Are you a small business that is looking to start more customers and don’t have the time to wait 2 months plus for SEO content to rank in google? While we don’t often recommend paid ads as a long term strategy it can help supplement or boost leads to your website.
This PPC guide was written for the beginner in mind and I don’t recommend anyone run paid ads without knowing what they are doing.
When a majority of customers are searching for a product or service 99% of the time they end up of Google. When used with SEO Google Ads and help boost your lead generation efforts and help you generate more business.
So, What Is PPC?
PPC stands for Pay Per Click. It’s a model of advertising online offered by most of the search engines and ad networks where advertisers pay when someone clicks on your advertisement.
While SEO can help your business regarding its long-term viability, if you want results now, paid online marketing is the way to go. With PPC, you will get immediate, effective, and fast results. If you set it up now and do it right, you can start seeing results in a few minutes to a few hours.
Some of the major pay per click campaigns, in no particular order, include:
- Facebook/Instagram Ad Campaigns
- Bing Ads Pay Per Click campaigns
- Google Ads Pay Per Click campaigns
Benefits Of PPC For as Small Business
There are so many reasons your small business should be running pay-per-click advertising. Here are some:
- With SEO It can take 3 – 12 months to get to page one of Google’s search results. With paid ads you can be displayed on the first page within a couple of hours after setting up your ad campaign and making it live.
- Targeting is straightforward. For example, Google has data on everything so you can laser target your ideal customers by income levels, geography you serve, and more.
- PPC campaigns can help you serve ads to people who are actively searching for your services – people who are at the bottom of the sales funnel and are willing to buy – in contrast to those who do not.
Different PPC Platforms
You can run PPC campaigns on many different networks, but the two major ones are Google Ads and Facebook Ads. Their shares of the search market are 80% and 20%, respectively. As a result, they are the two we focus on, allocating typically a 50/ 50 split.
How PPC Works: The Process
When people start running Google’s Ad (formerly AdWords) they will often assume that if they are willing to pay more than their competitors then they can take the top spot. While that used to work today google often prioritizes ads based on relevance and quality score. Why? They make more money, and customers have gotten savvy to typically only click on ads that are relevant to their search.
This brings us to a critical factor used by Google called ‘quality score.’
What Is Quality Score?
It is a factor used by Google to rate your ads’ quality and relevance and the keywords you use. It plays a vital role in establishing your cost per click (CPC) and combines with your maximum bid to determine how your ad ranks in the auction process.
While no one outside Google knows the exact factors weighted into the score, some of the factors it depends on include:
- Keyword relevance to the Ad Group,
- The relevance of your Ad text,
- Your landing page’s quality and relevance to the ad,
- Your AdWords historical performance and
- The click-through rate of your Ads or CTR.
Of these, the most important is your CTR because it tells Google that very many people find your ad relevant and helpful. This results in your ads ranking higher and a lower cost per click. As a result, you want to aim for a higher CTR (which is the natural result of your ad being relevant to consumers.)
How Can You Get The Most ROI With Their PPC Ad Budget?
We are going to roofing companies as an example of how you can narrow down your keywords and how to make your ads relevant to search term on google.
- Write down a long list of all the keywords that are relevant to your roofing services, for example, “roofing contractor,” “roofing contractor California,” “emergency roofing,” and as much as you can. You can break them down into groups relating to specific services you offer.
- Write down your ad text to matching the keywords or keywords group. Ensure it is compelling and relevant to what your users will be searching for.
- Create a landing page to direct visitors who click on your PPC ads. You should have a landing page per ad group and keywords group. Your homepage or blog does not qualify for a lading page.
If you do this right, you’d be able to get a higher quality score, which will result in your Google Ads campaign succeeding a lot more.
Know Your Numbers
The minimum amount we recommend for businesses is $500 to $1,000.00/month. Lower amounts will give you limited data making it difficult to work with. In some cities like New York Houston, Los Angeles, $1,000.00 is just not enough.
If your CPC is up to $30-$40, your $1,000 will disappear in about 30 – 35 clicks, which isn’t good enough. But since we’re talking ROI here, if you spend $1,000 and make $4,000, I’d say it was a good deal.
Setting Up Your Google Ads Campaign. (We are using a roofing company as an example.)
Keyword Research
The first part of the process is figuring out the best keywords to bid for relating to your services. You can make use one of several tools, including:
- Ahrefs
- SEMrush and
- Google Ads Keyword Planner
Below is an example of some keywords you can group if you want to bid on general roofing keywords in your city.
