Knowing how and when to spend your digital marketing budget are never easy decisions. There are so many platforms and options available that even sorting through the list of possibilities can feel daunting, especially when so much is riding on the choice you make.

And with the holiday season turned topsy-turvy by the pandemic, record-setting business closures, and still-climbing engagement with online shopping, this year offers both significant challenges and greater opportunities to turn your marketing dollars into profit.

All of which is why as we move into the holiday season in this anything-but-normal year, Pepper Gang is strongly recommending that our clients consider investing more than usual in Google Ads. An outstanding program that delivers a strong return on investment (ROI), Google ads has a proven track record of increasing conversion rates and capturing new customers’ attention. Here are some of the most compelling reasons we feel an investment in Google ads is the right decision.

Focus on High-Intent Users

One of the most powerful benefits of Google ads is their ability to be tied directly to search terms. This connection means that your Google ad appears prominently when high-intent users begin their research into a product or service they have self-identified as a need or want.

Who are high-intent users? Think of it this way: There are three fundamental reasons people use Google to search the internet. The first is to answer questions or learn something, which is called an information search. The second is to locate a specific website or a navigational search. And the third is when a person searches for a particular item or service to buy, which is the all-important transactional search. High-intent users are those people who are conducting transactional searches, which signals their intent to make a purchase immediately or soon.

Pepper Gang can build your Google ads to take full advantage of the commercial intent Keywords that are the magic behind transactional searches. There are two types of these keywords: Buy Now keywords and Product keywords, each of which addresses the user differently. Google ads offer several formats perfectly suited to optimize these high-intent keywords. Knowing which format to match with which keywords is an essential part of any Google ads campaign. The perfect match goes a long way to converting a high-intent search into a sale.

Google Ads Scale

There is no minimum spend required for Google ads, which means there is a price point that can allow any size business to take advantage of even a single ad’s reach and impact. Start with even a $250 investment, and as your business grows and budget increases, you can look at expanding your campaign, increasing your exposure, and tracking the increase in conversions that make it all worthwhile.

When is the right time to scale your Google ads campaign? Here are a few common signs that you might want to consider taking your campaign to the next level:

• Click-through rates are peaking, which usually means you are in the 1.91 percent range. A higher click-through rate means a higher ad quality score, which translates into a lower cost per click for your ads.
• Quality score is above 5 (the higher, the better, of course), which is a sign that Google deems your ad copy and landing page as relevant. Expanding your campaign while your quality score is high ensures that you get maximum impact per dollar invested.
• Spending is consistent (or going down), and conversions are up, which means that you have a reliable formula in place, so time to build on these successful ads with more successful ads.

Control your Key Word Investment

As Google ads make very clear, not all keywords are created equal. High-value keywords cost more per click because they are more likely to attract high-intent users and generate higher conversion numbers. This sliding scale of keyword costs gives your company several options: invest in one high-value keyword, for instance, or spread your investment across several lower value keywords. A $100 investment, for example, could net you two $50 keywords or ten $10 keywords. Trial the keywords, monitor the results, and refine your strategies, knowing that you are in full control of your Google ads budget.

Immediate Results

Google ads are still one of the fastest-acting digital marketing platforms available, which means that your investment will start to show results sooner and more consistently than other platforms. And there is nothing more rewarding or that makes more business sense than getting immediate feedback on your investment.

Testing, Testing, Testing

Google ads make testing a single component of your ad or campaign easy. Known as A/B tests, they help Pepper Gang fine-tune each aspect of your ads: creative, keywords, budget, ad position targeting, and so on. As you add more money to your budget, testing can also expand, allowing for more insights, quicker adjustments, and increasingly effective (and profitable) campaigns.

One increasingly important area that testing can help with ad positioning, which Google is always fine-tuning to address user preferences. Where your ad is positioned on a Search Engine Results Page (SERP) is often tied to the type of product or service you are selling. Despite what intuition tell us, top positions on a page are not always the most profitable in terms of the industry-standard metric of revenue per one thousand impressions (RPM). Testing goes a long way toward finding the perfect formula that ensures the placement that works best for your business.

As a Google Partner, Pepper Gang is committed to the highest standards possible for making your Google ads campaign the most valuable part of your marketing portfolio most valuable. Our in-house experts know that creating an effective campaign is a combination of data-driven science and creative art, and we have the skills necessary to hit that delicate balance every time. Whether a first-time buyer or a veteran of many past campaigns, we can help make 2020 the year that Google ads worked magic for your bottom line.

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