Google’s Pay per Click solution is known as Google Ads. Google PPC is usually a key element of a growth hack. In this post, we look at Google PPC on its own, but also how it can be part of a wider successful growth hack. PPC stands for Pay per Click and is part of the Cost per Click model. As well as Google and other search engines, social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter offer a Cost per Click model. This blog post will just look at Google’s PPC solution, Google Ads.

How do Google Ads Work?

In this section we give an overview and summary of how Google Ads work. We will look at some of it in more detail, further down, in the post.

First off, a business or advertiser selects a specific keyword or long tail keyword. Google Ads works on a bidding system. In other words, decides on their maximum price for keywords and they are able to bid against other businesses, vying for the same keywords. You only have to pay Google, if someone actually clicks on you ad.

Google allows you to set your daily Ads budget. That’s to say, it is very flexible and scalable.

A Google Ad, Pay per Click campaign is usually run in conjunction with an SEO campaign. They compliment each other and work together. However, the benefit of a PPC campaign is that the results are instantaneous. As long as you have really done your homework and chosen your Adwords wisely, you should see good quality leads start to pour in quickly.

Once a lead has clicked your ad, make sure it takes them to a landing page with a clear call to action. When you have them on a hook, it needs to be very clear what they need to do next. Otherwise you risk wasting your money.

How to Choose them for a Successful Google PPC Campaign?

There are several key elements to creating a successful Google PPC campaign. Choosing the correct Adwords is arguably the most important though. The words or phrases you use for your campaign will trigger Google to display your ad in the search results page. A good choice of Adwords, will ensure that the right people see your ad and are encouraged to click on it.

Do your research..

Research is usually the first step for any work we do. Whether it be a Google PPC campaign or a wider growth hack. With regards to Adwords, it is important to think about your customer and their persona. Really get into their heads and imagine, which words they are using to search for your product or service.

When considering keywords, try to be very specific. Single keywords tend to be too general and generic. It is important to work out the exact words or phrases someone who wanted to find your business would use. Sometimes people make spelling mistakes and it is possible to include common variations of these.

Check out the competition and which Adwords they are using on Google Ads. Specifically your more successful competitors! There are various tools you can use to check this out. For example, SpyFu or SEMrush.

There are also tools you can use to help you find keywords. There is a tool within Google itself, which can help you to identify appropriate keywords. It is called Google Keyword Planner. Free to use, it can help you with your marketing strategy. It will offer keyword suggestions and give you an idea of bid estimations.

Where appropriate, it is a good idea to use geographical keywords. Again, this helps to make the keywords more specific and targeted to your individual business.

Keyword Matching Options

Google has several keyword matching options to choose from. You can set these, to get the best results for your campaign. Google’s “About keyword matching options” in their help section gives a good description of the options. It is worth a click through to really gain a proper understanding.

• Broad match: is the default setting in Google. Your ad will show if someone searches your keyword and almost every variation of it. It will also show spelling mistakes.

• Broad match modified: This option is almost the same as broad match, but it allows for a little more targeting.

• Phrase match: This is a more advanced option. It will only show the phrase or ones, which are are similar.

• Exact match: This will allow exact matches to show as well as close variations. It also includes words which are not the same as the original word but mean the same thing.

For details on how to apply the various keyword matching options, refer to Google’s help section.

And:

Negative Keywords

Negative keywords allow you to exclude search terms, which whilst similar to your keywords, are not actually relevant. For example, if you are a restaurant, but you don’t do takeaway, you might include takeaway as a negative keyword. If you are a shoe shop, but you don’t sell children’s shoes, then again you would exclude children’s.

Once you have identified the keywords and negative keywords, you want to use for your campaign, you are well on your way to creating a successful Google Ads, PPC campaign.

Customised Targeting

Google allows you to target various groups when setting up your campaign. Again, it is important to know your customer’s persona, so you can really pinpoint your target audience by criteria such as types of websites browsed.

If you have a physical business or shop, it can be particularly important and useful to specify a geographical location. In other words, you can set out a distance radius from your shop or company premises. So, for example, your ad will only show when someone searches from within 15 miles radius of your shop or business. You can decide what is most relevant for your business, to further target your ads to the right audience.

Create a Great Google Ad

After selecting your Adwords, the next step is to ensure that your advertisements are enticing and will encourage people to click on them when they appear on the search results pages.

