5 November Cracking the Code on Digital Marketing with Paid Search November 5, 2024 By Melisa Rana Marketing digital marketing, paid search 0 CRACKING THE CODE ON MARKETING WITH PAID SEARCH November 5, 2024 | Marketing | digital marketing, paid search By Zach Vesper, NPI, Inc.'s Senior SEO & Marketing Strategist News flash: it ain’t 1985 anymore. Nowadays, it takes a bit more to remain relevant as a small business, regardless of industry. Gone are the days when word of mouth could carry a successful marketing plan alone, and we’ve entered into an age where an online presence is no longer optional. Social media, email marketing, personalized business websites - these elements are just a few of the essentials small business owners need to develop a plan for if they want to not only remain relevant in their market, but continue to grow their business. When it comes to funneling online customers to your website, there are many companies that promise to boost your SEO for fast and easy results, but real organic growth on Google’s rankings takes time and patience. Overnight solutions just don’t exist! Well, mostly. There is, in fact, one proven way to get your business listing in front of more customers and to the top of your favorite SERP right away. That’s right, we’re talking about paid search today! Consider this your beginner’s tutorial for if you haven’t experimented with Google Ads quite yet, or a refresher if you’re looking to brush up on the basics. Without further ado, let’s dive in What Is Paid Search? “Paid search” refers to the option to pay search engines (like Google) for ad space at the very top of search engine results pages (SERPs). While there are plenty of alternatives (such as Yahoo, Bing, or DuckDuckGo, etc.), Google is the absolute behemoth of the search engine sector, responsible for over 90% of all global queries today. In this article, we’ll use Google Ads as a reference point due to its dominance, but be aware that this information should also be relevant across platforms. By spending money through paid search on Google, businesses can place their website and their specialized promotions in a prime position, ready to be discovered by highly interested customers as defined through their selected parameters. What does this mean? More website visitors, more product sales, and more services booked when everything is set up correctly. A Google Ad is made up of a few key parts, including: Headline = The largest text included in the ad, and the area where searchers’ attention will first be drawn to. Ads can include more than one headline, and this portion is considered highly important for anyone that wants to see a high clickthrough rate (i.e. seeing searchers click the ad and continue on to your website). Web URL = Written beneath the headline, this lets searchers know what website they’ll land on when they click the Google Ad. Note: the quality of a Google Ad’s website landing page and the user experience on that page is highly influential for the ad’s overall performance. Yet another instance where a competent, responsive web designer is essential! Description Text = After the headline, the description text gives you room to expand upon the purpose of the ad or discuss your business in more detail. All good description texts will be built around keyword research and incorporate/reference the keywords selected during the Google Ad’s creation. Ad Extensions = Ad extensions are additional areas that are free to include in any Google Ad, and can be used to include pricing, location information, other website links, phone numbers, and more! It’s considered best practice to make use of ad extensions since it makes the Google Ad take up more screen space. How Do You Advertise on Google? Now that you know what a Google Ad is, let’s discuss how to get started. First, sign up for your Google Ads account! Then, go ahead and set up your first Google Ad. Locations can be defined with common references like cities or zip codes, then choose keywords that are relevant to your business, your services, and that are also communicated on your website’s landing page. Keywords are a huge factor that determines Google Ad success, and should only be selected after doing your keyword research homework! Keyword Match Types such as Broad Match, Phrase Match, and Exact Match can also be used to further specify what types of queries you’d like to trigger your ad. Learn more about keyword matching from Google right here! Lastly, you’ll bid on keywords against other businesses, jockeying for placement at the top of Google’s ad space. Luckily, much of the bidding process has been simplified today and is determined through your ad campaign’s overall budget. In short, the higher your monthly or daily budget, the better your ability to bid when potential customers search for your services. Setup and ongoing management of Google Ads is clearly plenty to tackle. If you are an NPI franchisee, just contact the marketing team for help starting your next campaign! We’ll take care of the management and data analysis. What Makes a Great Google Ad? Of course it’s important to set up your paid search campaigns correctly so that you get the ROI that you’re looking for, and not waste money on experimentation. As previously discussed, keyword research is huge for the success of an ad campaign, and these selected keywords need to be included in the ad description and the website landing page. If there are inconsistencies here, you can risk getting your ad’s Quality Score dinged, which can also affect your keyword bids. A Google Ad Quality Score is determined by three factors: Quality of Keywords Relevance of Keywords to the Ad Landing Page User Experience Then, a campaign’s long-term success comes down to watching your results, adding negative keywords as needed, and pausing keywords that aren’t getting you the results you’re looking for. Paid search is a powerful tool that, when used right, can be a phenomenal, cost-effective growth catalyst and revenue generator. Quick recommendation: try to build up your business’ online presence by gathering around 30-40 reviews before starting with Google Ads! Start getting more reviews on Google today. Want to know more about how NPI franchisees benefit from ongoing marketing support from their corporate office headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska? Request more info and get your free info packet here. About the Author Zach Vesper, Senior SEO & Marketing Strategist Zach brings twelve years of content marketing and nine years of search engine optimization (SEO) experience to the NPI in-house marketing team. His areas of expertise include building marketing plans that increase franchise sales, optimizing web content for search, crafting effective paid search campaigns, reputation management, and content strategy. Zach is always more than happy to answer your questions about all things Google and considers this the most important and enjoyable aspect of his job. Comments are closed.