Whether you are a small business owner or an agency that works with small and medium-sized businesses, you have probably encountered problems with low advertising budgets.
Small and medium-sized companies are generally dispersed and, especially due to business changes due to COVID, their advertising budgets as well.
However, low budgets do not have to mean small returns for small and medium-sized companies or their partner agencies.
What are Google Ads? How it works?
If you’re a small and medium-sized business owner, you’re getting started, here’s how it works: Google Ads offers paid advertising options for companies of all sizes to promote their products and services on Google platforms such as Search, YouTube, Shopping, and a lot more.
Ads appear at the top of search results, in local map packages, before and during YouTube videos, or on Internet sites that opt for Google AdSense.
Google Ads, commonly known as pay-per-click (PPC), works on an auction system. Individual companies bid to have their ads appear in these ad slots for a greater chance of visibility with their audiences.
At a fundamental level, Google analyzes your bid amount, multiplies it by the Quality Score (a numerical estimate of the quality of your ads and their associated landing pages), and ranks the top ads on your advertising points. If your ad is shown, you pay only when it is clicked (so pay per click).
How do small businesses use Google Ads?
The ad bidding process may seem intimidating or complicated for small businesses that invest in paid online advertising for the first time, but Google estimates that companies make $ 8 for every $ 1 spent on Google Ads. This can be a big gain for small businesses and local businesses.
PPC allows companies to target their audience based on their specific demographics and locations – a great deal for franchises and physical businesses.
Small and medium-sized businesses can appear on maps, above search results, on affiliate sites that opt for Google image ads, and even on pre-roll ads on YouTube.
In her virtual SMX session, “Small budget tactics that make a serious impact,” Amalia Fowler, director of marketing services at Snaptech Marketing, emphasized how paid advertising can take a small business to the next level.
The critical element for low-budget Google Ads accounts, however, is ensuring the integrity of your account structure and structure. An improper setup can ruin a business as quickly as a wasteful campaign.
How much should a small business use on Google ads?
How much your small business should spend on online advertising depends on several factors, such as your industry, your total advertising budget, and the competition in your space.
When determining your advertising budget for small and medium businesses, it is critical to note how many leads become customers and how much each new customer is worth to your company. If a new customer pays $ 500 for your product or service, how much are you willing to pay to get it as a lead?
Fowler quickly pointed out that leads are not always the same as customers or clients. Therefore, knowing your conversion rate is also critical to determining how much your business should spend.
Choosing an insufficient budget means that you will run out of money quickly and see minimal results. However, there is also the potential for wasted advertising spend when you throw money at paid advertising without a strategy.
Is it worth using Google Ads for local businesses?
As with most PPC issues, it depends. “With very little budget accounts, you typically only have the ability to catch market or create demand – not both,” said Fowler. Prioritizing your small business’s goals, budget, and ability to answer new questions can tell you whether it’s worth investing in paid advertising.
For example, if your gardening franchise can only serve 100 customers a week, an ad campaign that generates 200 queries can be overwhelming (and can hurt your business if you cannot respond positively to all leads in a timely manner).
Small businesses also need to understand the advertising process. When campaigns don’t get instant results, small and medium-sized businesses cannot count on increasing their advertising spend as a band-aid measure as larger accounts do.
Instead, you should use patience and sometimes even reduce other campaigns to focus on those that work well.
What is a low budget Google Ads account?
Certain sectors have higher budgets by nature, such as legal, financial, and other competitive local businesses, so “low budget” differs by category. Fowler ranks small business spending on Google Ads for accounts with budgets below $ 5,000 a month. Some also spend less than $ 1,000 a month and can yet see a positive impact.
Low-budget accounts should focus on some effective campaigns, rather than spreading money across many campaigns. Fowler suggests looking at which campaigns get the ablest leads per month (the leads that turn into customers) and invest your spending on it.
On this slide, we can see that it may be worth adjusting our budget to invest in the campaigns that generate the most leads, depending on our business objectives and capacity for new inquiries.
How long does it take to see results on Google Ads for small businesses?
Patience is key when it gets to seeing results for little businesses. How quickly you see results may depend on your budget and advertising strategy, but partnering with an experienced small business advertising specialist can help.
If you don’t see immediate results, the answer may not be to mess with the account right away. It can damage your visibility and waste money. Many small businesses panic when they see the numbers of clicks and impressions rising and conversion numbers (calls, form fills, and sales) stabilize.
Seeing real results that increase revenue can take some time, especially with a smaller budget. Here are some of Fowler’s best tips in his SMX virtual tour:
Low budget ad tactics for small and medium businesses
Avoid major terms and modified broad match / broad match. Fowler recommends that small and medium businesses with lower budgets focus on medium and long-tail keywords and add locations whenever possible. This helps you find qualified leads by searching in your specific area, who may be further down the funnel and ready to buy.
Focus on quality scores. If the Google auction system has two essential elements (how much you can afford and the Quality Score of your ads) and you are at the limit of your budget, the next area of focus should be the QS
Adjusted by the audience. “If you find an audience that is taking off like gangbusters, create campaigns around that audience,” recommended Fowler.
Strategies include using competitor data and top-performing keywords to target your landing pages. She also recommends focusing on how-to searches that have no intention of buying directly and using her FAQ pages as landing pages.
Delete what is not working well. If you’ve given yourself time and are seeing that certain campaigns or elements are NOT bringing in as many leads or customers as others, cancel them.
Fowler recommends evaluating underperforming geographies, demographics, keywords, and landing pages and investing that money in campaigns that are getting the best results.
React quickly to Google changes. As Google tweaks and experiments, low budget small business accounts must adapt quickly. When your budget is below $ 5,000 a month, any wasted spend can be a big blow to your leads.
Fowler mentions that his team realized that the ad text was being truncated, so they adjusted their descriptions and changed the calls to action to make sure they weren’t lost.
Having a small budget does not mean that you need to settle for small results with online advertising.
