Google has become the Standard Oil of the internet. The company has made more than $180 billion during the worldwide pandemic, mostly from ads. There is a good reason why this is.
Advertising on Google is one of the best ways you can reach people who need your services.
Not only will we show you why Google should be your restoration company’s go-to platform for marketing, but we will also dive into how to actually launch your ads.
It will be a lot of fun. Let’s get into it.
Benefits of Running Google Ads
Here are some key benefits of Google ads:
- Intent-based targeting
You can reach people who need your service right at the moment of searching.
In other words, you’ll be positioning your services right in front of people who desperately need them.
- Pay per click
You’ll only pay when people click on an ad and visit your website or call you.
Google ads have an option to display your phone number on your advertisement. And when a viewer sees your ad from their mobile device, they can dial that phone number.
Google Ads stats:
- Over a third of Google searches are local
- Over 60% of ads clicked have buyer intent
What does this mean? Searches with buyer intent are get, buy, book, best, etc.
- Over 70% of mobile users directly from their Google ads
See more Google Ads stats:
Types of Ads You Should Run
We recommend you test out the following:
- Text ads
- Call-only text ads,
- Local service ads – LSAs
Try all of them and see which ones work the best for your business.
We’ll cover only text ads today because they have the longest learning curve.
Note that the content covered will also apply to call-only ads since they’re just a type of text ads.
LSAs are completely different than the other two. They are almost totally automated and don’t require the knowledge of keyword research, copywriting, and all other things we’ll get into.
Keyword Research
Keyword research is the first, and also a very important step. If you don’t conduct keyword research properly, you won’t know which searches to target.
Take a look at the example below.
What you see above is Google Keyword Planner. It’s a free keyword search tool that helps you get keyword ideas and their data.
What kind of data?
You’ll be able to see:
- Monthly search volume – the average number of monthly searches
- CPC – average cost per click, how much do advertisers pay for each click they get from these keywords on average
As you can see for mold remediation Dallas, CPC is $73. Crazy, right?
But in big cities like Dallas, you will need to spend a lot more because there’s a lot more competition.
- Competition levels
- And others
In case you don’t know where to start, leverage your already existing website.
If you have a website that already targets local keywords, you can just add that site to the Keyword Planner Tool, after which you will receive a bunch of keyword ideas that this tool has generated from your website.
Cool way to save a lot of time, especially if you provide a lot of services and target multiple areas.
One tool that could also help you out is Keywords Everywhere. It’s cheap but really good, for $10 you can see the search data behind 100,000 keywords. Try it.
Keyword Match Types
Keyword match types help you with targeting.
What does this mean exactly?
They help you either expand or narrow down the reach of each keyword you add to your campaigns.
There are four match types. To trigger each match type, you have to add certain modifiers. We have used your keyword as an example keyword, displaying which modifiers you should add to it to trigger each match type.
- Exact match – [your keyword]
Your ads will only show when the user types EXACTLY the same query as the keyword you have added in the square brackets.
- Phrase match – “your keyword”
Your ads will show up for exact and similar searches to a keyword.
Let’s say you want to target people who are searching for water damage restoration Indianapolis.
If somebody types in water damage restoration Indianapolis cost, you’d show up with phrase match but you wouldn’t show up with an exact match.
- Broad match modifier – +your +keyword
- Broad match – your keyword
These two will target all searches even slightly related to your keyword.
How to fix water damage in Indianapolis – this is the search that would probably trigger your ads targeting broad match keywords (sticking to the previous example).
The difference between the two is that a broad match modifier will have a slightly narrower reach and be a little bit more targeted while a pure broad match type will go nuts.
One thing to note here is that the broad match modifier will be removed in July of 2021.
What will happen is that phrase match and broad match modifier will be merged into just phrase match.
Phrase match keywords will have a slightly bigger reach after this update. They will not be as targeted.
Understanding Google's Goals
Before you run any ads, you need to understand Google’s goals.
Google’s main goal is user experience. Part of a good user experience is finding results relevant to what you were searching for on Google.
This is why you want to help Google achieve its goal of relevancy and present relevant ads to users searching for different things. In return, Google is going to reward you with better results – more water damage leads for less money.
If you create ads that aren’t of high quality, you’ll pay a lot more and spend your money faster without producing significant results.
Don’t run ads just for the sake of it. Put in work and show the best ads to Google’s users.
Prepare to Spend Money...
Restoration services are expensive. This is why you may see incredibly high CPCs in your account. If you have a lot of competitors, you may end up spending $100-$200 per click or even more. Don’t expect cheap clicks.
Also, don’t expect a fountain of leads on your very first day. You may get some leads instantly but it takes a lot of testing before you find your sweetspot. Once you find your sweetspot, double down on it.
Don’t be afraid of spending money. With paid advertising, you can get almost immediate feedback on what works and what doesn’t. This will help you make quick optimizations and get better results over time.
Enough with the preps now. It’s time to get into the geeky stuff and cover how to achieve the best results with ads.
Like what you see? Book a free 30-minute consultation call!
Quality Score
First, we need to cover the Quality Score – QS. What is this?
QS is Google’s rating of your ad. It can be in the range of 1-10. And why does QS even exist?
