But which one is better? 

Facebook ads or Google Ads (formerly Google Adwords)?

Which one is more effective?

And which one should you use? Or should use both? 

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Every advertising situation is unique. And to answer these questions correctly depends on many variables, such as: 

I will outline the differences between both platforms, which one is better suited than the other by going through several scenarios and examples. Use these scenarios to apply to your current situation. 

So my goal with this post is to help you understand both platforms' strengths and weaknesses and give you additional ideas for targeting potential customers and to make better decisions for your own campaigns.

Ready?  Here we go…

A note before we get going - when we reference Facebook Ads, we’re talking about both Facebook and Instagram Ads. Facebook owns Instagram, and when you run ads on Facebook, they run on both platforms. 

Using Facebook for Your Target Audience

Scenario:
Imagine you run a boutique clothing store that specializes in trendy, eco-friendly fashion for young adults. Your primary target audience includes environmentally conscious individuals aged 18-35 who value style and sustainability. 

Why Facebook Ads?

Using Google Ads for Your Target Audience:

Scenario:
Suppose you own a plumbing service that provides emergency leak detection and restoration in a specific city. Your target audience includes homeowners and landlords who need immediate plumbing services.

Why Google Ads:

Using Facebook Ads Based on Budget:

Scenario:
You run a small online jewelry store with a limited marketing budget. Your goal is to increase brand awareness and engagement without spending a large amount of money.

Why Facebook Ads:

Using Google Ads Based on Budget:

Scenario:
You own a local law firm specializing in criminal law. Your primary objective is to attract clients who are actively seeking legal advice or services in this niche. Keep in mind, Google offers two core ad solutions: Google Ads and Local Service Ads (LSA). The former is pay-per-click (PPC), and the latter is pay-per-lead. Google only offers LSA in a small niche of industries (e.g. plumbers, lawyers, electricians, appliance repair, etc). (read our related case study comparing cost per lead for attorneys with Google ads vs Local Service Ads (LSA)).

Why Google Ads:

In both scenarios, the choice of platform is influenced by the nature of the product or service offered, the target audience, and the specific goals of the advertising campaign, all while considering the allocated budget and desired cost-efficiency.

Using Facebook Ads for Specific Objectives:

Scenario:
You are launching a new line of fitness apparel and want to create brand awareness and engage with a community interested in fitness and wellness.

Why Facebook Ads:

Using Google Ads for Specific Objectives:

Scenario:
You run a software company offering project management tools and your objective is to generate leads and conversions from businesses looking for such solutions.

Why Google Ads:

In both examples, the choice of the advertising platform aligns with the specific objectives of the campaign: Facebook for creating brand awareness and community engagement, and Google for targeting high-intent users for lead generation and direct conversions.

Using Facebook Ads for Specific Ad Formats:

Scenario:
You own a travel luxury travel company that specializes in tailor-made itineraries and wants to showcase the beauty and excitement of your trips through engaging visual content.

Why Facebook Ads:

Using Google Ads for Specific Ad Formats:

Scenario:
You run an online electronics store and aim to drive sales through ads that directly link to your product pages with clear pricing and product information.

Why Google Ads:

In both scenarios, the choice of the platform is aligned with the type of ad format that best showcases the product or service. Facebook is chosen for its strength in visual and interactive content, ideal for creating a desire for experiential products like travel. In contrast, Google is preferred for its direct, information-rich ad formats that are effective in driving sales for product-based businesses.

Understanding user intent is vital in choosing the right advertising platform. Facebook and
Google caters to different types of user intents, and here are examples to illustrate when to use each platform:

Using Facebook Ads for Specific User Intent:

Scenario:
You run a lifestyle brand that sells eco-friendly home decor. Your target audience isn't necessarily actively searching for your products, but would likely be interested once they see them.

Why Facebook Ads:

Using Google Ads for Specific User Intent:

Scenario: You own a personal injury law firm. Potential clients in need of your service are likely to actively search for attorneys only when they are in an accident.

Why Google Ads:

In these examples, Facebook Ads are chosen for their strength in reaching users based on interests and behaviors, suitable for products or services that benefit from discovery and visual storytelling. Conversely, Google Ads are preferred for targeting users with immediate, specific needs, making it ideal for services requiring urgent solutions.

Understanding the competitive landscape is crucial when choosing between Facebook and Google ads. Each platform has its own dynamics in terms of competition, and here are examples to illustrate when one might be more suitable than the other based on competitive focus:

Using Facebook Ads with a Focus on Competition:

Scenario:
You own a boutique fitness studio that's entering a market with several established gyms and fitness centers.

Why Facebook Ads:

Using Google Ads with a Focus on Competition:

Scenario:
You run a local home appliance repair service. The market has several well-established competitors who have been serving the community for years.

Why Google Ads:

In both scenarios, the choice of the platform is influenced by how best to position and differentiate your business in a competitive landscape. Facebook is chosen for its strengths in building brand identity and engaging with competitor audiences through creative content, while Google Ads are preferred for targeting users actively searching for services, including those of competitors, and capturing immediate demand.

In conclusion, the choice between Facebook and Google ads depends on your specific business needs, target audience, and advertising objectives. 

In general, use Facebook ads when your goal is to build brand awareness, engage with a specific demographic based on interests and lifestyle, and create a community around your brand through rich, visual content. Facebook is ideal for products and services that benefit from discovery and storytelling. 

On the other hand, choose Google Ads for targeting high-intent users who are actively searching for specific products or services. Google Ads excel in direct response marketing, lead generation, and reaching customers with immediate needs, particularly effective for businesses offering solutions to urgent problems. 

However, for a comprehensive marketing strategy, consider using both platforms. 

Combining Facebook's strength in creating brand awareness and community engagement with Google's ability to capture active searches and immediate needs can provide a well-rounded approach, maximizing reach and effectiveness in your digital marketing efforts.

You see if you can tell Google and Meta (i.e. Facebook, Instagram) specifically which people are converting on your site, each of those platforms then know precisely who to look for and will find more of just those people, avoiding the looky-loos and, thus, saving your ad spend and increasing your profit. 

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Each ad platform knows where customers are going each day, what stores they shop at, what they buy, what websites they visit and what they do on those sites, how long they engage, and other signals. The ad platforms also know who will likely complete our desired conversion actions if we tell them.

So, to leverage all that behavioral data and help Google and Facebook find the people that convert for us, we have to push back our ideal conversion actions from our website using Google Tag Manager (GTM) in combination with Google Analytics (GA4).

A good analogy for GTM is this:

GTM is like a fisherman's net. If it has holes, fish (customer conversions) slip through unnoticed, leaving you without crucial data. This means you won’t know how many fish you’ve caught, where the best locations were, or what kind of fish you were catching.

The consequence of not accurately recording conversions:

Ready to learn more?

Buckle up and read on because what I share below can be a game changer for your profitability and sales for ad campaigns on Google and Facebook.

Why Using Google Tag Manager (GTM) Is Essential

Without using GTM and GA4, you are limited in what you can track, and thus your campaigns will be limited. The majority of websites already have GA installed, but many of those same sites are not using GTM.

What is GTM?

It is a tool that Google created that allows website owners and marketers to manage and implement various types of tracking tags (e.g., GA4) on their websites without having to modify the website's code directly. 

Tags are snippets of code - in our case, GA4 - that collect data and send it to third-party tools or platforms, such as Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, Google Ads, and many others, to track user interactions and behaviors like clicks, gather analytics data, and implement various marketing functionalities.

What is Google Analytics (GA4)?

In comparison, Google Analytics, specifically GA4 which stands for Google Analytics 4, is like a super-smart helper for websites.

A lemonade stand as an analogy of GA4:

Imagine you have a lemonade stand and want to know how many people stop by what kind of lemonade they like the most, and what time they usually come to buy it. GA4 does something similar but for websites.

When someone visits a website that uses GA4, it keeps track of things like how many people visit the site, which pages they look at the most, and how they found the website (like if they clicked on a link in Google or on social media). This helps website owners understand what people like and don't like about their site, so they can make it more effective and more interesting for visitors.

GA4 is the latest version from Google, which means it has the latest features compared to the older versions. 

Why Is GTM, GA4 Essential to Campaign Success and Profit?

Using GTM with GA4 provides a more flexible and powerful way to gather data, allowing for more sophisticated tracking setups that are impossible just for GA4 alone, or just the Facebook pixel.

