The key to Google Ads for small businesses

More than 80% of the world's searches are made through Google's search engine, which processes some 7 billion searches a day. An immense sea of information available to anyone.

The challenge is that in that sea and among all those fish, they choose us, and to do so, advertising on this search engine is often essential. Google Ads is a tool that helps your business to stand out in this immensity in front of the eyes of future buyers.

What is Google Ads?

Google Ads is a system that allows you to create campaigns, ads and ad groups that will be displayed prominently in Google search results. It was created in 2000, initially as Google AdWords, and today it is one of the most powerful online advertising platforms.

From the Google Ads platform we can create various types of campaigns such as applications, discovery, display, hotel, local, search, shopping, or even smart campaigns. The ad formats can be text ads, image ads, video ads, shopping ads, mobile ads... The possibilities are endless, but the key to all of them is to find out how to appear just when the customer searches for related terms.

Why use Google Ads in my business

One of the advantages of this type of advertising is that the ads work on a CPC (Cost Per Click) basis, this means, Google only charges for the number of users who have clicked on the ad. The auction method is also used: advertisers who want to appear in a certain search "bid" for the maximum price they would be willing to pay for each click. In this way a click can cost you 5 euros, 100 or 500 euros, to give you an example, depending on the competition and how much you are willing to pay.

Google Ads allows us to "localise" advertising and get a better shot at it. We can limit it to a geographic location and different demographics, as well as a certain number of keywords. If we sell clothes, we don't want to go out when people are looking for cars, and if we sell women's lingerie, we might want to target women only. In addition, we can schedule the ads and campaigns and of course, measure the results.

We want to appear at the top of the searches related to our products, but it is not as simple as the sum of A+B. Google Ads involves many factors that act on our ads, so let's try to clarify the art of creating and designing ads for Google as much as possible.

How to advertise on Google Ads

The first thing to do, as with any marketing strategy, is to carry out a study of the competition to find out what we are up against and what searches we want to compete in. The next thing to do is to think about the objectives to be achieved: Are we interested in leads, getting traffic to our website, getting calls, etc.? Establishing the objectives is key to plan the ads both in their design and at a technical level in the Google Ads platform.

With these two things clear, it's time to dive into the tool. We warn you that it is not easy. Google changes day by day and if you need experience to work with advertising and marketing, in the case of Google Ads you need even more experience if you don't want your money to fall into a bottomless pit. This type of advertising is very effective if it has a team of professionals and experts behind it. 

The tool is complex and it is not only necessary to find the right text to show, but also to analyse the keywords (both search keywords and negative keywords that do not interest us), the segmentation, the approximate number of keyword searches, the level of competition... And once the ads have been launched, it is necessary to continue polishing, removing the keywords with the lowest CTR for example, and analysing what is working and what is not.

Seven keys to make Google Ads that work

Order, order and order. For ads to work you have to be as organised as Marie Kondo. Order, both in campaigns and in methodology, is essential, especially if you are going to have several ads running at the same time. Order when planning, order when programming and order when analysing. Order will save us money and that is always good news.

Clear objectives. With so many possibilities, choosing the right campaign and format is more than necessary. For example, search campaigns are good for generating sales, leads or web traffic, and video campaigns (shown in ads on YouTube and other websites) are meant to increase brand awareness. Depending on your objectives, this is what your ads will look like.

Think about your target and target them. You don't talk to a bank employee in the same way as to your nephew or a friend. The message in your ads also has to be adapted to the listener you want to address. Your ads will not be the same if you are targeting Generation Z as if you are targeting, for example, boomers.

Creativity to the maximum. Not only in the images if your ads have them, but also in the texts. Think about the amount of information that we as users receive in a single glance from a Google search. If in social networks a copy that engages is essential, here it is what separates you from living or dying. If you want to catch, the ad must be creative and impactful.

Be careful with image sizes. You run a display campaign with a beautiful image but it gets cut off along with the brilliant slogan you have chosen. Every campaign and every ad has technical specifications. Follow them to the letter, Google doesn't like improvisation.

The destination is important. Some say that the important thing is not the destination but to enjoy the journey. Not here. The ad is as important as the place where it lands. Imagine you make a campaign of ten that gets people who see it to click. But when they do, the landing page is poorly laid out, has colours that wouldn't match even in Palomo Spain's hands and takes so long to load that users lose patience. The destination is important because it is the place where we want the user to stay. The advert serves to capture their attention but if what they see after clicking on it does not interest them, we will lose them.

Analyse to improve. The best way to improve is to analyse what we do and how it works. This is the way to optimise our advertising investments and achieve better results, however tedious it may seem to spend half a morning between reports.

Google Ads is undoubtedly an opportunity to engage users who are proactively searching, and vital to "hunt" those who are already on the buying journey. 

But as it was near the wall in Game of Thrones, "the night is dark and full of horrors". Google is deep and complex so it is best to go into the fight well prepared, with a well-trained team so that advertising on the world's biggest search engine is not torture, but a bed of roses.

Main photo: Gabriele Diwald