Google Ads (also known as Google AdWords) is Google’s online ad network. Google’s ad network is the largest on the internet and you can reach virtually every demographic thinkable online. It covers all of Google’s own sites, such as Google and YouTube, plus millions of third party sites.
How Google Ads can help you
Google Ads is highly configurable and has a large, global reach. You will be able to target virtually any demographic you can think of, and Google Ads can help tailor your ads to the specific goals you want to achieve. This might be generating more calls to your business, driving traffic to your website or having visitors take particular actions on your site. Goal funneling allows you to not only generate more visitors, but also understand what those visitors are doing.
Combine with Analytics
Chances are you’re running Google Analytics to monitor traffic to your site and optimize it. As both services are from Google, Google Ads integrates with Google Analytics extremely well by default. You will have all the rich data you have come to expect about your visitors in Google Analytics and you will be able to apply that data to Google Ads to help optimize your advertisements. In this way, you can tweak your ads to really nail your target audience.
Get help from Google
Google Ads also have staff who offer free support and advice on tailoring your ads. They’re a great resource to tap into when you’re new and starting out as the wealth of options available can be a bit daunting at first. It may be worth contacting a paid specialist for support once your ads really get going, but Google’s free advice is a great launchpad for new customers.
Choose where to advertise
Having a global reach doesn’t mean you should advertise everywhere (in fact, that’s probably a very bad idea) but it means you can reach virtually every corner of the market. You can specify exactly where you want your ads are shown, from country to region and even to city. This means if your business consists of one local shop in a particular city, you can still use Google ads and only target people in that city and the surrounding area. This specificity is a huge boon for small, local businesses and is one of the advantages of Google’s global reach.
Tailor ads to your audience
Another very helpful feature is the ability to tailor different ads to different demographics. A key point in increasing user engagement is understanding what type of ad works for what type of people. Using one ad for everyone is missing out on opportunities to tweak your ad to specific audiences. You can run several different types of ads all aimed at different demographics – from age to gender, level of income to interests and hobbies. Work out what works for each type of audience and tailor your ads accordingly.
Understand how your money is spent
Google Ads gives you some great tools that help you to estimate the likely level of engagement you will get for a specified budget. For each ad, you can specify how much money you would like to have spent on a per-day basis and Google will provide you with an estimate of how many people are likely to see the ad and how many clicks it is likely to generate.
You can choose what your monthly ad budget is and you’ll never spend more than your cap. Google will intelligently spend your budget as optimally as possible – for example, not showing your ads at times of the day when the majority of your target demographics are likely to be asleep. You can adjust your budget at any time and also pause your ads at any time.
Conclusion
Google Ads is an incredibly powerful tool with an unmatched reach in online advertising. Entire businesses can be sustained purely off of using Google Ads, but an optimal marketing strategy should also be looking at other popular ad networks, like Facebook and Amazon as well. Nevertheless, Google Ads forms a core part of many company marketing strategies, from multinational corporations to brand new startups.