However, it's important to note that GTM is a tag management system that does not track user data itself; it enables the implementation of tracking tags (like those from GA4) to be more efficient, effective, and manageable.

Remember, the more meaningful conversion actions you can track, the more of those types of people your campaigns can find to produce more sales. 

And there are far more actionable actions you can track using GTM plus GA4, which means you can improve the leads and sales results of your ad campaigns. 

Plus, it's not uncommon that the desired conversion action often happens on a different website from your main site, and you can’t track and push those conversions back to your campaigns with just the pixel. 

For example, this happens with restaurants that use a different site for their online ordering, or with spas and salons that use a different site for online appointment reservations. 

Here’s an example of the Five Guys restaurant near me. The URL of the page is, https://restaurants.fiveguys.com/32195-temecula-parkway

But when you click the Order Now button, you are taken to a new website URL to order which is a subdomain of the main URL, https://order.fiveguys.com/location/five-guys-redhawk/menu/burgers

And it’s these 3rd party sites that process online orders where it’s common that you cannot track the actual sales conversions and push the data back to your campaigns. 

But if you’re using GTM with GA4, you can track the Order Now button clicks before they reach the subdomain and push those data back to your campaigns. Button clicks are about as close as you can get to a completed order before the visitor leaves your main site.

Benefits of using GTM to track conversion actions:

List of trackable conversion actions:

Examples of Website Conversion Tracking for Leads, Sales

Below are examples in different industries where we track various behaviors and push these data back to each respective platform with GTM and GA4.

Tracking Restaurant Online Orders

Below is a table showing the Google Ads campaign conversions for a fast-casual restaurant with 8 locations. 

Similar to the Five Guys example above, this restaurant uses a second platform that visitors click through to from its website to complete online orders. But that the second platform doesn’t allow us to track conversions all the way to the end.

But with GTM and GA4, we track the “Order Now” button clicks, which is almost the same as a completed order.  And it is these data, along with button clicks for driving directions, that we push back to the campaign to act on to find us more of these same people. 

So, from the table above, we can see we’re getting $1 - $4 per conversion from our Google Ads campaign for this restaurant (related post here on running successful Google Ads for restaurants and another helpful post on how to set up successful Facebook ads for a restaurant).

Tracking Leads for A Spa and Salon - Reserve Now, Phone Calls, Driving Directions

This next example is for a spa and salon landing page. Like the restaurant example above, the book online appointment function was on a separate site from the landing page. However, we could not push the data back to our Google Ads campaign from the online booking site. So, instead, we tracked the following conversions:

And with Google Tag Manager, we can differentiate each one of these different button clicks (i.e., conversion actions). 

Tracking Leads for a Restaurant’s Open Table Reservations, Driving Directions, and Phone Calls

Many higher-end restaurants use Open Table reservations and embed the “Reserve Now” Open Table widget on their website. 

Wouldn’t it be great to track those reservations outside of Open Table and feed the data back to your ad campaigns on Facebook and Google? Using Google Tag Manager and GA4, you can track this. 

And because this restaurant had a lively bar scene, we also tracked driving directions requests and website click-to-call. 

Tracking Lead Generation for Attorneys

Here’s an example of a personal injury attorney website where we’re tracking form submissions and sending that data back to the Google Ads campaign.

Below are the weekly conversion actions (form submissions) from a Google Ads campaign that is chasing conversions, not clicks. 

So whatever behavior you want to track and optimize for, you likely can.

And then, when you have enough conversion data pushed back in your Google Ad account (30 conversions in the last 30 days) or Facebook Ads, you can focus on producing more conversions and not just clicks, impressions, or brand awareness. 

Each platform has campaign objectives that focus on conversions.

Setting Up The Digital Plumbing - Google Tag Manager (GTM)

Ideally, your digital plumbing is set in place before any campaigns are turned on. This all starts with adding the Google Tag Manager code to your website and configuring GA4 in GTM. 

Below is a general outline of how the process works step-by-step. I do not go into all the details since your situation is unique, so refer to the Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics links below for more details. 

Heer's how to verify the code is installed and working. 

After you click the “Preview” button, GTM will open a new tab with your website loaded on it with a popup that shows if GTM is now connected.

For our conversion trackin, we will use Google Analytics (i.e. GA4) as the tag. Here are specific instructions from Google on how to set up Google Analytics with Google Tag Manager.

So, at this point, we have GTM installed and verified, and Google Analytics installed and verified and working with GTM. The fun part is next - configuring our specific conversion events. 

To set up Triggers. 

Triggers are Events that happen on your website through the Google Analytics Tag. For example, conversion events such as button clicks, form submissions, video views, specific page views, etc). Here is more information on how to set up Triggers that you want to track.

From within GTM, click on Tags, then New.

Now you will see a screen like this - click on Tag Configuration:

And here’s where we choose Google Analytics as the Tag which we configured in an earlier step: 

Once you have designated Google Analytics (GA4) as the Tag, now we can set up our desired triggers (i.e., conversion actions).

Once you click on Choose Trigger Type, you will see all the options for tracking behaviors that are associated with our GA4 tag. The below screenshot only shows a handful of these trigger types. 

I highlighted with red arrows a few that stand out - Form Submissions, YouTube Video, Just Links (the above screenshot is only a partial list).

So let's say you want to track Form Submissions of a newsletter signup, the Form Submissions trigger type option is where you can set that up as a conversion action. 

Or perhaps you have embedded YouTube videos on your page, you can use the YouTube Video trigger type to identify site visitors who are watching your embedded YouTube videos as conversions. 

Or perhaps you have links to your “order now” pages that go to a separate website, you would use the Click - Just Links to configure those specific link clicks as conversions. 

Or maybe you have a chat widget on your site and want to track people who click on the “chat now” button - that’s a link click that you can track too. 

Summary

In conclusion, the key to unlocking maximum profit potential in your Google and Facebook campaigns lies in the strategic use of Google Tag Manager (GTM) and Google Analytics (GA4).

By meticulously tracking the right conversion actions and feeding this data back into your ad campaigns, you can significantly enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of your advertising efforts.

GTM and GA4 not only offer you the tools to capture crucial data but also the flexibility to tailor your tracking to the specific needs of your business. Whether it's tracking button clicks, form submissions, or more complex interactions, these tools ensure that every aspect of your customer's journey contributes to a more informed and profitable advertising strategy.

So, implement these powerful tools, track the conversions that matter, and watch as your campaigns transform into high-performing, profit-generating machines. Embrace the change, and the results will surely follow.

Let's Look at The Facts First

We use a case study that provides insights to help us understand answers to these questions.

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Background of the site we used for the case study:

This is a Shopify site for direct-to-consumer (DTC) health products. The company had relied on Google Ads for much of its sales.

Then, about nine months prior to this post, the company started investing in a targeted long-term SEO effort with us to accelerate sales. Google Ads continued to run. 

The chart below demonstrates the exponential and steady increases in clicks coming from organic searches in Google over that 9-month period. (a related post here on content marketing and SEO)

The line chart below shows sales from organic searches are trending upward from improving SEO.

Google Ads were stopped at the end of June, as shown in the prior trending clicks report from Google Search Console (GSC), which allowed us to see then what, if any, impact stopping Google Ads had on organic search cannibalization. (a related post here about using Google Search Console for SEO).

Month-Over-Month Organic SEO Comparison

The graph below shows organic search metrics in GSC comparing July (when Google Ads were stopped and not running) with June (when Google Ads were still running).

Branded Keyword Cannibalization Data

Below are organic branded search term data tables when Google Ads were on and off.  

Organic Branded Search Terms While Google Ads Were On

We can see 203 clicks, 1489 impressions, and CTR for each branded term.

Organic Branded Search Terms While Google Ads Were OFF

We can see 701 clicks, 1591 impressions, and CTR for each branded term.

So, what happened with branded search cannibalization?

It's clear Google Ads was cannibalizing the Google organic branded search significantly as the key performance indicators (KPIs) of clicks and CTR all improved significantly when Google Ads were turned off.

Here are the differences for branded organic queries comparing the two months:

Considering that branded impressions in organic search remained flat - more people were not searching for the company - and that organic branded clicks and CTR then skyrocketed, we can conclude that Google Ads cannibalized organic brand searches. 

The question now is...

Did Google Ads Cannibalize Non-Branded Organic Search Terms?

Because organic search continued to grow significantly for nine months, it’s somewhat harder to determine the impact of cannibalization on non-branded search terms, but wedraw conclusions below.

Stay with me here...

