Small businesses have to fight every day to be noticed. They are, after all, competing with big brands that have an unlimited marketing budget.

But did you know that there is an effective marketing weapon that they can use to beat even the largest of brands?

Enter Google Ads for small business.

The PPC advertising service offers better control over your ad spend while allowing you to reach a specific target audience. It generates the highest ROI compared to other Key Performance Indicators used by marketers, making it an invaluable tool for small businesses looking to make it big.

However, it takes work to make Google Ads work for you. In this post, we offer a few tips on how to get started with Google Ads for small businesses.

1. Define Your PPC Objectives

Do you want to generate sales, capture leads, or increase brand awareness?

Establishing your goals will guide the campaign and help you choose the right keywords. If you want to achieve multiple goals with Google Ads, it’s best to set up separate campaigns.

Once you determine your goals, create an ad group. This helps you gauge the best keywords to describe your specialized services and attract the right customers. Use the Keyword Planner tool to create a list of short-tail and long-tail keywords.

You can save the ad group in your Google account. PPC will allow you to bid on the key phrases your customers uses to search for products or services you offer. The brands with winning bids will show up first on the search results page.

2. Stay Local

One of the most effective Google Ads for small business strategies is to keep your keywords local. Targeting a specific geographical area ensures that you generate high-quality and relevant traffic. You can also add negative locations so that you don’t attract customers from areas you don’t serve.

Another benefit of geo-specific Google Ads is that they save you money because they don’t appear when people perform general searches. They also allow personalized content marketing to increase engagement and improve user experience.

3. Optimized Ads for Mobile Devices

With most of today’s consumers using smartphones to find information and shop, you cannot overlook the importance of targeting by device. This is particularly true if you own a retail store.

The best way to approach this is to keep your desktop campaigns completely separate from your mobile ads. This allows you to focus on mobile users and increase conversions. If you aren’t sure about investing in mobile ads, try running them for a few months to see how they work for you. Keep going if there is a significant increase in mobile ads and drop them if there isn’t much improvement.

4. Optimize Your Landing Page

The landing page is where anyone who clicks on your Google Ads for your business will be redirected. It must not only be relevant but also enticing. The content of the page should retain the exact message as the ad.

A few things to keep in mind when optimizing your landing page include:

• Maintain consistency between keywords
• Don’t overcomplicate the page
• Repeat what your ad says on the landing page
• Include a call-to-action at the end

Adhering to the above will enhance your Google Ad Quality Score and dramatically increase click-through rates.

5. Use the Right Keyword Match Types

The success of Google Ads for local businesses relies on user intent through keywords. The auction system considers the relevance of the search term entered into Google and displays ads accordingly. This makes the keywords and types of modifiers you use all the more important.

There are four types of keyword matches including:

• Broad
  This is a wide net to cast as it matches searches with anything remotely related to the keyword including close variants and synonyms.
• Broad Match Modified
  It tells Google to show ads to users whose search queries have each of the words in your keyword phrase, in any order.
• Phrase Match
  Your ads only show when users enter the exact phrase you specify, in the exact order of words.
• Exact Match
  Your ads will be shown when your target keywords match the exact words as a user’s search query in the exact order.

6. Embrace Extensions

The extensions tab in Google Ads allows you to add extensions to your ads specifying your location, sales promotions, products, or features. You must take advantage of this feature considering 88% of mobile Google searches for a nearby service end in an in-store visit.

You can use the extensions to wave the flag that you are nearby and ready to help with your customers’ needs. A phone extension on your ad lets people easily call to ask for help with an apology bouquet.

Are you a wholesaler of beauty products? Toss in an affiliate location link to share which retail stores sell your products.

7. Use Negative Keywords

A negative keyword prevents your ad from being triggered by certain words and phrases. Otherwise known as a negative match, it helps further qualify the Google ads for local business.

It streamlines your ad, ensuring that the ads are presented on the relevant search results pages. This improves click-through rates, raises conversion rates, and saves money on useless clicks.

Checking the Search Terms report is a great way to discover how users are accidentally searching you. You’ll find the irrelevant queries that lead people to your landing page, and you can add them to the negative keyword list.

8. Monitor and Adjust

This is probably the most important tip on how to use Google Ads for business. With Google algorithms constantly evolving, you must too.

Start by measuring your success and patterns. What pages are most popular? How are people finding your business? What search queries is your target audience using?

If you use Google Analytics and Google Ads together, then finding this information will be easy. Otherwise, visit the metrics section of Google Ads if you don’t have Analytics.

Analyze this information and use it to tweak your campaign accordingly. Better yet, leverage the data to make the next campaign a success.

Google Ads for Small Business Is a Cost-Effective Investment

The road to successful Google Ads for small business is a long one, and you’ll probably make a few mistakes along the way. However, with the right maintenance and execution, you’ll be driving conversions for your small business in no time.

Start with the above suggestions and consult our experienced Google Ads specialist to get the most out of your campaigns.