Google is the world’s most popular search engine and its number one product is ads. While we love search engine optimization and free leads, the reality is, Google will ALWAYS be updating its platform to make ads more prominent so they make more money.
In 2021 they introduced the “Google Guaranteed” program that now sits at the very top with the regular PPC ads below. In 2023, they’ve changed the ads to contain the “sponsored” word which less obvious than the previous green “ad” symbol they used before, driving even more clicks to ads.
We could even argue, the organic results are getting “cluttered” as well. In the next screenshot it shows Angie’s List, the “People also ask” box, and Yelp (not small business) then finally a business website at #4 – which also happens to be a national franchise…
In fact, if you actually count the total number of businesses that are visible before the first organic small business, there are 9 listings before the maps 3-pack (5 advertisers, 2 directories, 1 national franchise, and the people also ask box) and a 10th listing before the first organic small business.
How many users go to page 2 of Google? Almost zero. So even if you’re “on page 1” in this case at #10, you’re waaaay down the list.
This is Google’s goal and why PPC has nearly become a requirement for many small business to generate leads. Let’s get in front of your customers TODAY with Google PPC instead of waiting about 6 months for SEO to kick in.
As much as we love SEO, it’s getting harder and harder to get in front of customers because of Google’s ad product. Ads are taking more and more of the click-share within the search results and one thing we absolutely LOVE about ads is using them to test our SEO campaigns.
What do we mean?
We can target many of the same keywords in a PPC campaign that we can in an SEO campaign and see results much faster. In addition, the PPC campaign can give us extremely valuable insights into what we should be doing for SEO. PPC can:
While we can do most of these in SEO, we get results nearly instantly with PPC instead of waiting 6 months to see the fruits of our labor. That means once the SEO fully kicks in, we KNOW the pages will convert because we’ve already done the heavy lifting.
In addition, Google gives us an “ad quality score” which determines how relevant our ads and our LANDING PAGES are for a given set of ads. This is direct feedback from Google telling us our page “is or isn’t relevant enough” for the given keywords. If our landing page isn’t optimized well enough to get a good enough ad quality score, then it’s likely it’s not good enough for an SEO campaign either.
So you see, there are advantages to running ads before or concurrently with running an SEO campaign where both campaigns can benefit from one another.
Starting a PPC campaign can be quick but there are many things that need to be in place before we can really dial in your ads. Here are some of the tasks we’ll perform and timelines to get your campaign started off on the right foot.
Month #1
Just like with SEO, Keyword Research is critical to success.
To build a cohesive campaign and get’s conversions, we need to target the right user with the right ads using the right keywords and get users to the right page with the right information.
In the first month, we’ll dive deep into your niche, find relevant keywords that are associated to your business. While we’re creating a keyword list, we’re also creating a NEGATIVE keyword list where intent isn’t matched, phrases are too generic, or we’re excluding other people’s brand names so you don’t waste money on keywords that are unlikely to convert.
In addition, we’re building landing pages either on your website (preferred) or on another platform like Unbounce or Clickfunnels for your users to land on. If we use your own website, it must be:
All of the above are extremely important to accelerate our timeline to get your pages built out, in addition to helping your users convert.
For example, if your website takes too long to load, no matter how good of a campaign we create, you’re going to get limited conversions because people are impatient and will not wait. A slow site + running ads = throwing your money down the drain.
We will also add some tracking to your website to monitor conversions and to monitor how visitors use your website.
We also recommend getting some type of call tracking software that records your calls so you can review your calls with your sales and make them perform better as well.
Month #2
Once we have your ads running for 30 days, we’re able to dive deeper into keywords to see exactly where you’re spending money, where you’re getting conversions, and what words we need to continue to add to our negative keyword list, refining your list of words and eliminating wasted ad spend.
With our conversion tracking, Google will also learn who is the “right” user that is likely to convert into a lead for your business. It’ll begin to show your ads to those visitors more frequently and less frequently to “click-happy” users that are unlikely to convert into a lead.
We’ll also review our tracking software to see how visitors are using the website. Is there a section of the content they completely skip over? Are they watching the intro video or scanning through your pictures? Are they clicking on phone numbers or filling out the form? Do they only fill out 6 boxes of the form instead of all 10 and the form too long? We have a list of items that we review to ensure visitors are using the page the way we intend and we’ll make edits as necessary to increase conversions.
Month #3+
We will continue to refine your campaign and begin scaling the campaign to generate the maximum number of conversions for your business. There are 2 metrics we look at in particular that are “hidden” in Google ads:
These two metrics give us an understanding of WHY your ads are not being shown more frequently. If the % lost due to budget is high, that means you’re not getting more conversions because your budget is too low. We can increase the budget and boom, you’ll get more leads. If % lost is due to rank, that means we need to dial in our ads more and update the landing pages to be more relevant for the specific keywords we’re targeting.
The end goal is to achieve your optimal cost per conversion while minimizing ad spend waste and achieving 100% search impression share. If we can get all three of these factors optimized, then we’ve maximized your PPC campaign.
We build out simple report that will show the breakdown of some of your campaign statistics. We’ll have one chart with ad spend, lead forms, phone calls, and cost per lead. We’ll have another chart that shows keywords that are performing well, how many clicks they’ve received, their click-thru rate (CTR), your cost per click, and the total number of impressions you’ve received for said keywords.
Finally, we’ll talk about areas for improvement for the following month. Maybe our click-tracking shows that we generated 50 phone calls but you only took 35 of them and converted 23.
There are many inferences that can be extracted when you dive into the data.
While we would love to guarantee results, the answer is no. We been running a digital agency for over 6 years and have driven thousands of customers to our client’s businesses. Using the methods we’ve developed for both SEO and PPC, it’s highly UNLIKELY that you won’t get conversions. Typically it’s a matter of are the conversions at the price that you need (cost) and at the rate you need (frequency). Optimizing both of these is our goal and we work day in and day out to achieve those goals for ALL of our clients, new and old.
In addition, we can only control so many factors and Google does change its policies for ads fairly frequently. Sometimes ads get stopped by Google and won’t run. We make sure our ads follow Google’s guidelines as best as possible but sometimes we do have to disputes ads with Google to get them manually cleared.
We also can’t control who the other advertisers are. In some niches, companies like the BBB or Yelp run ads, not just small businesses or franchise companies. Other industries like personal injury lawyers have massive budgets as well. We can’t compete with businesses that spend millions of dollars per year on ads, but we do our best to get you the conversions you need at an affordable price.
Of course. We’ll be more than happy to walk through our process and give you an analysis. If you’re already running ads, we can be set as a viewer of your account to dive in and see what can be improved right now to save you money or get you more leads. We can also show you an example of what it would look like to start a brand new campaign from scratch.
If you have any questions before ordering, please email alex@shopsmallcolumbus.com
Zoom Calls or Phone Calls For Non Clients Are $50 for 30 minutes and must be paid and scheduled in advance. We understand you are very interested in our PPC services and that paid ads may be confusing to understand if you are completely new to the service, but we are a business as well and with our small team, our time is limited and prioritized on ranking our paying clients with current services. We cannot educate everyone about PPC but that’s why this page is filled with great content regarding our PPC services and we leave the deciding factor up to you based off the information provided. Thank you for understanding.
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Keyword Research
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And much more….!
Send us a message and we’ll be happy to give you a free marketing analysis.