The total of non-branded organic search terms the site showed for in Google remained the same during Google Ads and after Google Ads were stopped. In other words, there were no more or less keywords.

However, the non-branded clicks went up a staggering 50% while impressions remained flat, which means CTR went up along with the average organic position. 

But how did sales compare for organic month-over-month?

Sales for Organic Search doubled when Google Ads stopped in July.

But we know from the earlier table of non-branded search metrics that click traffic only went up 50%, but sales doubled.  

We can reasonably assume that Google Ads also cannibalized organic traffic and sales.

Below is a table showing more detail on purchases from 3 organic keyword phrases pre- and post-Google Ads with rolled-up numbers at the top for ALL organic terms. We do not want to show the keyword phrases to keep the client and industry anonymous. 

Summary and Takeaways

It's clear that searchers will click on Google Ads for branded terms and non-branded search terms when there is overlap.

But, don't abandon your Google Ads ship just yet!

Remember, every decision must be weighed against factors like cost, sales, control, promotions, competitiveness, budget, and user intent.

If you're already reigning supreme organically, perhaps there's little to gain from overlapping keywords in Google Ads.

Instead, let your paid ads champion the cause of terms that remain elusive in organic rankings.

The beauty of Google Ads lies in its control – over traffic, copy, and landing pages, perfect for those time-sensitive promotions.

And when the competition gets hot, Google Ads can be your knight in shining armor, securing top positions.

And if you're operating on a shoestring budget, make Google Ads work for you by focusing on high-converting keywords that perhaps you don't rank for organically.

Leave a comment or question below - was this helpful? What are your thoughts? 

Want A More Effective Digital Presence?

Why Is This Important?

Because it allows to focus your ad spend on tactics that are working, and stop investing in advertising that is losing you money.

Each platform has its unique features and benefits. Some platforms are better suited to certain business types than others. 

And for many small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), advertising is a knee-jerk reaction, not something well planned out, and much of it is wasteful and ineffective for a number of different reasons. 

But here's how to answer that question for your business. 

How Do We Define "Worth It?"

First, I define a successful ad campaign as one that generates more cash for a business than it consumes.

If you run an ad in the paper that costs $500 but only 1 new person called you, and they only spent $200 on your products or services, that's ineffective advertising that consumed more cash than it generated for your business -- that serves nobody well (other than the advertising company you paid)!

In accounting, cash is king. And it should be for your business, too.

Cash is the lifeblood of any business, and running advertising campaigns that are cash flow drains will put you in the poor house!

Some might argue that even if it wasn't successful financially, you still created brand awareness, and you can't really measure the value of that too well.

There are times when you do want to create awareness and that's the main goal, but the majority of SMBs need the phone to ring, they need cash register to ring and cash to flow now, not brand awareness. 

The goal of Advertising is to Support Sales

Advertising should contribute positively to the financial results of a business.

It's important to hold your advertising accountable and make it pay for itself. You wouldn't keep an employee around that wasn't contributing, so don't keep advertising around that isn't contributing either.

So, to answer the question, is advertising worth it, we start the accountability process by building a simple profit blueprint to help us better understand how advertising affects our business.

The goal of this post is to provide a simple Profit Strategy Blueprint which you can use to measure the financial success of any ad campaign and decide for yourself if the advertising you're doing is worth it. You can build this model using Excel or Google Sheets.

Although the majority of my work these days is in Internet marketing, the examples I present below are with a Google Ads campaign, and then two direct mail campaigns.

However, you can use this model for any advertising you do to understand whether it's positively contributing to the financial success of your business.

Whether that is Internet advertising through Google Ads, or Yelp advertising, or any advertising where your goal is to drive sales. (Read our related post on the benefits of digital marketing vs traditional marketing and SEO for Traditional Marketing Agencies)

Build a Profit Strategy Blueprint

First, to build a profit strategy and to answer the question if advertising is worth it for your business, you need to be able to track the leads and/or sales from your campaigns. You can do this in various ways: through unique call tracking numbers, Google Analytics, overall sales measured at the P&L level, coupon redeeming, and more.

Digital Marketing Example - Google Ads:

Let's look at a Google Ads campaign for Spa that sells massage therapy. The goal of this campaign is to book new prospects for a 1-hour massage. 

The actual business type is not necessarily important, what is important is the process of measuring the effectiveness and the ability of the campaign to generate cash flow for the business.

For illustrative purposes, let's say you have allocated $1,500 per month in Google Ads spend. (read our post on, how much should you spend on Google Ads?). 

Through our unique call tracking number (unique call tracking numbers on the website, plus click-to-call metrics from the Google Ads campaign), we know how many people called the business or converted directly on the website.

So, let's see how this breaks down.

We have total ad spend in Google, we know the cost-per-lead (CPL), we know how many booked their appointments, and finally we know our average order per customer. 

In the table above, we assumed 10% of leads didn't show for the intro offer for a massage. So that leaves 135 that did. Let's look at that advertising math. 

A $1,500 investment in Google Ads produced $9,449 in sales of prospects receiving a 1-hour massage. 

But that's not all of it. Let's keep going. 

We need to focus on the net cash from fulfilling the sales and take into account the labor costs to produce those sales. 

For a licensed massage therapist, we assume that 50% of sales is labor for simplicity's sake. 

And then, we need to make marketing pay for itself, so we add in the $1,500 expense from Google.

Now we get this...

We've paid our employees, paid our advertising bill to Google, and we're left with over $3,000 in cash flow from this campaign. Not bad. So in this case, yes, advertising is worth it. 

And these campaign results are realistic and spot on. We have run these types of cash-flow profitable campaigns with Google Ads for years.  

Key Takeaways:

• Google Ads and SEO campaigns in Google typically produce the lowest cost per lead out of any advertising you will ever do
• The data is very transparent in Google. Clicks, impressions, and, most importantly, we have clear data on conversions and sales. 
• Your marketing budget will go further than with anything in traditional marketing

Traditional Marketing Example - Direct Mail Postcard:

So, let's compare a postcard campaign where each postcard costs $0.35 each and a more expensive direct mail piece that costs $1 each. The goal again is to answer the question, is advertising worth it?

Here's the total campaign cost: 

So, you can see the postcards is much less expensive, but the hope is that the more expensive direct mail pieces will produce better results.

Postcards are relatively inexpensive at a per-unit cost. The question you should ask is, will either produce positive cash to the business?

And will the more expensive direct mail piece garner that much more of a response to make the extra cost worthwhile?

For example, the more expensive direct mail piece could be variable data direct marketing letters printed on more expensive paper. 

In the direct response marketing world, personal letters from variable data generally have better response rates.

Stay with me here. Let's continue the analysis.

A response rate between 1% - 3% is reasonable, but this will obviously vary depending on the components of the piece, i.e. your offer, the CTA (call to action), a sense of urgency, effective headlines, your mail list, etc.

In our example, the Expensive Direct Mail Piece has produced twice as many leads or phone calls versus the postcard.

So next, let's calculate the sales of each advertising campaign.

If our average order size is $50 then we've achieved double the sales with the more expensive direct mail piece.

The question is, is adverting worth it? 

Let's drill down further and calculate our net sales, where we make the campaign pay for itself.

So, we can see right away in this particular case the net sales of the postcard were better, $750 versus $0.

But...

• Was it still worth it to run the postcard campaign with net sales of $750? 
• How did this affect the financials of our business?

To answer that question, we need to consider what it cost to produce those sales as we did above with the Google Ads campaign.

Let's assume labor is 50% of sales.

So back to our example, the numbers look are now negative cash flow.

In the postcard example, our total revenue was $2,500 and if COGS was 50% our gross profit would be $1,250.

So, our net sales are $750 after we paid for the campaign, but then subtracting the cost of sales (in the postcard example, 50%*$2,500) we are actually negative $500 ($750 - $1,250).

It's even worse with the Expensive Direct Mail Piece, which has put us in the hole a negative $2,500!

These data are important. 

If you stopped the analysis at the fourth chart which was calculating just your net sales you would have incorrectly concluded yes, the postcard campaign is worth it?

You may have assumed, the campaign paid for itself and generated positive cash flow, but the cost of sales expense makes this not such an attractive campaign.

Build a model like this for yourself.

Play around with the numbers to understand what milestones you must hit to make an advertising campaign successful.

So, is advertising worth it? 

In our example, yes, for the Google Ads campaign, and but not for the direct mail postcard advertising. We want advertising that produces positive cash flow.

