Google Ads Essentials: Tips & Strategies

[00:00:00] If you're trying to grow with Google Ads, there can be a lot of different pain points that you hit, especially [music] because there's so many different variables with Google Ads. There's so many different things that you [music] can audit and change and test and optimize, and every single business is different. There's definitely some best

[00:00:17] practices that we can implement into a Google Ads account, [music] but from there it's all on testing, seeing what works for your business, ensuring that you're hitting the right audience, um, and paying for meaningful clicks that will really not only just drive up the volume of your account, but actually drive up the results that you're seeing [music] from Google Ads. For your Google

[00:00:37] Ads account, you would want to make sure that your copy speaks [music] to the audience that you are trying to hit. If you're trying to look for homeowners, you want [music] to stick to that residential language. They've invested in their home. So, instead of saying that you're the number one home

[00:00:52] inspector [music] in town, you should say that you're the home inspector that your friends and your families would recommend to you. Because with somebody's home, they like reliability and trust. So, you want to make sure your [music] ad copy not only speaks to them as a homeowner, but hits on [music] those things that they're looking for in a company, which is that reliability, which is the trust that you're going to get the job done on the first try.

[00:01:16] Anybody can say that they're number one or the best or anybody can say anything in their [music] ad copy, but it's always good to back it up with actual results. So, if you're saying in your copy that you are the company that your friends and family [music] would recommend, then when they click on your landing page, there should be reviews, something that the person searching can actually click on and read through that shows that you [music] are what you say you are. So, customer reviews, whether

[00:01:43] it's business recommendations, whether it's proof of different awards that you've received or boards that you're on. Um, having all of those on the landing page where users go to will definitely help increase not only again the volume but then the conversion rate down the funnel for your audience.

[00:02:05] Google is great at [music] being able to target a bunch of different individuals. You can target people based on their interest and demographics, which is data that you can actually pull from your Google Analytics account as well as your Google [music] Ads account. So looking at historical data of what's worked and

[00:02:21] what hasn't definitely helps. And then also being able to utilize customer lists [music] and custom lists in your Google Ads account is fantastic. If you have past customers, whether it's their email address, name, phone number, you're actually able to upload [music] that into Google Ads and then implement that into your campaigns and use that as another layer of audience segmenting, telling Google to go after individuals who are similar to those who it knows [music] has already converted with you.

[00:02:50] If you're a BTOC e-commerce brand, I would really focus on not [music] only the product you're selling, but why your product is better than other people's products. It's a very saturated market right now. There's a lot of similar products out there. So, you need to be able to show that you stand out from

[00:03:07] others. So whether it's different call outs like free shipping, even free returns, [music] whether you offer samples, whatever the case may be, always highlighting those to make yourself stand out on top of your brand recognition is definitely valuable. On the basis of Google Ads, there's such

[00:03:24] thing as an ad schedule, which is something that you can set to tell Google when you want your ads to show. I typically set mine in hour increments based on the time of day. So, [music] early morning, morning, midday, afternoon, and evening because during the time of day, there's different shopping patterns for different consumers. What I like to do is set

[00:03:43] those in the start of a campaign. really see when traffic is coming in, how traffic is coming in, and the quality of traffic that's coming in for those specific times of days. And then from there, you can optimize. If you are a BTOC e-commerce, [music] and you notice that from 12:00 a.m. to 7:00 a.m.,

[00:04:02] you're [music] not seeing any purchases come through, but you're spending a lot of budget on clicks and traffic coming through at that time. I would say it's worth it to negate that out. tell Google you don't want to show your ad during that time and utilize your budget more efficiently throughout the times of day that people are actually making purchases. AB testing is fantastic. It's

[00:04:23] a lot of fun and it can show you a lot of insights on things that you wouldn't have even thought about. And an AB test can be something as simple as switching out a couple headlines or something as big as updating a bid strategy based on what your intent is for your campaign. Typically with an AB test, you like to

[00:04:41] give it enough time to learn. So about a month or so would probably be best practice and you want to make sure that during that time what you're testing is the only variable that you're changing so that way your results aren't skewed. When you AB test, you really want to focus on one variant, one thing that you think would make the difference in the account. So, one of the accounts that I

[00:05:02] have, I've noticed that our [music] traffic was good, our traffic was qualified, but the CTA that we were actually using was almost too demanding of a user who wasn't as far along in their journey. So, they would get to our landing page, they would get to our [music] ad, and then they would see our CTA, which was get started when it probably should have been a little bit lesser than, and they would hover over it, but they wouldn't [music] necessarily click. And so what we tested

[00:05:30] was that the CTA get started may have been a little too forthcoming. It may have been targeting someone who was a little bit more bottom of funnel than what we were actually bringing in. And there was no clear message and what was going to happen when you said get started. [music] So we tested get

[00:05:46] started alongside schedule your free consultation. [music] that tells the customer a little bit more of what they're getting themselves into by clicking on [music] RCTA, whether it's filling out the form, getting a phone call, whatever the case may be. But after [music] 30 days of

[00:06:03] testing those, comparing conversion rates, we did see that the new CTA of schedule your free consultation had a much higher conversion rate than just get started. With that, that was the only change that we had made across our ads and our landing page. So, there was a clear-cut winner.

[00:06:22] When you're shopping around for an agency, which chances are you are, you shouldn't always go with the first one that you click on. You should always get [music] a differing opinion. Have a couple different audits completed so that way you can see how an agency approaches your Google Ads account and how an agency will be as your business partner. Your agency should be a

[00:06:42] business partner [music] and not just somebody that runs your Google Ads account. When you're in the initial talks with an agency, definitely get an audit from them. See what they're thinking alongside your Google Ads account. Do you want to see how in-depth they go with their audit? And not only

[00:06:58] with your Google Ads account, but [music] also just your business as a whole. Do they take the time to get to know your business outside of what you're running on Google? [music] Because Google is a part of your business. And as a business partner, you want to know the full-fledged account, what they're getting into, if you're running on any other channels, what your main goals and focuses are, and [music] move on from there. A lot of the times,

[00:07:21] some agencies will give you hard numbers that they'll be able to hit. Google Ads, unfortunately, is more of a gamble. You can't give hard numbers. You can't say, "I will promise to get [music] you 600 clicks in the next 30 days." because that's not something that someone can guarantee. [music] And if they can,

[00:07:42] there's nothing to say that they're going to be high quality clicks that will actually lead to customers or purchases or whatever the case may be for your account. We can give industry standards, we can give projections, but from there, I would really take note [music] on the fact that a good agency would show you data, show you how it compares to the industry, and then tell you a plan on how they want to get there without overpromising and underdelivering. [music]

[00:08:08] If you've got questions or want help with your ads, reach out. We would be happy to have a conversation. [music]