By Himanshu / August 4, 2021
Google ads will play a critical role, in accelerating business growth for Small and Medium Enterprises. An overview and outlining the key steps, to successfully move, in that direction.
Google has changed the way, business is conducted in the 21st century. World over the term 'Google' is used interchangeably for online searches and justifiably so, with over 85 % of online searches conducted on google.
More importantly, Google has smartly monetized Google Ads, generating phenomenal revenues. To put some more context, 104 Billion revenue in 2020 alone, just around Google Ads, this exclude YouTube, or network members revenues. The ads revenues are only expected to grow further.
While businesses in North America and Europe have reasonably cultivated the benefits of Google Ads. We believe India, with over 680 Million users (pre-Covid numbers), the growth potential for SME's (Small and Medium Enterprises), using Google Ads, has been relatively untapped.
In today's competitive marketplace, with increased competition and reduced margins, reaching wider customer segments and demographics, has become paramount for survival. It is in this very context, SMEs would have to rely more on Google Ads, for fuel further business growth, as they try to tap a wider audience.
While we largely agree on the need for reach wider audience, the next logical question looming is, how to actually get there, using Google Ads. Outlining a few critical steps below
1.Goal setting:
Might seem obvious, but can't emphasize the importance enough. Defining clear, specific and measurable goals is critical, for overall success. For example, this could be increasing YOY revenues or visits to website or even creating awareness, on service offerings. Specific goals will help build a cohesive strategy and ensure you have mutually agreed metrics, to measure them.
2.Identify right set of keywords:
Keywords help you connect with your customers during searches and they need to be specific. Two words with the similar meaning, might not yield the same search results. Optimal keywords will be specific and relevant, to the audience, you are trying to reach and needs to be organized by themes. For example, bags could be categorized as backpacks, handhelds or shoulder bags. Which could further be sub-themed, based on subtypes. In Google Ads keywords are further organized by ad-groups. Work together, to brainstorm and optimize the keywords.
3.Create a campaign in google Ads:
Campaigns can be created in Google Ads, based on your goals. For example, this could broadly be based of sales, leads, traffic, brand awareness etc, aligning with your specific goals. Campaign creation in Google Ads is intuitive, so long as you are clear on what you need to achieve, from your campaign. Google Ads has intuitive feature such as scheduling, targeting geographic locations and refining audience, which ensures you are able to not just organize better but also narrow-down your audience, for optimal results.
4.Optimizing your bids:
Google Ads runs auctions, when ads space is available on a Google search. Bids help put you in the auctions. Hence, it's important to optimize your bids, to ensure you have maximum impact for the cost being invested.
Setting your budget and bids– Our recommendation is to have an agile approach, by making ads investments. For example, invest for a limited duration and analyse the impact, while adjusting in the following bids, based on finding. Continue this process till you are able to optimize your campaign. A key metric to be mindful is average cost per acquisition; conversion rate will help in deciding the budgets.
Make sure you define a cohesive bid strategy. As you define your daily budget for the campaign, also look into your bidding, define what you would like to focus on, such as conversion, clicks, impression share etc.
5. Creating effective ads:
We suggest, you first begin with a text add. This will contain headline, description and your URL. Google has some intuitive and useful features to showcase your ads on Google, including recommendations to improve performance. However, we also suggest you spend some time to understand all the features and capabilities provided by Google
It is important to mention that one needs to be patient and pragmatic while working with google ads. Since it might take some time to optimize the process and reap the eventual rewards.
To conclude we strongly believe, particularly in India that, there is a tremendous potential for SME's (Small and Medium Enterprises) to fuel further business growth, by using Google Ads. Accomplished by effectively leveraging Google Ads services and aligning with the new ways, of doing business.