The key is to understand which advertising campaigns are positively adding to the financial success of your company and making the campaigns accountable.

Questions? Have you tried this or something similar before?

If you want professional marketing help to grow sales and profit for your business, contact us now. We'd love to hear from you! 

Next Steps:

This might be interesting for branding, but this is a horrible landing page for reasons we’ll discuss below. This page has very poor alignment with the ad for hair services and what the landing page offers. 

Remember this with advertising, friends: the first goal is always to sell and maximize profit, not to brand. The Internet is a direct response advertising medium. People are goal-oriented on the web and seek to accomplish a goal, not leisurely browse. 

Prefer to watch a video? Click Below.

Now, let us venture further into the realm of landing pages that align with Google search ads - this is where true conversion magic awaits. These powerful strategies hold the key to unlocking unparalleled conversion rates, trumping the mere redirection of users to a homepage. 

For landing pages, we must create a seamless user experience, crafting pages that not only enthrall but also align perfectly with the ad that brought them there. Imagine a seamless transition that leaves your prospects in awe, eager to take the next step toward conversion. Where every hesitation to buy your product or service is removed by your landing page.

Why is landing page alignment essential for Google Ads campaigns?

Landing page alignment is important for Google Ads campaigns because it ensures that users who click on your ads are directed to a highly relevant and informative landing page that fulfills their search intent. This leads to a better user experience and increased likelihood of converting users into customers, which all leads to more sales, increased profit, and better margins.

Matching your landing page to your ads is crucial for maximizing conversions.

The Role of Landing Pages in Conversion Rate Optimization

Landing pages are designed to deliver a clear and concise message to the user, encouraging them to take a specific action. Landing pages are then closely aligned to the ads and keywords. 

By directing users to a targeted landing page, you can provide a relevant and focused experience tailored to the user's search and intent. This approach is more effective in driving conversions because it eliminates confusion and allows users to find the specific information they are looking for, leading to a higher likelihood of conversion. Remember, the internet is a direct response medium, and consumers are goal-oriented so help them achieve their goal!! (here's a related post: how to ensure your campaigns are delivering the most of conversions possible)

Home pages are typically poor landing pages. 

Home pages are general, not specific to one topic or keyword. When a prospect lands on your Home page, they have to click through menus and links to find what they are looking for, making them work harder to achieve their goal. 

Landing pages should reduce friction in the sales process, not create friction.

But how, you ask?

Relevance Between Ads and Landing Pages

When potential customers click on an ad, they expect a seamless transition from the ad's message to the landing page's content. Some refer to this alignment as “maintaining scent.” 

If your landing page meets some of the visitor’s expectations, you’re in the game. And the level of success now depends on how well your page aligns with the visitor’s expectations and how well your page sells.

Let’s review another example.  

Look at this ad for non-laser tattoo removal: 

The above Google Ad led users to this landing page:

So there’s a whole lot wrong with both the ad and the landing page. But lets focus on the landing page (The ad issues here are whole different blog post). 

Does this page have a good alignment with the ad? 

No!

The first thing that happens when a user lands on this page is a pop-up about Hydrafacial services. Was I looking for Hydrafacial? No!

This landing page is a jolt to the user. This page is not converting anywhere near as many site visitors as it could be, if it’s even converting any site visitors to leads or booked appointments. The conversion rate here is awful.

A lack of relevance between what the user sees in the ad and the landing page leads to confusion, disappointment, and, ultimately, a lost opportunity for a sale. 

Here’s another example.

This ad has an “Excellent” rating from Google. This means the ad has a high level of relevance and diversity (meaning many headline and description combinations that will appeal to a diverse audience). So far, so good. 

But hold on, take a look at these data

The two below keywords have extremely low-quality scores (QS) in this campaign. The quality score reflects the relevance of your Ads, keywords, and landing page to the intent of the search word or topic. Quality score is a on a 10-point scale with 1 the lowest, so this is Google's way of telling us that these keywords are not aligned well with the landing page. 

How quality score affects cost-per-click

Stay with me here….

The implication of low-quality scores are (any score below a 5)… 

All three of the above points will hurt your conversions leading to fewer sales, lower margins, and higher costs. 

Create A Seamless User Experience

Users who click on an ad expect a cohesive and relevant experience when they arrive at the landing page. Not like our example above for the non-laser tattoo removal that had an irrelevant pop-up for Hydrafacial.

Ensuring that the messaging, visuals, and offers from the ad are consistent with the landing page content helps to build trust with the user, encouraging them to take the desired action. A cohesive user experience also helps to reduce bounce rates, keeping users engaged and on the path to conversion.

Customer-First Copy and Personalized Content

By crafting landing page content that speaks directly to the user's unique needs, desires, and pain points, businesses can create a highly compelling and persuasive experience. 

Always remember any good strategy starts with the customer.

Personalized messaging and tailored content can take many forms, including product recommendations based on past behavior, dynamic content that changes based on user data, and targeted offers that speak to the user's specific interests. 

How To Create Customer-First Copy: Profile Your Ideal Customers

Start by writing down your ideal customer segments - you might have one, or you might have five or more. 

Let’s suppose you sell mortgage brokerage services (related post here on digital marketing for mortgage brokers/loan originators). Your VA customers are one set of customers, then you might have Millennial first-time home buyers as another. 

If you’re a med spa (related post here on digital marketing for med spas), you have women who seek age-related skin blemish services and men that seek laser tattoo removal services. 

If you’re a fast-casual restaurant (related posts on digital marketing for restaurants), perhaps you have the mother or father that’s too tired to cook for the family and wants a family pack to pick up during the week. And then perhaps you have a lunch-only business crowd.  

For each customer segment, ask the following questions (we refer to this as a persona worksheet):

Next, you distill what you learned in your persona worksheet to create a landing page that speaks directly to your customer segments, including your copy, images, offers, calls to action, and more.

We have a more in-depth persona worksheet that we have each of our customers walk through - this ensures we align our ads and landing pages to the customer’s needs and pain points.

What NOT To Do On A Landing Page: Textual Content

Avoid talking about yourself as much as possible. Always start with the customers' needs and wants first. For example, avoid adding content such as:

If those features didn’t come up in your persona worksheet as important to your customers, likely nobody cares. And they especially don’t care if that’s the first thing they see. If anything, put that type of content near the bottom of the page if you have to at all. 

Make sure you’re not just talking about yourself on your website. This is the equivalent of meeting someone for the first time and listening to them talk about how great they are - BORING. Customers want to know: What’s in it for them?

Designing Effective Landing Pages

Key elements for optimizing landing page design include:

Visual and Textual Consistency

Visual consistency with ad creative ensures that users are presented with a consistent and cohesive message from the moment they see the ad to the moment they arrive on the landing page. In the case of Google Search Ads, which are text, make sure the landing page content is consistent and seamless with the ad headlines and descriptions. If you have image extensions enabled on Google Search Ads, ensure he image used in the ad is the same or similar to what you have on your landing page. 

Calls To Action

A clear and compelling CTA helps to guide the user toward the desired action, reducing confusion and increasing the likelihood of conversion. Calls to action include things like:

Mobile Responsiveness

Mobile responsiveness is essential for your landing page. Depending on your niche, it’s likely the majority of your site visitors are on a mobile device. Thus, ensuring that landing pages are optimized for mobile ensures that users have a seamless experience, regardless of the device they use. 

Utilize Persuasive Design Techniques

Persuasive design techniques mean creating a website or landing page that is designed to encourage customers to take action, such as making a purchase or filling out a form. 

This involves using design elements such as color, imagery, and layout to guide the customer's attention toward the desired action. It also involves using persuasive language and messaging to appeal to the customer's emotions and desires, encouraging them to take action. 

Examples:

Analyzing and Optimizing Landing Page Performance

Key metrics to evaluate landing page effectiveness include:

All these metrics are captured by Google Analytics which you likely have installed on your site. 

The conversion rate measures the percentage of users who complete the desired action, such as making a purchase, calling you, making an appointment, or filling out a form. For business-to-consumer services, typical conversion rates vary from 10% to 30% of traffic. 

The bounce rate measures the percentage of users who leave the landing page without taking any action. High bounce rates don’t always indicate a problem, but often they do. Compare bounce rates between pages to get a better understanding of where you should be.

Time on page measures the time users spend on the landing page, which can provide insight into user engagement and interest. 

Monitoring and refining landing page performance is crucial for ensuring ongoing success, as user behavior and preferences can change over time. 