Again, it is worth having a look at what your competition are doing. Not to copy what they are doing necessarily, but just to acknowledge what is working for them and to keep that in mind, when creating your own ads.

Make sure you have done your planning properly before you embark on your Google Ad campaign. What are your overall business objectives? And specifically, what are you hoping to achieve from this campaign? Google will look at your ad’s bid amount and give it a quality score. So make sure it is up to scratch. In other words, ensure your ad is relevant to the keywords you have chosen and that you are bidding on. And also, that it reflects what your customer is actually searching for.

When creating a Google ad, there are 3 different types to choose between:

• Search ads: These are text ads and they appear on the Google SERPs (search results pages) with other organic searches as well as paid searches.

• Display ads: These ads tend to be images and are displayed in Google’s GDN* (Google Display Network).

• Video ads: These are short video ads and are shown in YouTube. They are between 6 – 15 seconds long.

*Google’s display network is a network of more than 2 million websites where your ad can be shown.

Create a Great Landing Page

When you are planning your Google Ad campaign, it is important to pay as much attention as to where the ad will take the customer, as to the ad itself. If the customer clicks on to the ad and is taken to a generic page on the website, such as the home page, it is likely they will lose interest. In other words, they will look elsewhere for what they want.

The answer is to create a landing page. A landing page is a separate website and its purpose is to turn hits into leads.

A good landing page should have a very clear CTA (call to action). If a customer has felt compelled to click your ad, then make sure the landing page, makes it easy for them to get what they want and for you to capture their details as a hot lead. A good call to action will encourage the visitor to click on the button. It usually includes a verb such as get, subscribe, order.. etc. Also, it should be simple and make it very obvious what the visitor needs to do to get what they want.

It is a good idea to remove all other distractions such as navigation. You don’t want to distract the customer from clicking on the call to action button.

Another important factor is urgency. Make sure your call to action creates a sense of urgency to encourage visitors to click. A deadline is helpful to encourage your customers to act quickly. Your landing page should also be responsive and optimised for all platforms. In other words, it should work just as well on a mobile as it does on a laptop or PC.

Keep in mind your ultimate goal when creating a landing page or Google ad, which is conversion.

And Test, Test, Test..

As with every campaign, growth hack or other marketing exercise, testing is imperative. You should always be testing every aspect of your Google Adwords campaign to establish what is working for you and what needs to be adjusted or changed. If you are continuously monitoring and analysing, you will be able to adapt quickly to any changes, which need to be made.

Google’s Quality Score, is a good indicator, of how relevant your ads, landing pages and Adwords are to your audience. Often, small tweaks can make all the difference. Improving your Adwords, is often a first step to improving your overall quality score.

A/B testing your copy is a good way to work out what is compelling for your audience and what isn’t. Sometimes a small change in the way something is worded, or the type of language used, can make a noticeable difference.

Google’s Ads Reports is a very useful tool to have at your disposal to work out how to optimise your Google Ads campaigns. The reports will show useful metrics such as clicks from Google Ads and bounce rates from Google Analytics. By really analysing your statistics you can start to improve your advertising strategies and tailor them so they are as optimised as possible.

To learn all about Google’s Ads Reports, have a look here.

Cost per Click:

This is an important calculation, which can demonstrate how effective a campaign is. Ultimately, you want to be earning revenue from the client. A good return on investment ratio would normally be around 20%. In other words, anything above a ratio of 5:1 of revenue to ad cost would be a really good result. This is what you should aiming for and constant testing and tweaking is the right way to get there.

Google PPC and Growth Hacking

Google Ads can work in harmony with SEO and other elements of a growth hack. The real benefit of Google PPC is its immediacy. Whereas SEO is more of a slow burn, they are both as important as each other when designing a growth hack. The goal of which, is to create a self sustainable growth cycle. With Google PPC there are additional benefits, you can tap into, such as the ability to retarget customers, who have started to enter the sales funnel, but who have, for whatever reason, dropped out. You can remind them that you are still there..

And remember..

If you need any further insights or would like us to work with you on your Google Adwords journey, then we’re just here. Google Ads are a great way to reach a vast and targeted audience and your commitment is minimal as it is totally scalable. You can stop it and start it at any time.