Google ads are an auction. You’re trying to outbid each competitor to rank higher and get more clicks. However, the highest bid doesn’t win every single time.
Google decides which ads they will rank by multiplying your QS with the bid. And whoever gets the highest score of this calculation is going to rank the highest.
This means that even if you bid the same or even less than your competitors, but your QS is higher, you can get more clicks.
How to improve your QS?
- Be relevant – target relevant keywords
- Improve CTR – write good ad copy and use extensions.
The goal here is to increase your ad relevancy and CTR. If your ad is relevant then your CTR will also be higher. You’re taking care of two tasks in one ago.
- Have a great landing page
Don’t send people to your homepage. Instead, send people to the page specifically about the service you’re promoting.
If you’re promoting water damage restoration, send people to your water damage restoration page.
Same goes for mold removal.
Bidding
There are two ways you can bid. You can either do it manually or let Google do it for you. When starting out, it’s recommended that you use manual bidding. This allows you to have full control over your spending.
Once you get some data, you may want to test a few automated bid strategies.
It’s recommended to test new bidding strategies every couple of weeks.
Here are automated bid strategies:
- Target CPA
- Target ROAS
- Maximize clicks
- Maximize conversions
- Maximize conversion value
- Target impression share
When using manual bidding, Keyword Planner will be really helpful because of the average CPC data it presents for each keyword.
Let’s go over some automated strategies.
Maximize clicks – Google will automatically set the price per click and try to maximize the number of clicks you can get out of your daily budget.
Maximize conversions – Similar thing but it will aim after the max conversions instead of clicks.
Maximize conversion value – Aiming to maximize the total conversion value of a campaign.
Target CPA – You’ll set a target cost per conversion and Google will optimize your ads to achieve that goal.
Target ROAS – You’ll set a ROAS you’d like to achieve and Google will do the rest.
Target impression share – Aiming for max visibility. This one is useful when your goal is visibility only.
One thing you should know is that for automated bid strategies like target CPA or target ROAS, you need to have some data in your account for Google to optimize for conversions. Around 30-50 conversions are usually recommended to have in the past 30 days.
The last thing I’d like to point out is target CPA and target ROAS are going to be disabled as bidding options very, very soon (from the time of writing this post).
They will be merged under max conversions and max conversion value respectively. You will be able to set the target CPA when choosing max conversion bidding. The same goes for target ROAS and max conversion value.
How much should I build?
You should bid enough to get the most out of your daily budget. To calculate your daily budget, divide your monthly marketing budget you plan to spend on Google Ads by 30.4.
Leverage past data from your website and try to calculate the conversion rate from your already existing traffic.
For example, let’s say that 1 out of 5 people who call you order your service. Also, let’s add that 1 out of every 10 website visitors calls you on the phone. This means that 1 out of every 50 visitors of your website become your customers.
To get that one customer per day, with a $10 CPC, you’d need to spend:
$10*50=$500 per day
Ad Extensions
To increase your QS and overall results, you should use ad extensions.
Ad extensions help your ad grab more attention by providing more information about your business.
They will also rank higher in the paid search results.
Extensions you can add:
- Location
- Phone number
- Site links – pages on your website relevant to your ad
- Callouts, – bullet points
- Lead forms
These are some you can consider adding and seeing how they work for you.
You should always use ad extensions to prove your ad CTR and therefore increase your QS.
Ad Extensions
Every ad is made up of 3 headlines. Other ad components are the description, link to which you’re sending traffic, and extensions. But headlines are critical.
Headline 1 is the most important part of your ad. It’s what users see first. And if it’s not attention-grabbing, 8 out of 10 people won’t read the rest of your ad.
It’s a good idea to put your keyword inside headline 1 because then the user would see exactly what he/she has typed in Google, making your ad incredibly relevant and therefore worth clicking on.
Add some kind of a bullet point to headlines 2 and 3 – fast service, 24/7 support, free quote, etc.
Note that on mobile devices, headlines usually can’t fit the screen and therefore, will not be presented.
In the description, you can add up to 180 of text, split into two parts of 90 – descriptions 1 and 2.
It’s a good practice to add your keywords to the description as well.
Don’t stuff keywords! This will cause more harm than good.
Our main point is that your ad doesn’t have to have a crazy copy.
Just add information relevant to what the user is typing in. If somebody is typing water damage restoration, add a water damage restoration keyword to your ad. Or add something highly relevant to that keyword.
Take a look at the ad examples above and see how they’re structured.
Their ads are highly relevant and have good sales propositions – 24/7 emergency service, certified professionals, etc.
Tracking Your Performance
Check your ads account regularly. Once everything is set up, it doesn’t take a lot of time to manage everything inside your account.
Google will often make optimization suggestions like increasing your daily budget and changing your bid strategy. These might or might not help you. Know that Google’s main goal is to make money and therefore, you will often see recommendations that benefit them more than you.
However, they want you to succeed as well because their money comes from you. The more money you make, the more money they make. Many suggestions like improving your landing page or ad copy should be implemented.
That’s it! Hope this post was valuable to you. If you need more help, click the button below and schedule a consultation call. See ya!
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