Examples of Google Alignment of Google Ads with Landing Pages

Below is a wholesale patio furniture store. Notice the quality scores on these keywords - very high. With high-quality scores, Google will reward our client with increased exposure and lower cost-per-click for those keywords, which means more conversions at a lower cost and thus higher margins. 

And here’s the landing page the traffic was sent to. Remember quality scores on your keywords reflect the overall alignment of ads, keywords and landing pages. 

This landing page scored well for those keywords because of the following factors:

So what do I do with my low-performing keywords?

How To Improve Low Quality Scores (QS)

In conclusion, aligning your landing pages with your keywords in Google Ads is crucial for driving conversions and maximizing the performance of your campaigns. 

By ensuring that your landing pages are relevant, informative, and provide a positive user experience, you can increase the likelihood of converting users who have clicked on your ads.

The benefits of this process are many:

By following best practices for landing page optimization and continually monitoring and refining your campaigns, you can achieve ad-to-landing page alignment that maximizes the effectiveness of your Google Ads. Remember, by prioritizing relevance and user experience, you can drive more conversions and ultimately achieve your business objectives.

Next Steps

If you need help managing and running profitable Google Ads campaigns, please reach out to me directly. My team and I have been running successful Google Ads campaigns for over 15 years and can help you grow your sales and profit. 

Take the following steps:

Google has a steady stream of qualified potential clients for your business. It has 98% of all search traffic! And the number one mobile phone operating system with Android. So when people need information, they grab their phones and start searching Google. 

Watch the below video - just hit the play button. I cover a lot of information, but you can scrub the video timeline (mouse over it) and find the sections you want if you prefer. (don't forget to give me a "like" if you found any part of the video helpful.

Just consider consumer behavior. The below data are from Google a few years back so these numbers are far larger now. 

Google Ads Reach Customers Where Their Eyes Are - On Mobile Devices

So for a salon, what are the best options to reach those future customers with Google Ads?  

The goal of this post is to help you shorten the learning curve and understand the following:

So whether you're doing ads yourself or just need to educate yourself because someone else is running the ads for you, you now have a better understanding of where to start. 

Are Google Ads Worth It for Beauty Salons or Day Spas?

The short answer is yes! 

People are actively searching Google for all kinds of beauty and day spa services. From nails to hair, lashes and lash extensions, brows, facials, massages, blowouts, Brazilian waxing services, and more.

The services people search for in Google are endless.

Google Ads are one of the most effective ways to tap into that stream of searchers. Google delivers warm, pre-qualified leads to businesses. Those potential prospects typed into Google what they were searching for, so we know they are interested. We just have to capture that traffic.

Take a look at the monthly volume of searches below for hair salons and related in Google Search. This search volume is in the geotargeted areas of Newport Beach, Irvine, and Costa Mesa, California.

Thousands of Searches per Month for Hair Salon

Or what about nail salons or nail bars in the same geographic area? Thousands of more searchers looking for these services. 

People are searching. And here's how you can access those potential prospects with Google Ads. 

The First Two Important Decisions: 
Search or Display Ads?

If you're new to Google Ads, the first thing to understand is that there are two core advertising options for you to reach your ideal customers. Those two options are Search or Display campaigns.

We first discuss search, and then down below display ads. 

Search

Search ads are when you bid for keywords that people are searching for in return for the opportunity to show your ad (screenshot below). For example, in the screenshots above, I posted samples of just some of the terms people are searching for related to hair extensions and lash extensions within the geotarget of Newport Beach, Irvine, and Costa Mesa. You can also see the cost-per-click (CPC) columns in that example. 

Definition: Cost-Per-Click (CPC) is the cost you pay as an advertiser every time someone clicks on your ad.

Here's an example of Search ads related to "lash extensions." Three different companies are showing their ads for the term "lash extensions near me."

How To Set Up A Winning Search Campaign 

I will skip the basic initial steps of setting up your Google Ads account (billing, time zone, etc) and get right into how to set up a successful campaign.

We are going to start with the Leads campaign objective.

Leads for our specific case are phone calls to book an appointment, leads coming from forms on our website, or through booking an appointment online. Once, you start a "New Campaign," you are presented with several campaign objectives. The Leads objective is the most relevant for a salon that wants to book appointments and get butts in chairs. 

After you click on Leads, you will then choose Phone Call Leads. 

In this case, we’re going to choose Search and then check Website visits and Phone Calls. The other options are not optimal for what we’re trying to achieve, which are phone calls, form submissions from the website, or booking an appointment online if your site allows for it. 

Next, set your daily budget. You can set any daily budget you want. Read our section below on how to set the right budget on your goals and what stage your company is at in its evolution. Our bidding is set to Conversions and right now we do not want to a target cost per action. Setting a target cost per action at this point can restrict campaign performance before it has any data to work from.

Once you have set your daily budget, choose Search Network (and include Google partners), and uncheck Display. We do not want to run Display with Search in the same campaign. It is always better to have a separate campaign for Search and another for Display, but not in the same campaign. 

Now we will choose our geolocation of where we want to show our Search ads. Click on Advanced Search.

in this example, I entered the zip code 92037, which is the La Jolla area of San Diego.

You have many options for targeting your ideal geographic areas. You can also drop a pin on the map and set a radius by checking the Radius radio button.

Next, choose your language - in this case, I have English chosen. Choose Next once you are done.

Now, move on to the keyword selections by clicking next.

You'll notice that we are now at the Ad Group level. Ad Groups hold keywords and ads. And here's where you have to stay organized if you have more than one salon service.

For example, perhaps you do hair and lash extensions. The critical point to remember is that you should have only one ad group for each type of service. So, for example, you would have one ad group for haircuts and another for lash extensions.

I will walk you through setting this up for nail services. I will type in "nail salon," and Google will populate with some good high-value search terms.

As you scroll down this keyword list, there are some terms that perhaps you won't want to include.

I see a couple of phrases that should have their own ad group - anything related to manicure, manicurist, and then pedicure.

While both fall under Nail Salon services, you still want to align your ads to the keywords. So you would have a separate ad group for "manicure" related terms and another ad group for "pedicure" terms.

When you organize this way with ad groups, the ads in each ad group will reflect the keywords you're adding, increasing performance and lowering the cost for you.

Here's the final initial keyword list we'll start with:

Additionally, we are using Broad Match keyword types. You have several options for keyword match types - Broad, Phrase, or Exact. 

You can learn more details about Google's match types here.

But for our initial campaign, we are using Broad match. Broad match will match to similar keywords, it will match to misspellings, and it will match to synonyms. 

Here's an example. The keyword nail salon will match to: 

• nail salon near me
• nail salon [and your zip code]
• best nail salons near me
• And more combinations

The benefit of using Broad Match is that it will capture keyword variations that perhaps we didn't think of that customers are using to find your services. 

But, the caveat for using Broad Match is that you need to tighten it up over time. In the first couple of months, you will want to run a Search Terms report weekly to see all the variations of keywords that the ad showed for using Broad match. There will be variations of our keywords we do not want. And in that case, we will add those as negative keywords. 

Now that we have our keywords in place, we are going to create our ads. 

Go ahead and type in the Final URL - hopefully, this is a page that speaks ONLY to your nail services as this will improve the performance of the campaign. Similar to how we kept keywords narrowly focused on one service along with ads that reflected that service and keywords, our landing page should take a similar approach and focus just on the primary service keywords. 

Now we're going to add multiple headline variations. Google will mix and match and automatically find the best combinations of headlines that produce the best performance.

Then add your Descriptions. Up to four variations and Google will test the best performing descriptions.

Off to the right as well, Google will give you hints and ideas for descriptions and headlines to help you along the way.

Click Next.

Sitelinks are additional links that direct people to other parts of your site and are part of the ad but show below it. Google decides when sitelinks show in your ads. Still, these are excellent ad features that help expand on the ad and increase the possibility of you getting the click and hopefully conversion.

So what do you include in your site links?

For evergreen sitelinks (i.e. they never expire), you could include a link to About Us, Contact Us. Or a link to a Gallery page that shows examples of past work.

For seasonal sitelinks, perhaps you have a page dedicated to Gift Cards or unique nail services pages.

So click on New Sitelink and fill out the information. Add at least three different sitelinks.

Date Sensitive and Special Promo Sitelinks:

Sitelinks can be hugely beneficial as well when you have a date-sensitive promotion.

