If you’re considering spending any amount of money on ads to reach your target audience, then you’d better spend it in the right place. That is, somewhere with over 246 million unique visitors, 3.5 billion daily interactions, and an estimated 700% return on investment.
Somewhere like... Google Ads.
Google Ads was launched just two years after what has become the most popular website in the world: Google.com. The advertising platform came on the scene in October 2000 as Google Adwords, but after some rebranding in 2018, it was renamed Google Ads. Given Google’s expansive reach, chances are you’ve seen (and probably clicked on) a Google ad … and so have your potential customers.
In this guide you'll discover what Google Ads is and what you need to know to begin advertising on Google. We’ll cover features specific to the platform and teach you how to optimize your campaigns to achieve the best results with your ads.
What is Google Ads?
It's no secret that, these days, the stronger and more focused your paid campaigns are, the more clicks you generate — leading to a greater probability of obtaining new customers. This is why Google Ads has become increasingly popular among businesses across all industries.
Google Ads is a paid advertising platform that falls under a marketing channel known as pay-per-click(PPC) where you (the advertiser) pays per click or per impression (CPM) on an ad.
Google Ads is an effective way to drive qualified traffic, or good-fit customers, to your business while they're searching for products and services like the ones you offer. With Google Ads, you can boost your website traffic, receive more phone calls, and increase your in-store visits.
Google Ads allows you to create and share well-timed ads (via both mobile and desktop) among your target audience. This means your business will show up on the search engine results page (SERP) at the moment your ideal customers are looking for products and services like yours via Google Search or Google Maps. This way, you reach your target audience when it makes sense for them to come across your ad.
Note: Ads from the platform can span across other channels too, including YouTube, Blogger, and Google Display Network.
Over time, Google Ads will also help you analyze and improve those ads to reach more people so your business can hit all of your paid campaign goals.
Additionally, no matter the size of your business or your available resources, you can tailor your ads to suit your budget. The Google Ads tool gives you the opportunity to stay within your monthly cap and even pause or stop your ad spending at any point in time.
Now, onto another important question: Is Google Ads really effective?
To answer this, let’s consider a few statistics. Google Ads have a click-through rate of nearly 8 percent. Display ads yield 180 million impressions each month. For users who are ready to buy, paid ads on Google get 65% of the clicks. 43% of customers buy something they’ve seen on a YouTube ad. So, yes, Google Ads works. With an optimized ad campaign and lead flow, you can create a high-ROI marketing campaign.
Click-through rate is the ratio of users who click on a specific link to the number of total users who view a page, email, or advertisement. It is commonly used to measure the success of an online advertising campaign for a particular website as well as the effectiveness of email campaigns.
Why advertise on Google?
Google is the most used search engine, receiving 3.5 billion search queries a day. Not to mention, the Google Ads platform has been around for nearly two decades, giving it some seniority in the area of paid advertising. Google is a resource used by people around the world to ask questions that are answered with a combination of paid advertisements and organic results.
And, according to Google, advertisers make $8 for every $1 they spend on Google Ads. So, there are a few reasons why you’d want to consider advertising on Google.
Need another reason? Your competitors are using Google Ads (and they might even be bidding on your branded terms). Thousands of companies use Google Ads to promote their businesses, which means that even if you’re ranking organically for a search term, your results are being pushed down the page, beneath your competitors.
If you’re using PPC to advertise your product or services, Google Ads should be a part of your paid strategy — there’s no way around it (except maybe Facebook Ads, but that’s another article).
Click here for a complete guide on how to master Google Ads for your business in South Africa