General Roofing Keywords + City: roofers (city), roofing (city), roofing companies (city), roofing services (city), roofing contractor (city)
The example above is simply meant to give you a picture of how it’s done. Now open a spreadsheet or get a piece of paper and do your research for the keywords you want your prospects to find you with. Grouping them into different sets.
Negative research
Just the same way you research keywords you want to be found for, you also have to extensively list keywords you don’t want your ads to appear for. Why? They will only increase your cost per click, make you burn up your ad budget in a faster, and not bring you any leads.
Some examples include:
- Buy, supply, sales, supplier, bulk.
- Employment, part-time, jobs, full time, careers
- Home Depot, Craigslist, and all of your top competitors.
These are just examples. Don’t leave anything out.
Roofing Ad Groups & Bidding
Google makes it simple to set up different roofing ad groups. For example, ‘General Roofing Services’ will cover keywords like “roofing,” “roofer,” “roofing contractor,” “roofing company,” etc. If any of your prospects type in any of these keywords, they’ll find your ad.
You can create other ad groups like ‘Emergency Roofing Terms,’ roofing terms with geo-modifiers, and so on. The point here is, you just keep keywords for similar services in the same ads group.
Type Of Keywords You Can Put Into Ad Groups.
Google has 4 Keywords variation for you to put into ad groups. They are
- Broad Match
- Broad Match Modifier
- Phrase Match
- Exact Match
Of these four, we almost always use only the last three because the first has too many variables and issues that can cost you a lot of money.
An example of a Broad Match Modifier is +roofing +contractor +Chicago. This simply means that so long these keywords (or their variants, but not synonyms) are in a search term, Google should display your ad. The order in which they appear is not important.
An example of a Phrase Match is “roofing contractor Chicago.” This means ads can only be displayed if they include the exact phrase, and the words appear in the same order. However, there can be words before or after the phrase.
An example of an Exact Match is [roofing contractor Chicago]. This means your ad should only be displayed for an exact match of the keyword phrase.
The strategy we use is to have each of these variations in each ad group with an exact match getting the highest bid. This way, you get to cover all the keywords relating to those terms.
Campaigns Settings
The following lists the series of steps you’d have to follow when creating a new PPC campaign on Google Ads. They are:
- Campaign goals
- Campaign type
- Title of Campaign
- Networks
- Locations
- Budget
- Bidding
You should understand each of these and know how to get the best out of these settings.
THE AD SET UP
The Ad set-up process is quite straightforward. Just ensure that
- Your ads are very relevant to the ad group, and
- Your ads get your audience’s attention and also make them click.
Here’s an example of a great ad.
Headline 1: Roofing Contractor Chicago
It includes the primary keyword you’re targeting
Headline 2: A+ BBB Accredited Company
You should include benefits, Numbers, or Trust components to encourage people to click.
Display Path: /Roofing/Chicago
Make use of your main keyword again
Description 1: 40 Years Experience. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed. Get a Free Estimate
Include a call to action while restating benefits.
You should set up two ads per ad group. The headlines should be different, so you can test which performs best, and kill the worse performing ad when you’ve finished testing.
Conversion & Call Tracking
It is also essential to get these right so you can tell which keywords are working and which aren’t.
We set up 3 types of conversions, including:
- Contact Form Submission
- Calls from the landing page.
- Ad Extension Calls.
You should track all three too.
Landing Pages
It is critical to stress again the fact that your ads should not direct people to your home page. You should have one dedicated landing page for each ad. You can have a Roof Repair page, a Roofing in (Your City) page, a Roof Replacement page, etc.
As stated earlier, your landing page should be relevant to your ad and encourage your visitors to enter their details, call you, book a meeting, etc., or it will all be a waste.
Monitoring
After setting up your ads correctly, you need to monitor them to know which are performing and which are not. Which should be improved and which of them should be aborted. This is particularly important in the first few months. You should keep monitoring the data, tweaking your ads until your CPC is as low as possible, and your ads are converting.
PPC Are You Ready To Utilize Paid Ads For Your Website?
One of the best things small business can do to grow their business is to set up roofing PPC campaigns to bring in leads and help you generate more business in your local area. Unlike SEO, it produces results in hours or a few days, but it needs to be done right, or you will just be throwing away money.
To get a Free Audit and Strategy Session, get in touch with us today. We’ll hand you a blueprint detailing we can help your business have a positive ROI and start showing up on the first page google using Paid Ads.