For example, maybe you have a special for Valentine's Day with special pricing. You created a specific page on your site for Valentine's. Create a sitelink for this but set an expiration date to stop running on the 15th of February. So in the below example, I put a start date and end date. But think of all the holidays or specials you might run and how you can incorporate that into your sitelinks. 

Next, click Save on your site links and scroll down to Callouts. 

Callouts

Callouts are short text phrases that appear below your ad similar to sitelinks, but in this case, they are not as long and do not link to other parts of your site. Callouts are best suited for adding phrases that help you stand out even more. Add as many as you can. For ideas on more callouts, think of the questions and pain points customers have. Are there any that you could turn into callouts? 

You might include the following callouts:

• Voted Best Nail Salon
• Appointments Available
• Professional Manicurists
• Book Online Today
• Open 7 Days A Week

And callouts can have start and stop dates, so leverage these whenever you have something unique and time-sensitive to promote. Create as many callouts as you think that will help differentiate you and appeal to your future customers' needs.

Call Extensions:

Add a phone number they can call when they click on the ads. You can set dates for this if you want as well. And you can designate for mobile or not. 

We're almost there…stay with me

Image Extensions

Now consider loading an image that will appear next to your text ad. This is a great way to differentiate your text ad from the competitors. So choose a quality image that shows your services well. Or a photo of the final product. 

Now click Next. If everything is ready to launch, you will see the blue "PUBLISH CAMPAIGN" button. If not, it will highlight any issues that you need to fix. 

Once you are ready, go ahead and click the PUBLISH CAMPAIGN button and the ads will go to Google for review and once approved, go live. This typically takes 24 hours for ad approvals. 

Display Ads

In comparison to Search ads, Display ads are banner ads, videos, or text ads that show on other websites, on YouTube videos, or within Gmail and to only the people you want to target.

If you're not familiar with Display ads, here's an example of a Display Retargeting Ad showing at the top of Jim Cramer's show, Mad Money on CNBC. But Display Ads can show on hundreds of different websites. And you have many options for targeting just the right people. 

But most importantly, Display ads are inexpensive. Many Display ad campaigns cost pennies per click.

Compared to Search ads where we bid on keywords, Display ad targeting is entirely different. 

For example, you can target based on demographics, including:

• Age
• Sex: Male or female
• Education level
• Household income
• Whether they are parents, and other demographics.

This allows you to target only your ideal customer so you can keep your ad spend focused and reduce wasted ad spend.

And similar to Facebook ad targeting, with Google's Display Ads you can reach people specifically on unique behaviors. 

For example:

Affinity and In-Market Audiences - these are people that are actively searching for or are regular visitors of beauty salons, day spas, hair stylists, nail bars, and more. Because Google knows so much about what sites we visit and what stores we visit, it has built large audiences of people we want to sell our services to.

Here are some of the options for In-Market Audiences for Beauty and Personal Care:

Here's are the options for Affinity Audiences for Beauty and Wellness:

And one of the most effective ad tactics you can use with Google Display Ads is Retargeting. 

With Display ads, you have the option to show ads to people that visited your website at any time in the past year. This tactic is referred to as remarketing.

Remarketing is a very effective and low-cost tactic for increasing repeat visits with existing customers or bringing back prospects that didn't convert on a first visit.

Imagine if you wanted to push gift card sales during the holidays, Valentine's Day, or Mother's Day. You can create new Display ads with an offer and push that out to all your past site visitors. And lists of past website visitors can be substantial in size - it's not uncommon to have a list of 50,000 or 100,000 people just in your local area. Where else can you get that kind of exposure for such little money?

And consider that the people most likely to buy from you in the future are those that are already customers and have purchased from you in the past. 

Benefits of Display Ads:

• Lower cost-per-click (CPC)
• Huge exposure potential so you can create broad awareness in your local market
• Retargeting - show your ads to past customers or people who didn't convert to a lead yet
• Helps close longer sales cycle customers

When and Why Run Display Campaigns?

When you want to create broad-level brand awareness to a very targeted audience, Display ad campaigns are the best option. 

For example, maybe you want to reach women between the ages of 18 - 45 who are interested in or actively searching for beauty salon services. Or, more specifically waxing, or hairstylist services who live within 3 miles of your salon or spa. The options are endless here. 

But because these banner ads that show on other websites, what we call interrupt marketing, the prospects are not as close to converting to a lead as Search ads. 

But keep in mind that creating broad brand awareness locally for your salon or nail bar will positively impact your leads over time. 

Google Ads Budgets: 
How Much Do I Need To Spend?

There are several ways to arrive at a reasonable monthly ad budget that you should spend. 

If you're somewhat new with advertising your salon services, the first thing to understand is that the size of your ad budget directly affects results. This is because budget equates to the number of leads and brand exposure you can achieve in your local market. And larger budgets mean more leads, more brand exposure.

Current Sales or Projected Sales Method To Estimate Google Ad Spend

The first place to determine a Google ad budget is to decide what budget is reasonable for your sales goals.

Aggressive Growth Ad Budget

Established companies that are aggressive spend 5% - 10% or more of monthly sales on marketing. But the general range for an established business is to allocate 2% - 10% of monthly sales towards marketing and advertising. So if you're spending on the lower end of that scale, then growth is not the main priority. Instead, you're just maintaining sales to squeeze more cash out of your business versus setting it up for bigger successes in the future. 

Establishing A Budget For Less Established, Newer Salons or Spas

If your salon or spa is on the younger side or not as established, then using the percentage of current sales method to determine an advertising budget is not the best approach. 

Here's a more practical approach to help you reach your sales goals and arrive at a reasonable Google Ads budget. 

Estimate your ad spend or ad budget as a percentage of your monthly future projected monthly sales goals. So if you want to grow to $80,000 per month in sales, then 5% - 10% of that amount is considered aggressive. 

Of course, your budget needs to be within your comfort zone and your business' cash flow. Most importantly, however, your Google Ad budget needs to be sustainable month after month. Starting and stopping marketing campaigns is not effective. If anything, start smaller but maintain consistency in spending and grow it as your cash flow improves. 

Consistency is a crucial ingredient to successfully growing leads and your salon sales. 

Read my related post here for a more in-depth process on how to determine how much you should spend on Google Ads.

Benchmark Ad Spends From Other Salons and Spas

For reference, compared to your peers, from more than two hundred different beauty salons, nail bars, massage services and spas throughout markets in the US, the most conservative businesses and the minority of this group spend as little as $500 per month on Google Ads. Conversely, the most aggressive spenders allocate $4,500 per month on Google Ads, with additional ad spend above this going to Facebook and Instagram Ads. 

What Will I Get with My Google Ad Budget?

Any advertising you do has a cost per lead for that tactic. For example, for massage services, we found direct mail provided a cost per lead of $50 - $300 per lead, which is crazy expensive. 

For this same business, Google Ads provided leads in the range of $5 - $13. A huge difference and a difference that can mean whether you are successful or not. And whether you will be cash positive or negative after advertising.

The below chart are unique phone calls coming from Google Ads for two beauty salon locations in a metro market with monthly increases in Google Ad spend. Would you not want a steady stream of customers calling?

Google Ads and SEO generally provide retail businesses with their lowest cost per lead out of any advertising that is available with the highest returns on ad spend. And most importantly, you are generating positive cash flow - meaning after spending on Google Ads, you have more cash coming into the business than is going out of the business. 

Budget will determine if you run Search or Display, or Both

If your monthly ad spend is less than $500 per month, I generally recommend starting with only Search campaigns to generate the leads now that can help you grow. 

Suppose your ad budget is higher than $500 per month. In that case, I generally recommend a 90% to 10% split on ad spend between Search and Display, respectively. 

How Much Do Google Ads Cost For Salon and Spa Services?

You can set whatever daily budget you are comfortable with. But Google Ads cost-per-click (CPC) varies significantly between Search or Display campaigns. Specifically for Search ads, the cost-per-click (CPC) range for salon and spa services generally falls between $1 - $7 per click depending on the competitiveness and value of a keyword. 

In comparison, Display ads typically cost $0.20 to $1 per click. 

And you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. So any unused budget is not charged to you.

What Determines My Google Ads Cost?

Cost with Google Ads is determined by the following three factors:

• Relevancy
• Competition
• User Experience

But these three factors differ slightly depending on whether you're running a Search or Display campaign. 

Here's what's vital for you to know.

Search Ads

For Google Search ads, the cost varies based on several different factors. 

