Getting the most out of Google Ads for small businesses

Does Google Ads work for small businesses?

Yes, if you have a solid strategy for finding the right keywords, audiences, locations and so on. The Google Ads platform lets advertisers connect with anyone in the world who is searching online for the product or service they offer. By following these simple guidelines, Google Ads could help your small business grow.

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Make sure your ads run when people are most likely to be searching for the products or services you offer. For example, it would make little sense to run ads in January if your business wants to push its Black Friday deals. A locksmith advertising an “emergency locksmith service” at 3 in the morning, when customers are asleep in bed, would waste clicks and budget. Targeting women with “men-only strip club” would clearly be the wrong audience. We could go on giving examples for ever.

Landing pages

Make sure the landing page on your website is exactly what your customers expect. Attention spans online are frighteningly short. Users leave a website if the ad they clicked doesn’t take them to a page offering exactly what they were looking for. Remember that the user experience of your landing page also affects your overall Quality Score. For example, if you’re a roofing company bidding on keywords such as “roofing materials” but you send users to a page about “emergency roofing services”, the user experience will be terrible, they’ll probably leave and you’ll have wasted money on the click.

The landing page you send users to must respond precisely to the need they’re expressing and try to meet it.

The right keywords to target

Bidding on highly competitive keywords with high search volumes can become very expensive, especially when they’re “left to run” and managed poorly or superficially. Bear in mind that a click isn’t a sale, nor is it a guaranteed lead. You may know your business inside out, but you might not know how your potential customers search for you.

Thorough keyword research is essential for small businesses using Google Ads, to make sure they show ads that are relevant to the searches users make.

“Men’s trainers” might have 1,000,000 searches a month, while “buy nike air max size 45” might have 150. Clearly the second term shows stronger purchase intent and is the one to target.

During keyword research you’ll also discover negative keywords, which you’ll need to add to your account. If you only sell Nike trainers, does it make sense to waste money on the terms “Adidas” or “Asics”? And if you’re a removals company based in Turin, would you want to appear in search results in Florence? Adding negative keywords to your account is an ongoing task, and it saves you a lot of money over time.

How much does Google Ads cost?

The amount small businesses decide to invest in Google Ads depends entirely on their advertising budget and the keywords they choose to use.

Someone selling “handmade mugs” can expect to pay a lower CPC (cost per click) than a company selling “car insurance”. Why? Competition in both categories can be just as fierce, but the value of acquiring a customer is much higher for the insurance company. Add the customer’s lifetime value (LTV), and it’s easy to see why insurance companies are willing to bid very aggressively to acquire customers through PPC.

Some keywords have a much higher monthly search volume than others: for example, in Italy the Italian for “handmade mugs” averages 90 searches a month, while “car insurance” gets 165,000.

Researching meaningful, “transactional” keywords and the audience they’re aimed at is essential to avoid wasting money on irrelevant clicks.

One of the best things about Google Ads is that, whatever your ad budget, smaller companies can compete with larger ones that may have enormous budgets to invest. The difference is that with a smaller budget your ads will stop showing sooner! With Google Ads you can be very precise with demographic targeting (gender, age, income): if you know 18-year-olds are unlikely to buy your handmade mugs, you can stop them seeing your ads and save on advertising spend. If, on the other hand, you know that women in Moncalieri (near Turin) are more likely to buy, you can apply bid adjustments to that specific location to target your ads better.

The cost of Google Ads depends largely on the keywords you target, the locations you aim at and your advertising budget. Based on average cost per click, if you’re an insurance company, 10 euros a day won’t get you very far. Suppose you’re a removals company based in Turin with a weekly budget of 1,000 euros to invest in Google Ads. With a CPC of 2 euros, your ads will receive 500 clicks. If you pay a CPC of 4 euros, you’ll get 250 clicks, and so on.

Within each industry there are huge variations in keyword costs and average CPCs. Many other factors come into play when calculating CPA (cost per acquisition), such as your website’s conversion rate.

Here’s another example:

With a CPC of €2, if 10% of those 500 clicks asked about a removal, you’d get 50 leads.
With a CPC of €4, if 5% of those 250 clicks enquired about a removal job, you’d get about a dozen leads.
A great result, right?

Not quite…

The difference between the two examples is that in the first, with a 10% conversion rate, you’ll pay 20 euros per lead, while with a 5% conversion rate you’ll pay around €83 per lead.

That’s how CPC and conversion rate affect what it costs you to acquire each lead.

The ability to “convert” users into leads or buyers at a higher rate is crucial: that’s why we offer landing page design to all our clients.

Does Google Ads work for small businesses in 2024?
Short answer: yes.

The fact that over 95% of Google’s 60 billion dollars in annual revenue comes from Google Ads shows that many companies are investing heavily in the platform. According to a recent survey, every euro spent on Google Ads brings in an average of 2 euros in profit across all industries.

Another statistic worth remembering about the effectiveness of Google Ads is that its ads reach around 80% of all internet users, and Google earns 44% of all online advertising revenue. Impressive as they are, these statistics are useless to small businesses if their Google Ads campaigns are run without a solid strategy.

Google revolutionised online advertising when it introduced AdWords (now Google Ads) in 2000. It’s still the best platform and will remain the most direct digital marketing tool available for a long time to come. But the success of a Google Ads campaign depends largely on how you use the platform and adapt it to your own business.

Mistakes in your Google Ads campaign can lead to wasted money, frustration and a loss of faith in the platform. Small businesses with no experience of this digital channel should rely on an agency or a professional experienced in Google Ads to help them manage their ads effectively…