseline data to work from. After observing for a week you should have a good idea of which ads and keywords are working for your business. If you have hooked in your free Google Analytics account you will also be able to see what your potential customers are doing on your site and can optimize accordingly. For more info on optimizing ads go here and for more info on setting up your Google Analytics account in WordPress go here.
Have questions about this article? We respond to all questions and comments personally, so feel free to leave them in the comments section below. Also be sure to tune in for our next article on the online marketing series where we will discuss how to setup a Facebook page for your small business.