Brands are always searching for the best ways to connect with customers and promote their products and services. With a limited marketing budget, you need to find cost-effective options that yield measurable results for your business. Google Ads has been a popular digital marketing option for a long time, but is it still worth the investment? The answer depends on your marketing goals.
Explore the ins and outs of Google Ads to decide whether this is the right marketing approach for your brand.
What is Google Ads?
Google Ads is Google’s digital marketing platform. Through Google Ads, you can run several different types of campaigns to promote your brand online across Google’s properties.
Ad types include:
- Search ads: These promoted results appear at the top of Google’s search engine results pages (SERP). People searching keywords related to your business see your website display URL, headline, and description above the other results from their search.
- Display ads: These ads show up on websites and apps that are part of the Google Display Network. As people browse other online content, they will see your display ads integrated above, next to, or even within that content.
- Shopping ads: These are promoted results within the shopping tab of Google’s search engine. They show customers searching related keywords an image of your product, price, product name, and website alongside the other product results.
- Video ads: Google owns YouTube, the second most popular social media network after Facebook. With video ads, your video content appears in the recommended videos for YouTube users or as an ad before the videos they watch.
- App ads: With App ad campaigns, ads for your brand’s app appear alongside other apps in the Google Play store.
You can choose one or more of these types of campaigns when you use Google Ads. People typically associate Google Ads with display or paid search ads, but the other three types of campaigns are also popular.
Campaigns through Google Ads are always pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns. That means you don’t pay anything for your ads to appear on Google properties. Instead, you only pay a fee each time an interested customer clicks on one of your ads. How much you pay for each click depends on several factors, such as your industry, location, and your keywords’ competitiveness.
Benefits of Google Ads
Many businesses choose Google Ads because of its incredible reach. In 2023, there were over 80 billion monthly visits to Google.com, which doesn’t even include other Google properties like YouTube. But what are the concrete benefits of advertising through Google Ads?
Here are some of the ways marketing through Google Ads can help your business:
Drive fast results
With traditional advertising or even some forms of digital marketing like social media, you often need to wait to see strong results. You create your campaign, send it out, and hope customers build up enough interest in your brand to engage further. It could be weeks or even months before your campaign has a concrete impact on your business.
Advertising with Google Ads is different. You can start seeing results almost immediately after publishing your campaign.
Once you launch it, Google users will start seeing your ads right away. Customers could potentially see your ad and make a purchase on the same day your campaign starts.
Compare that to something like search engine optimization, which is more of a long-term marketing approach. You aren’t going to notice a difference the first day because it takes time for those efforts to boost your rankings in the search engine results. Over time, SEO can offer great visibility for your brand, but if you need results fast, Google Ads is the way to go.
Reach customers when they’re engaged
Google doesn’t show your ads to any random customers browsing the internet. Instead, only customers searching keywords related to your campaign will see your ads.
For example, say someone is in the market for a new mattress. They might search “shop queen mattresses” or something similar in Google and see ads for different mattress companies in the results. The person clicks on one of those ads and continues their shopping.
The customer in this example was already interested in buying a mattress. The mattress companies advertising on the SERP didn’t have to do any extra work to convince the customer to buy something because they were past that point in the customer journey.
Using Google Ads allows you to reach customers who are already primed to take action. If you structure your campaigns correctly, you’ll get your brand in front of interested customers at just the right moment.
Control your advertising budget
No matter what size your marketing budget is, you don’t want to accidentally overspend on your advertising campaigns. Google Ads makes it very easy to control your spending.
When setting up your campaign, you set clear parameters on how much you’re willing to spend in total. You also set a maximum bid on how much you’ll pay per click. Google will never charge you more than that maximum bid for a click, and once enough people click on your ad to hit your monthly budget, the ads will simply stop running.
Connect with local or niche markets
Some businesses target customers all over the country or the world, while others focus on more local markets. If you’re trying to reach local customers, Google Ads is the ideal tool. Around 80% of consumers make searches with local intent on search engines. They want to see information about businesses in their area to find products or services near them.
By running Google Ads campaigns, you can get your brand in front of local customers searching terms related to your business. Add location and call extensions to make it easier for them to reach you while using a mobile device.
All you need to do is add a geographic limit to the keywords in your campaign settings. Then, only people within a set distance of your business will see your ads when searching those keywords. You avoid competing with more national brands and just target your local customer base.
