Our clients love our experience and savvy with Google Ads.
That’s right many advertisers’ strategy on Google Ads (previously known as AdWords), appears to be no strategy at all.
As competitive as your marketplace is, and as much as Google Ads clicks cost, I personally feel that there must be a strategy to what you promote, dollars you put toward what, and evaluation of the success or lack thereof of your advertising as a part of your overall business profitability.
It all starts first with knowing what you can afford and what your costs are to supply the product you are selling to the purchaser. I feel that the time a business owner takes to evaluate what they can afford and the monetary investment they want to make in Google Ads clicks and our services is strategic to business growth.
As a professional Google Ads manager, I have found that results are much better for clients who have a degree of preparation and have done business analysis. The guidance that they give to me at account set up on their average sale, lifetime value of a client, desired Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) is incredibly helpful and allows me to have a better understanding of their requirements for success in a Google Ads account.
In Google Ads, you can compete effectively against large competitors who are spending a lot of money on Google Ads with a few creative approaches.
First, consider taking the gloves off. We will routinely target competitor names in very competitive spaces. Our ad text will show dynamic keyword insertion and phrases in the ad text like (Competitor’s Name) Too Expensive? Check out (Your Company Name) and then showcase features. Similar to (Competitor Name) is also another great way to get traffic and bleed off prospects who may have never known about you and were searching for your competitor.
Be watchful about the time of day your ads show. If you are competing against a company with a very large advertising budget, consider bidding down slow times of the day or times that do not typically convert for you and show your ads at your regular cost per click in peak times. This strategy keeps your name out there but focuses budget in peak decision making times.
Consider Display advertising and use In Market as a setting. This will show your ads in the Display Network and targets readers or browsing prospects that are actively looking for your competitor or services you offer.
If you are looking to boost your Google Ads exposure and be more competitive in your marketplace, I invite you to visit our website to find out more about McCord Web Services and what we do.
We Are a Google Partner Specializing in Search Marketing and Search Optimization.
If you are not budget restrained, meaning that you have additional marketing dollars to spend, here is a quick primer on how to know if it makes sense to increase your Google Ads spending budget.
First, look at your campaign level results and sort the data for yesterday. If you did not spend your full budget yesterday, raising your daily budget will have no impact. Make sure to check a few days on top of just yesterday to assure that you are seeing enough results to be sure.
Second, if your program is profitable for you meaning are getting leads which leave room for profit, then the rule of thumb is to increase your ad spend as long as you have a positive ROI or return on investment. Make sure to look at the average cost per conversion when you evaluate what your leads cost versus what you make per lead.
It is important to have an awareness of important facts that are unique for your business such as one out of every ten leads makes a purchase or becomes a regular customer and regular customers typically will stay five years with us and have a lifetime value of X.
I do not recommend raising your ad spend budget without thought to assure that Google Ads is an investment in your growth and not an expense.
That being said for accounts that have taken the approach of increasing the ad spend without a limit while there is still positive ROI, the results can be absolutely, positively, mind boggling and wonderful.
Mobile-friendly websites and speedy page loads are a new criteria for growing your business.
In our new world where over 65% of all Google.com searches are done on smartphones, what happens to a website that is not mobile-friendly in regards to lead conversions, store sales, and organic placement?
The PPC Picture
Google has lots to say on this topic of mobile friendliness. For sites that are not mobile-friendly and the business owner is advertising in Google Ads, Google flags the account with messages such as this:
“Avoid losing customers on mobile devices by improving your mobile site. Recommended because 98.57% of your mobile clicks go to non-mobile-friendly pages on your site. 68.97% of clicks from all devices come from mobile. 98.57% 138 of 140 clicks go to pages that are not mobile-friendly.“
As Google Ads is incredibly focused on relevance and offering the best user experience, I expect in the future ads that are not showing mobile-friendly pages to start to receive very poor quality scores driving up the click cost and reducing exposure due to a low ad rank.
Google has been pretty forthcoming in regards to page speed as well. A 1-second delay in page response can result in a 7% reduction in conversions. For a store generating $60,000 in sales a month, that is a loss of $4,200 in monthly sales. In a year, that translates into $50,400. A non-mobile friendly site is not optimized for speedy download and may be virtually impossible to use on a smartphone driving away potential customers. Many will never come back to visit. This is a very serious impact for Google Ad activity.
For sites that do not have a mobile-friendly website, conversion numbers are dropping in Google Ads. Mobile activity is a very big part of the conversion path now for sales and leads.
For some websites that are not mobile-friendly using Duda Mobile to do a scripted redirect to a Duda Mobile mini site worked – but no longer. Google Ads is aggressively disapproving ads for our clients that are using this approach and we are now having to remove the code from those websites effectively making them now not mobile-friendly for organic or for pay per click activity.
The Organic Picture
For organic traffic, know that Google now spiders the mobile version of a website and this is the content that now determines your site’s organic ranking on Google.com for all devices, not just mobile.
Additionally, Marketing and Growth Hacking states “Based on the blogs Google is putting out, we can confidently assume companies who don’t optimize for mobile will see their rankings disappear. At the same time, companies who adopt and take advantage of mobile-friendly sites early-on have and will continue to see higher rankings.”
I agree that if you mean to be in business, grow sales, and compete effectively, your website and store must be mobile-friendly.
For more information about our services please visit us at www.McCordWeb.com.