Competition

So keywords that have more economic value, meaning they lead to more sales and leads, are more competitive and thus more expensive (higher CPCs). But higher CPCs can be interpreted as a positive signal to you as it shows that other advertisers are finding value in it otherwise the keyword would be cheaper. 

Take for example, these two keywords:

• "lash extensions near me" is double or triple the CPC compared to the keyword phrase
• "individual lashes" from the earlier screenshot.

The intent of the latter keyword is not as clear, and searchers are likely looking for many different things. As a result, other advertisers are unwilling to bid it up as much. Some advertisers probably won't even bid on that keyword. Conversely, "lash extensions near me" is clear that the searcher is looking for lash services close to them. 

Quality Score

Another factor that affects your cost for Google Ads is what Google calls Quality Score. 

Every keyword you bid for in a Search campaign is given a Quality Score rating from 1 to 10, with 1 being a poor score and 10 being excellent. And, unlike the level of competition for a keyword, you have control over your Quality Score (unless you're a franchise). Here's how.

Search Ad Alignment to Keywords Affects Quality Score

Without going into too much detail, your quality score is a measure of your relevance to a particular keyword. Your relevance is determined by your ad copy, your expected click-through-rate (CTR), and your landing page experience. (here's a related post on how to align landing pages to your ads for more conversions)

For example, if you are bidding on the keyword "Brazilian waxing near me" but your ad doesn't mention that keyword and instead only mentions your salon services in general, this would qualify as poor quality. Your CTR for this ad would be poor because it is not aligned with the searcher's intent and what they are looking for. 

Ad copy needs to align with the keywords. So how would you improve this? 

Campaign Organization and Themes Improves Quality Scores

In this case, if you offered several different waxing and salon services, you might create ads for Brazilian waxing keywords that talk about that service, it's benefits, etc, and then another ad for lash extensions with the ad reflecting that service feature and benefits. But mixing those two services will spell disaster for your campaign performance and results. 

Landing Page Experience Affects Quality Scores

In addition to the ads aligning to the keywords, the landing page you send the traffic to from your Search ad also needs to align with your keywords and ad.

This is where franchises fail as each franchisee typically only has one location page with all the spa services listed - not a great landing page experience! Franchises are at a distinct disadvantage to independently owned businesses from this standpoint. 

So if you are advertising hairstylist services, your landing page needs to reflect those services. For example, showcasing hair options, pricing, customer testimonials, before and after photos, etc. 

Does Your Site Load Well on Mobile Devices?

An important consideration is, does your site and page load fast and render well on mobile devices?

Here's an example of a salon website that is NOT mobile responsive.

This is an awful user experience and will kill lead generation. Mobile traffic is 75% of all the salon traffic for many websites. Ironically, this was a salon in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in southern California - Newport Beach. The owners wanted to grow leads but were not interested in improving their site. 

Notice near the top there's a red button with a call-to-action, but we can't see it. And then down below it looks like there's a "Book Now" button, but we can't see that either. Plus, there's no mobile-click-to-call number anywhere. This is awful for growing leads or sales. Not only that, the competitors have a better website and they will likely pay less per click for Google Ads (since they are delivering a better landing page experience), and equally important their site will likely outrank this one for organic non-paid searches (SEO) and within Google Maps. The website below is leaving money on the table.

The majority of search traffic is from mobile devices.

If your site does not render well, you will suffer from higher cost per click (CPCs) compared to your competitors that do have mobile optimized landing pages. And most importantly, you will see far fewer conversions and leads due to poor user experience on your website.

So ads, keywords, and landing pages all need to align for good Quality Scores.  

Here's an example of Quality Score ratings per keyword. In this example, most of the keywords have a score of 5, with one keyword at a 1. That low Quality Score is one keyword that should be paused until adjustments can be made to improve the score. 

Display Ads

Display ad quality score is based on similar factors as Search but differs in important ways. There is no alignment to keywords since the targeting is based on other factors. But the landing page experience is essential - if your site is not optimized for mobile, you will score poorly. And if the page content is not what you were advertising, your score will be lower, and your per click cost higher as well. 

Google won't show you Quality Score metrics for Display, but here's what's most important. The landing page experience, as mentioned above, will not only affect your Quality Score but your conversions, too. 

Consequences of Low-Quality Scores

If your quality score is low, you will pay more per click, so costs will be higher, and Google will not show your ad as often. 

And sometimes, you will pay a lot more per click with low quality scores. Google wants quality advertisers. And it rewards quality advertisers with lower costs. But punishes low-quality advertisers with higher costs. In some cases, I have seen low quality scores more than triple or quadruple the cost per click that an advertiser pays. So suffice it to say, you need to pay attention to quality. 

Geotargeting - Only Reach Customers Near Your Location

In addition to the laser targeted Search and Display targeting options using keywords or behaviors, you have very effective geotargeting options, so you only show your ads to prospects near your salon. 

Let's say you had a salon or spa in the Del Mar area in San Diego. Below I dropped a pin on the map that goes out in a 5-mile radius. But you can expand or narrow this geotargeting as well. You can also target by typing in city names, zip codes, counties, and more. The options are many. Here's a related post that goes into more depth on hyper local targeting with Google. 

So I hope this post has helped you get a better understanding of what you stand to gain running Google Ads for your salon or spa, and what are the most effective strategies and tactics. 

If we can help with your digital marketing efforts, please contact us today!

The Restaurant Customer Journey

Within this discussion of Google Ads and how they work, it’s important to remember the customer journey to becoming your restaurant customer.

The path to conversion for a customer is typically not direct – meaning there are multiple steps, not just as simple as:

see Google ad --> click on ad --> become a customer

The above example, of course, does happen, but many customers take many steps over the course of hours or days. For example, perhaps you piqued their interest, but then they left to read your reviews, check out competitors, or maybe they stopped their search altogether temporarily.

Google Ads Wants You to Be Successful and Provides the Channel and Tools

Understandably, most people unaware of how Google works don’t realize that the platform offers many tools to reach the ideal restaurant customer at any point during the customer journey. And that you can be successful with even modest budgets whatever your restaurant goals are.

Here's an example...

Consider that Google provides a campaign objective (one of many) that is designed to maximize conversions however you have defined conversions. Perhaps those conversions are restaurant phone calls, store visits, or conversions through your restaurant app.

The campaign optimizes to achieve that goal and reduces any ad spend that doesn’t help achieve that goal. Google will also adhere to your cost per lead/cost per conversion limits as well, so you ensure you’re maintaining your ROI goals.

Here’s another example - use remarketing to increase repeat sales:

We had a restaurant client in NYC that had thousands on its remarketing list (past website visitors). We ran a remarketing campaign and every day we would advertise banner ads with the latest lunch special to thousands of hungry customers between 11 am – 2 pm that needed to decide where to get lunch. These types of campaigns cost very little money. 

If lunch sales are important, why would you not want to run lunch special ads targeting current or new customers from 11 am – 2 pm? You know people are hungry, and you know they need to eat. 

But equally important, the people that are most likely to buy from you are the ones that have bought from you in the past (all those people on your remarketing list). Unfortunately, most restaurants focus the majority of their marketing dollars on new customers. 

Financially, the cost of a sale to a repeat customer is a tiny fraction of what it costs to get a new customer. So to maximize profit and return on ad spend, you need to be advertising to your past customers. 

Untapped Opportunity for Restaurants

Consider the below chart showing the growth in searches in Google for “restaurant near me.” Are you sure you want to concede that traffic to your competitors?

Here’s another search: “Mexican restaurant near me”

And this one...

How Do Google Ads Work? Campaign Types

Google ads work in two basic ways:

1. Search Ads: text ads that show when searchers type keywords into Google search (or Google search partners) or on Google maps.

Here's an example:

• Display: image, video, and text ads that show on other websites you visit. Have you ever noticed those ads that follow you around after you have visited a website? Those are often Google Remarketing ads, which is one type of Google Display ad.
• Video ads on YouTube – if you have video creative you can run ads on YouTube in very targeted ways. Remember that YouTube is the second largest search engine. With YouTube, you have many advantageous targeting options – based on keywords people are using to search for videos, placements – specific YouTube channels you know your audience visits, or even retargeting people that have previously visited your website.
• App: you can drive app adoption as well using this ad type – with this campaign goal, you can increase app adoption and in-app usage as well.

But the core campaigns that the majority are focused on are Search and Display (image, video).

For Google Search ads, you as a restaurant advertiser bid on keywords specific to your business and have your ads show to those searchers within a specific geographic area that you choose.