Say, for example, you run a daycare in Topeka, Kansas. If you tried bidding on a general keyword like “daycare” or “childcare,” it would likely be very expensive. You’d be competing with other businesses across the world for the top ad placements for those terms, which raises prices significantly without greatly improving your results. If you chose “daycare provider in Topeka” instead, your cost per click would be much lower because you’re competing with fewer businesses. You’d probably also have a higher conversion rate and return on investment (ROI) on your campaign.
Monitor your results
You can track your results in detail with Google Analytics when you run campaigns through Google Ads. Google Analytics is Google’s suite of analytics tools that track how your campaigns are performing and display key metrics. Use the platform to monitor important statistics like your campaign’s average cost per click, conversion rate, and advert position.
Unlike traditional marketing, Google Ads campaigns make it easy to track your ROI. See how much you’re spending and what concrete results your ads are driving.
If you don’t like your campaign’s performance, you can go into Google Ads and immediately make changes. You don’t have to wait for the campaign to end. The best marketers always keep an eye on their campaigns’ metrics and adjust their strategies accordingly.
When something’s not working, change it. You can A/B test different landing pages and ad copy within Google Ads to find what works best.
Drawbacks to using Google Ads
Many businesses run impactful campaigns with incredible results in Google Ads. However, the platform does have some drawbacks.
For one thing, Google Ads isn’t the most intuitive platform, especially for someone new to digital marketing. You may struggle to get the hang of it at first and need to spend some extra time familiarizing yourself with all the different features.
It’s also easy to waste money on Google Ads campaigns that don’t make a meaningful difference for your business. If you don’t closely monitor your ads and changes to Google’s policies, your campaigns might not yield any results.
There’s some trial and error in most Google Ads campaigns. You will probably have to adjust the keywords you’re targeting and other settings before you’re able to reach your ideal customers. Although you can get results right away with, that won’t always happen. If you’re not prepared to continually tweak your campaigns until they drive the results you want, Google Ads probably isn’t the right choice for your business.
Another problem you may encounter is that because Google Ads is such a popular marketing platform, you have to compete with many other businesses for ad placements. Larger businesses with deeper pockets could target the same keywords as you and significantly increase the cost per click. If you want your ads to keep showing up, you’d need to increase your budget to compete.
Google Ads vs email marketing
Alongside Google Ads campaigns, email marketing is one of the most popular forms of digital marketing. Many businesses, from mom-and-pop shops to massive international corporations, use email marketing to connect with customers.
But if you had to choose between Google Ads and email marketing, which is better?
Return on investment
In terms of bang for your buck, email marketing is the clear winner. Email marketing offers an average ROI of $36 for every dollar spent. Comparatively, Google estimates that companies earn $2 in revenue for every dollar spent on Google Ads. Successful ad campaigns may offer a higher ROI, but it would still be difficult to compete with email marketing.
Reach and customer intent
Google Ads campaigns put your advertisements in front of customers who show an interest in terms related to your business but may not be familiar with your brand at all. As a result, you can expand your reach to new customers.
By contrast, you can only send marketing emails to customers who have already interacted with your brand enough to provide their contact information. You already have some form of connection with these customers, so they may be more receptive to your marketing messages. However, you’re not expanding your reach to brand-new customers with email marketing.
Your email recipients may or may not be ready to take action and make a purchase. You don’t have as much information about customer intent compared Google Ads, which go to people who are actively searching for products or services to buy.
Segmentation and personalization
One of the biggest advantages of email marketing is that you can use in-depth segmentation and personalization. Email list segmentation is when you break your email list into smaller groups by shared characteristics and write email messages tailored to those segments. The more personalized and tailored your marketing emails are, the more impactful they will be.
You can even automatically personalize mass messages with each recipient’s name or position. Constant Contact’s email marketing software allows you to tailor your mass emails with just a few clicks. The software also includes pre-designed templates, an AI-writing tool, and automations to help you send the right message at the right time. Sign up for a trial of Constant Contact today.
Google Ads don’t allow for the same level of segmentation and personalization. You can target specific groups of customers based on their location and interests, but not to the same degree as with email marketing.
Combining Google Ads and email marketing to grow your business
Sometimes, the best option isn’t one or the other — it’s both together. Using email marketing and Google Ads campaigns together lets you get the best of both worlds. Ads will help you achieve your short-term marketing goals with fast results, while email marketing supports your more long-term aims.
Don’t just run these campaigns simultaneously, though. Connect them. For example, if you’re running ads for a new product, send email blasts about the launch, too. Customers who receive similar marketing messages through multiple channels are more likely to pay attention and take action.
Keep learning about digital marketing and trying different strategies until you find the ones that work best for your business. Rely on email marketing software like Constant Contact to help you optimize your campaigns.
