Thinking of Using Google Ads? Here’s How to Test Your Market

I’m sure you’ve been in business long enough or at least have heard what Google Ads is right? If not, Google Ads is an online advertising platform where you can put your business to the top of Google (via sponsored ads), so that a prospective customer can click on your website and hopefully you get an enquiry or sale.


You pay Google for each click. The cost for each click is based on an auction model and in general, the more you’re willing to pay the higher your advertisement is.

The cost per click (CPC) varies from industry to industry and is pretty much dictated by the life time value of a customer.

Generally, the higher the transaction with the customer, the higher the cost per click will be.

Life is about testing and trying out new things and Google Ads is no different. If you can see the value of getting in front of customers that are ACTIVELY looking for your type of product / service, then you definitely need to start Google Ads and test your market.

Testing requires finding out what is going to work however, you will need to go through a process of “buying” in your data. You essentially need to “pay” for the data to find out what will work by spending it on clicks.

This is where lots of businesses chicken out, they’re not prepared to fork out money and learn about there business online. Their results are expected immediately or they won’t do it. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it and the CPC would be astronomically high.

Fortunately for you, there’s always room for someone to muscle in to gain some market share on Google Ads. If you’re going to do it, do it NOW as Google Ads is ONLY going to get more expensive.

Trying something new is one thing but trying it for the right length of time is another, which means your testing needs structure. There’s no point trying an idea for only 10 clicks then jumping on to the next opportunity because it failed.

Your better off sending 200-300 clicks to one page on your website with laser focus and then analyse the facts. By this stage you will have paid for a good amount of clicks to analyse and be able to make great marketing decisions. You test until it works. PERIOD.

“How much will that cost” I hear you say? To answer the question, you will need to use Keyword Planner from Google, find the rough cost per click and then multiply that cost per click (cpc) by 100 or 200. If we’re testing 200 clicks at $0.50 a click, it would cost you $100.

Buy that amount of clicks and hopefully you have a good product / service, you would have gotten some sales and phone calls from customers. This would be your 1st phase test. When you look at your stats in the Google Ads interface along with your Google Analytics for tracking stats, you can then decide what factors you want to optimise for Phase 2 of the test.

Below is a basic structure when testing your campaign (this is assuming your website looks good and has a good offer):

Ad Headline

Ensure keywords are in your headlines of your ad so that it matches your customers search intent. The Ad will stand out as it will match your customer’s decision making process. Test different headlines to see which one gets the most clicks. A great headline will then lead the customer to read the description.

headlines

Ad Description

This is where you will be telling the customer what is unique about your business and why they should be contacting you. In your ad description, you will want to talk about the benefits and features of your business then add a call to action like “Get a Quote”. Assuming your headline is great, with a great ad description, you will expect a click to your website. In fact, you’ll  get a click even if your ad is bad (you’ll just end up paying more).

ad-description

Keywords

You obviously need to use the right keywords for your business to get in front of the right customers but when adding keywords you 100% need to input it correctly or you WILL end up losing money even though you “thought” you added the keywords correctly.

This is probably the number 1 reason why most of the customer quit, because they messed up this bit. Before you go onto advance keyword targeting, our suggestion would be to input the keywords with square brackets.

Eg if the keyword is:  “kent accountants”, you will type into the keywords area with the square brackets [kent accountants]. You won’t get as much clicks as other methods but it’s as targeted you can get and will at least start you on your Google Ads journey. As your account develops and you know more about keywords, you can start expanding to reach more customers.

testing-keywords

Conversions

Depending on your business, you will be measuring the success in a number a ways but I know your end goal is to get either a website sale or a phone enquiry/email from a customer. Right? When you test the above, your conversions will naturally develop.

This then comes down to tracking. Your tracking can be the sales reports from Google Analytics & sales generated, it can be the Google Ads conversions found in the backend of Google Ads interface or it can be simply be the amount of times your phone rings (not ideal if not tracked).

Where you will lose money or gain customers is through the right keywords. We’re not so worried about the headline and the description as you will most likely write naturally for that but where it ask you add keywords, this is where most mess it up because they don’t understand keyword match types.

For now anyway, start of slow with Exact Match keywords meaning when Google Ads ask you to add keywords, put it in square brackets like this:

[kent accountants]

Google Ads is easy but at the same time complex if you don’t understand the foundations of the system which is why some have lost money and some are raking in new clients and sales.

I met a customer a few days a go where  we’ve set up his account and now he generates bread and butter clients consistently. If you’ve found this useful, you might find my 10 Page Google Ads Common Mistakes Guide useful.

I want to help you avoid common mistakes and save money. Sign up for the Guide. If you have any questions, you can contact me here: michael@clickmetrics.co.uk

Michael Nguyen
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