How to Get More Sales Leads on Less Budget with Google AdWords
There are two questions that we typically get from our marketing and branding clients here at Studio Brand Collective when we recommend that they begin a Google AdWords campaign. The first is, “What’s that?” The second is, “How much does it cost?”
The first question is easy to answer. Google AdWords is the most far-reaching, widely used pay-per-click advertising service on the Net. That’s due almost entirely to the fact that the Google search engine is popular enough to generate and almost constant stream of users searching for the products or services that you offer. Particularly if you aren’t ranking particularly highly in the organic search results just yet, the multiple ad formats that Google offers is a reliable way to corral those searching eyeballs into traffic to your website.
The second question is a little more tricky. No matter how little or how much you care (or can afford) to spend, Google AdWords will gladly take your money. You can spend as little as a couple of bucks a month on AdWords, but you won’t see so much as a blip of results from it. In fact, results can be rather expensive to achieve using Google AdWords, depending on your industry. To be perfectly honest, it’s the most expensive PPC advertising platform out there.
Given those facts, is a steady stream of leads generated by Google AdWords out of reach for most small businesses? Absolutely not. Studio Brand Collective works with clients every day to maximize their campaigns and results using Google AdWords budgets of many, varying amounts. You don’t have to spend $30,000 annually to get your ads clicked. But if you’re on a budget, you have to play it a little smarter.
Typically, SBC never advises our clients to spend less than $1,000 per month on their Google AdWords campaigns. That’s because anything less usually returns less-than-impressive results. If you think your small business can only afford a couple hundred bucks per month on AdWords, it’s likely your business would be better off spending that money on other digital marketing campaigns, instead.
One of the complicating factors is that you simply can’t dip your toes into PPC advertising using AdWords. Trying to be frugal will just lead you to waste money in smaller amounts, which will add up quickly for a small business. The truth is that, no matter how good your product is or how expertly we create the ads, there is an adjustment period of at least a month in any AdWords account or campaign. That’s because you have to spend money to deliver ads to people just for the privilege of learning which ads they’ll click on and which they’ll ignore. Essentially, you first $1,000 of your AdWords budget will be going toward testing and optimizing, and there’s no telling exactly how long it will take to optimize your campaign for the results you’re looking for.
Now, don’t let that scare you off completely! If you know you can’t afford $12,000 and up per year, however—especially if your business is new—it’s time to use a different strategy. If your budget says you can only spend $500 a month for the first year, that adds up to an annual spend of $6,000. You’ll almost certainly get better results if you spend $2,000 a month for three months during your peak season rather than trying to spread it out over the entire year, because every ad must compete on relevance and spend to get seen. Spending more money quicker also allows the PPC manager to get more data faster to make adjustments sooner. If the three-month campaign works, great! Keep it going. If you can’t find a profitable foothold on the channel after three months, you can quit AdWords and move your attempts elsewhere.
So, how do you set up a Google AdWords campaign that will actually work? We strongly recommend hiring the pros! Studio Brand Collective helps clients across Houston, Texas, and beyond use PPC advertising of all kinds to convert search traffic into customers. Contact us today for a free consultation, and we’ll make a recommendation for you based on your budget.
