I’m sure you’ve also heard the stories of the business that blew through $10,000 in one month, didn’t get a single lead, and went bankrupt.
One of these scenarios is likely why you are reading this article. To see if it’s actually worth your time, money, and effort to set up Google Ads for your business, or if you’ll just end up broke.
There are some easy mistakes that you can avoid, just by knowing a few things about the nature of ads, and how they work most effectively in any business.
Let’s start with what not to do.
3 Ways Google Ads Aren’t Effective In Your Business
Most businesses that fail at Google Ads do so because they don’t have the right approach.
They have the old mindset of all advertising being awareness advertising. Just spend money to get your name out there and the market demand will take care of the rest.
Not true. There is too much competition out there to be true, and unless you are Pepsi or McDonalds, you likely don’t have enough money for awareness advertising.
Here are 3 mistakes to avoid from the get-go.
1. Sending People To Your Home Page (or Services Page)
Going along with the theme of awareness advertising, a lot of businesses will spend money on ads and send people straight to their home page or even the service page related to what they are advertising.
While a service page is a little bit better than a homepage, there is still too much confusion when people land in either of these places.
People aren’t sure what they are supposed to do when they land.
Because these are the main pages of your website, the messaging likely doesn’t match exactly what you were putting in your search ads.
There is a better way that we will discuss in the “3 Effective Ways to Use Google Ads” section below.
2. Generic Blanket Advertising
Another mistake that businesses make with their search advertising is they don’t have a solid message.
They just think if they write up a special offer and target a wide swath of keywords, they will cover the most ground, reach the most people, and rake in the cash.
That’s not how it works.
You need to target specific keywords and have a message that is tailored to those keywords.
Advertising to everyone is advertising to no one.
3. Using Single Ads
Assume that you know what your target audience will respond to?
You know what they say about assuming…
Even if you have extensive market research, you still can’t place one ad and just expect your audience to respond.
You need to cover all bases and provide different hooks to get people to click your ads.
This means creating many different headlines and descriptions for your ads (or images if you are doing display ads), posting them all to your ad campaigns, and measuring what is driving the highest quality traffic to the least cost.
Remember: just because an ad gets a lot of clicks, doesn’t mean it’s your winner.
So Are Google Ads a Waste of Money?
Google ads are a waste of money only if you don’t know what you are doing.
This is true of any advertising.
You can’t just throw money at things.
You have to know how the platform works, how your audience thinks, and devise a marketing strategy that will ultimately be trial and error.
Over time you will see what rises to the top and resonates the best with your audience. This will make any future campaigns easier to start because you have a clearer starting point. You will still need to constantly test, but will lose less money when you start off better.
There are ways for you to be able to make your Google ads effective.
3 Ways Google Ads Are Effective In Your Business
There are a lot of things that you can do to increase your likelihood of success with running ads.
Here we will take a look at 3 of the top issues to address that will put you worlds above most of your competition if you follow these effective rules of thumb.
1. Send People to A Landing Page or Funnel
If sending people to your home or services page is one of the worst things you can do when directing your ads, then the opposite is surely the best.
You want to send people to a dedicated landing page that reflects the same message that you put out there in your ads.
If people click an ad that says one thing, and then are directed to a landing page that has the same message, the connection feels complete. They feel like they are in the right place, and will continue to explore what you have to offer.
If you dump someone on a homepage they won’t know where to go or what their next action should be.
Create dedicated landing pages with a single call to action that take people to the next step you want them to take.
You can build landing pages on your existing website, or utilize a professional funnel builder software to build the sales system you need.
Another great thing about landing pages is that you know people who land there are interested in that particular section of your business.
You can then utilize retargeting via Facebook or Google Display ads to create an effective follow-up campaign and turn some of your lost traffic back into leads and sales.
2. Targeting Your Competitors
Do you know the Cost Per Click (CPC) for the term “wrongful death attorney” on Google?
$166 per click.
Do you know the cost of targeting your competitors’ business names?
Around $3 per click.
Sometimes with your advertising you have to think outside the box.
People in your industry are all targeting the same keywords that are popular searches from your target market.
Less are targeting each other.
It may seem like a low blow or unproductive to target your competitors names as keywords, but there is high value in it.
You are only getting charged every time someone clicks on your ad.
