How to Launch a Search Ad Straight from Google My Business
Search Advertising Basics
Every day, about 3.5 billion searches are made using Google Search. Everywhere, people are searching for information, shopping online, comparing product prices, getting directions, or just learning something new. Google Ads helps you reach this audience and transform them into valuable customers.
Before learning how to setup a Search Ads, let’s review the objectives Google Search Ads can help you achieve. These include:
Drive Sales: Grow online, in-app, in-person, and over-the-phone sale
Get Leads: Boost conversions by encouraging people to take action.
Increase Website Visits: Get the right people to visit your website.
Influence Consideration: Encourage people to explore your products and services.
Build Awareness: Reach a broad audience and maximize exposure.
Promote Your App: Increase installs and interactions with your app.
Google Search ads appear next to Google search results and on other Google partner sites, like YouTube, when people look for businesses like yours. With a Search campaign, you can make sure potential customers notice your business/brand, consider your products, and take action.
In order to reach your ideal customers, you’re able to target people based on several characteristics. For standard search campaigns, these include:
Affinity: Reach users based on what they're passionate about and their habits and interests.
Detailed Demographics: Reach users based on long-term life facts.
In-market: Reach users based on their recent purchase intent.
Remarketing: Reach users that have interacted with your business.
Customer Match: Reach your existing customers based on your CRM data.
Similar audiences: Reach new users with similar interests to your website visitors or existing customers.
Writing an Engaging Search Ad
Before we walk-through how-to setup your advertising campaign, let’s review best practices for writing successful text ads and common mistakes to avoid. In the most basic terms, your text ads should be specific, relevant, attractive, and empowering. Some important things to keep in mind are as follows:
Highlight what makes you unique: Showcase the products, services, or offers that make you competitive.
Include prices, promotions and exclusives: If you have a limited-time discount or stock an exclusive product, say so.
Empower Action: make clear what the next steps are by including a call to action like ‘Purchase’ or “Call Today”
Include Keywords: This shows your ad’s relevance to what people want! At a minimum, include one keyword.
Match to your Landing page: make sure that the promotions or products in your ad are included there
Use Ad Extensions: Include even more information with your ads, such as location details, links to pages on your website, and your phone number. For ads on mobile devices, call and location extensions are a must.
Check for Mistakes: Ensure your ads are high quality by checking spelling, for extra spaces, sTrAnGe CAPITALIZATION, or unclear URLs, to name a few.
Setup
Setting up a Search Ad is now easier than ever since it can be done straight from your Google My Business dashboard! These ads are part of what Google calls Smart Campaigns and although objectives and targeting are simplified, they’re a great DIY solution for small businesses.
Before setting up a Search campaign, ask yourself these questions.
What is your main goal? This is the main thing you want to achieve and should match your campaign type/objective. Smart Campaign goals include
1. Get more calls
2. Get more website visits or signups
3. Get more visits to your physical location
How much do you want to invest over 30 days? In addition to a budget, you can indicate a schedule you’d like your ads to run on (day of the week/times).
What keywords will match your customer’s search terms? When you create a list of keywords in your ad group, you're telling Google’s algorithm which customer searches should match with your ads.
Who do you want to target geographically?
Now let’s walk through the steps to setting up your first Search Ad through Google My Business.
Sign into the Google My Business account where you’ve claimed and verified the business for which you’ll be advertising.
If you haven’t claimed or verified your business, follow these steps
For more information on why this is important, read our blog How & Why to Claim Your Google My Business Listing
On the home screen, look for a box that says “Advertise easily in minutes” and select ‘Start Now”
Select Your Main Advertising Goal
1. Get more calls
2. Get more website visits or signups
3. Get more visits to your physical location
Indicate your location targeting
Choose between an address OR specific zip codes, cities or regions
After you set your target, pay attention to ‘potential audience size’ on the right. If this number isn’t large enough, your ad will not be eligible.
Setup Keyword Themes
Keyword themes help match your ads to Google searches. Enter the products and services you offer, and they’ll show your ads for related searches.
Some keyword themes will auto-populate based on information on your google my business listing. You can keep or remove these.
Write Your Ad!
Remember what we reviewed above about writing an engaging ad!
Don’t forget to indicate where you want clickers to go. This will default to the webpage associated with your Google My Business account. In lieu of this page, you can send clickers directly to a page within your website.
You can write several ads during this step with different headlines and descriptions. This is common practice because the more ads you have, the more likely one will perform well.
Setup Ad Extensions such as location and phone #
This is important because it’s your CTA! Google will track both calls and direction requests so that you can judge the performance of your campaign.
Set Your Budget
This is an average daily budget for the whole campaign, not per ad. You will also see the monthly max in small print.
Pay attention to the estimated reach and clicks which illustrate the value you should see from this ad
Name Your Campaign & Review all Specifics
Name your campaign something that will help you differentiate it from other campaigns. We suggest including the campaign goal in this name. For example: “Visits – Happy Hour”
Set Up Conversion Tracking
Conversion tracking is a free tool that shows you what happens after a customer interacts with your ads
This may require some technical assistance from your web developer if Google Analytics is not already set up.
Launch Your Ad!
Analysis
In your Google Ads dashboard, you’ll find ads setup with Google My Business under the “Smart Campaigns” tab. You can get each campaign’s details by clicking on it. Overall performance can be monitored here, including:
Impressions: counted each time your ad is shown to someone visiting a search results page or website on Google.
Clicks: when people click your ad, they’ll be taken to your website. People might also click the phone number in your ad to call your business.
Amount spent: total dollar amount spent
Verified calls: the number of times people saw your ad and then called via the ad extension or your business’ pin on Google Maps
Pap actions: the number of times people saw your ad and then clicked your business’ pin on Google Maps or got directions to your business.
Impact on your website: includes new visits, average time spent, and average # of pages viewed
Additionally, you can monitor performance of targeting including best performing keyword themes and search phrases.
In Closing
Search advertising should be a part of your marketing strategy and now it’s easier than ever to do-it-yourself! With Google’s simply, integrated solutions, you can reach your desired audience and transform them into valuable customers with just a few clicks. If you’re looking to harness the power of traditional search campaigns, digital or even video ads, Trifecta Marketing Services has the experience and expertise to make this happen. To learn more about our custom marketing packages, visit www.trifectamarketingservices.com.