This means that when someone does a search for your competitor, you show up above them, and only pay when someone clicks your ad instead of their organic listing.
This is a powerful tactic that will make you very competitive, and also lowers your CPC drastically.
3. Analyzing Data to See What Works
AAD.
Always Analyze Data.
You don’t know what works until you run your ads, send people to your landing page or funnel, and see what happens.
You can have an educated guess what will happen, but until you have concrete data showing you conversion rates and what’s working and not working, you are flying blind.
You have to see what ads are driving your traffic. That’s why it’s important to test many ad variations to see what works.
You have to be able to see what steps people are taking within your funnels, and where they are falling off. That’s why it’s important to collect data and see what’s working.
If there is one specific page in your funnel where people are dropping off or never taking your offer, you know you have something to fix.
Do Google Ads Work for Small Business?
If you run a small business you may be wondering if you can support a budget large enough to make Google Ads work for you.
The answer is: as long as you are smart about it.
Set aside a specific percentage of business revenue for advertising, and use that towards Google Ads.
Start small.
Again, we want to put out a bunch of different ads to see what resonates well within our audience.
Start with a small budget and scale up on the winning ads.
If you are a local business, a small budget can have huge impact if you are just targeting your local area.
Are Google Display Ads Ever Effective?
As a standalone ad, display ads aren’t nearly as effective as search.
This would be the equivalent of TV advertising (but with better ability to target and track). It would be more for blanket advertising and brand awareness.
The reason that search ads work so well is that people are searching with an intent to find an answer to a specific problem.
While you can target with display ads, it’s still just putting your ad in front of people and interrupting what they were previously doing. Shoving ads in people’s faces doesn’t have the highest conversion rate.
That said, if someone visits your site and you have a retargeting pixel, you can then follow them throughout the internet with your display ads.
You already know they are specifically interested in what you have to offer because they were on your page. Follow up with display ads and you will likely recapture some of that lost traffic.
Also, if you have as much money as Pepsi and just want to blanket the market in ads, display would be a good way to do that online, but it’s gunna cost ya.
The Best Tool To See If Google Ads Are Effective
I’ve mentioned a tool that can help you determine your ultimate winning ads, and that tool is Funnelytics Pro.
Funnelytics is a funnel mapping tool that allows you to map out the different pages of your funnel and make a solid plan from the start.
As you build your funnel in another program, such as WordPress or ClickFunnels, you can add the links to these pages to the corresponding steps of your funnel map.
The amazing part about Funnelytics is when you add the tracking script to your funnel.
This allows you to track live traffic through your funnel. You will be able to see where people are flowing in your funnel, where they are falling off, and which steps need more work to increase conversions.
In the context of our ads, we need to add UTM codes to every different ad that we create. This way we will be able to track which ads are driving the most clicks to our funnel.
Remember, data is key.
By tracking which ads are working to hook people and send them into your funnel, you will know where your best traffic is coming from.
But as I’ve mentioned, just because you have the best click-through-rate on one ad, doesn’t mean it’s your best sales driver.
Another ad may get less clicks, but provide a better pre-frame for your customers that makes them more apt to take meaningful action on your website, such as signing up or making a purchase.
Funnelytics Pro allows you to filter your funnel actions so you can see exactly where people who take action on your website came from. You will be able to see the exact ads people are coming from, and which ones may be sending people to your site but not driving actions.
Do you know what this means?
You have absolute data on which ads are driving actions, and not just the ones that are getting the most clicks. This saves you money on ad spend because you know which duds to drop and replace with new, fresh ads to test with.
You see why Funnelytics Pro would be an amazing tool to have in your software arsenal?
And lucky for you, they have a lifetime deal happening right now.
Also lucky for you, I know how to access this lifetime deal (it’s not on their main website, and other bloggers aren’t talking about it in their Funnelytics Reviews either).
If you see the value of this tool, you can click here and learn more about how to access the lifetime Funnelytics Pro deal.
You will also be able to get some awesome bonus templates and other resources from me if you buy through my link. I want to help you succeed with Funnelytics because I know how life-changing it can be to a business.
Stop wasting money on losing ads.
Get the lifetime deal and KNOW FOR SURE which ads are working.
Want to see Funnelytics in action? Check out my video below to see exactly why this is the most powerful funnel tool out there.