For example, the keyword phrase: “Best hamburgers in San Diego.”

When someone clicks on your ads you are charged the cost-per-click (CPC), and the searcher is taken to your website, or a call is initiated to your restaurant, for example.

Here’s an example of a search ad on a mobile device:

The above ad highlights an important benefit of Google Ads over organic non-paid listings in Search. The best screen real estate at the top of a mobile device is given to ads. 

Remember that the majority of search traffic right now is on mobile devices.

Notice this fact...

with the mobile ad above, the entire visible part of the mobile screen is taken up by an ad! You have to scroll down quite a way just to get to the non-paid organic listings. With mobile Google ads, your restaurant dominates the screen.

Now that doesn't mean the organic listings down below don't matter, they do. And your most effective strategy is one that uses SEO to rank your restaurant in non-paid listings combined with ads at the top of the page. Afterall, the more spots on the first page that you occupy means the more likely that you will win a new customer. 

How Much Do Google Ads Cost?

The CPC (cost-per-click) varies greatly depending on the type of campaign, whether it’s Search or Display, but often it can be as low as $0.20 per click to more than $10 per click for restaurants depending on the search term and the type of campaign.

Here’s some estimated CPCs for restaurant terms for a Search campaign:

Keep in mind that Display campaigns can drive traffic for much lower CPCs. It’s not uncommon for a Display remarketing banner campaign to see CPCs less than $0.50 per click.

For Search campaigns, the cost you pay varies by keyword. Some keywords will be more economically valuable than others.

The two main variables that affect the cost per click with a Search campaign are:

1. Competition for the search terms you’re bidding for (how many other restaurants are bidding for those same or similar keywords)
2. Relevance of your ad and website to the searcher

Relevance is important - if you bid on a keyword for hamburgers but your ad doesn't mention hamburgers, and the landing page for the ad doesn't either, then your ad relevance will score low. The effect of this is that you will pay a higher CPC - sometimes a lot higher. Google rewards ad relevance with lower costs to you the advertiser. (related post here on how to align ads to landing pages)

Later we’ll talk about how to identify which keywords are the most economically viable.

Identify Your Goals For Your Google Ads Campaign

What are you trying to achieve with a Google Ad campaign?

Everyone is going to say sales, of course, and that may be a goal, but there are additional options:

• Increase repeat business through retargeting
• Increase phone calls
• Grow website traffic
• App promotion and more

Likely you will have multiple goals.

Spend some time identifying what you are trying to achieve – this will drive what types of campaign you set up and what types of budgets you need to achieve your goals. Below are example goals that Google Ads provides restaurant advertisers.

Search Campaign Structure

Campaigns, Ad Groups, Ads, Keywords

Organization is at the heart of successful Google Ad campaigns. The hierarchy in a Search campaign is:

• Campaigns > Ad Groups  > Ads > Keywords

Campaigns are where you set top-level settings, such as your geotargeting, budgets, start and end dates, etc.

The Three Amigos

• Ad Groups
• Ads
• Keywords

The above are the Three Amigos – they go hand-in-hand and are organized in themes.

For example, here’s a possible theme group (i.e., ad group, ads, keywords):

Let’s say you offer the best hamburgers around and want to acquire more hamburger customers.

You have one ad group called Best Hamburgers.

Within that ad group are ads that are written about why you have the best hamburgers along with a call-to-action (CTA) and a promotion. 

And the keywords you bid on revolve around:

• best hamburgers near me
• best hamburgers in…, etc.

So as you can see - the theme is well aligned around hamburgers. Any click traffic from these ads would ideally land on a page that talks about your hamburgers with nice images and perhaps video too. 

Here’s a possible second theme - catering:
Perhaps you offer catering as well – a second ad group would have ads focused on your catering services, benefits, pricing options, etc and keywords that are focused around “restaurant catering." 

So in each of the above ad group examples (i.e. hamburgers and catering), you have aligned the Ads with the Keywords (meaning the ads have the keywords in them) – this is a fundamental principle in Search campaigns. Following this structure ensures you have a good campaign that will deliver the best results at the very lowest cost. 

But we don’t stop there…Landing Pages!

Each landing page you send the traffic to is about that theme…don’t send catering traffic to a generic home page. Send your catering traffic to a detailed page about your catering services that has pricing, pictures, testimonials, etc.

Conversely, don’t send your “best hamburgers” ad group traffic to a page that isn’t talking about why you have the best hamburgers.

Both ad groups could be under one campaign, as illustrated below.

This alignment between ads, keywords, and landing pages is essential. 

Not following this structure will cost you more money (since Google rewards for relevance). And, equally important, lead to a poor user experience for searchers. Nobody wants to click on a catering ad and land on a generic Home page of website with little to no information about your catering services and then have to search for catering. 

Campaign Details

Campaigns are at the top where you designate key features. It’s crucial that you designate campaigns for one ad channel only.

For example, a Search campaign should only focus on Search, not Search and Display.

A YouTube campaign should only run YouTube ads, not Display or Search as well.

Even though Google will allow you to mix campaign types, mixing campaign types is a bad idea because each channel, whether it’s Search, Display, or YouTube, behave very differently, and the campaign level metrics are different.

Search campaigns often have CTRs (click-through-rates) of 4% or higher, while Display campaigns are usually less than 0.1% - 1% - mixing these campaign types in one campaign distorts the data, among other issues.

Below we go through the options at the campaign level of setting up your campaign.

Campaign Detail Features:

• Networks: In the case of a Search campaign – just Google search or Search Partners as well. We recommend Google and Search Partners
• Type of campaign – Search, Display, App, or YouTube
• Budgeting is set at this level
• Where you’re advertising geographically - many options here...from narrow to broad
• What languages you’re targeting
  • We typically set this to English, of course, and add in Spanish often. If other languages apply to your type of restaurant, you want to select those here. This feature is essential for those people that have set their browser preferences to a particular language.
• Bidding type
  • We’ll discuss more about bidding below
• Campaign Start and End Dates
  • Setting dates for campaigns is very beneficial especially if you’re running a temporary promotion or holiday campaign, or want to stop the campaign at one point automatically
• Conversions – select which conversions are included
• Ad Rotation – Google gives you several options here…the default is set to “Optimize: Prefer best performing ads.” However, if you want to split test ad creative and copy to uncover which performs better, then set this to “Do not optimize: Rotate ads indefinitely.”
• Campaign URL options – typically you do not need to worry about this – we set campaign URLs at the Ad level
• Dynamic Search Ads Setting – more of an advanced feature. I do not recommend using this right out of the gate if at all.
• IP Exclusions – not something you will need to worry about, but it allows you to block specific IPs and thus geo areas

Search Ad Groups

Ad groups are just a name placeholder. You can set ad group bids which will apply to all your keywords in the ad group (unless you specify keyword-level bidding on keywords), but the ad group is just the place that will hold your ads and keywords for a particular theme.

Search Ads

Write at least two ads per ad group to split test ad copy, offers, and CTAs (calls-to-action).

Here’s an example ad from within the Google Ad Manager:

And then the interface to create the ad:

Text Ad Character Limits

• 3 Headlines – 30 characters each
  • The third headline will not show all the time
• Description 1 and 2 – 90 characters each

You don’t have much space, so make sure you highlight your unique features and benefits that customers love the most. Add in any offers and of course a CTA (call-to-action).

• USP – unique selling proposition – what makes you different? Think in terms of what your customers want – what are their needs and translate that into compelling ad copy.
  • CTAs – add appropriate calls-to-action.For example, call now, download our app today, order now, etc
  • Features and benefits – what is unique about your restaurant, and what’s the benefit to your customer?
  • Prices and promotions – for sure, include these…can improve CTRs

If you’re a multi-unit restaurant, don’t forget that the Final URL, which is the first field in this example should land you on the location page for that restaurant, not necessarily the Home page unless that’s the most relevant page. Unless you have many locations in a metro area, your campaign can cover all those locations and, in that case, land the visitor on a page that lists all the locations.

And remember, there’s only one URL per ad group, so you cannot have one ad with the Final URL going to the location page, and another ad in the same ad group go to the Home page.

Ad Extensions: Use all the Google Ad features

• Callouts – these have 25-character limits and will appear below the ad. Callouts make the ad larger and will show per Google’s discretion. Use these. Examples include: Open until 2 am, Vegan Food, 20 Beers On Draft, etc
  • Sitelinks – these also appear below the ad and are links to other areas of your site. You can use them to link to your Contact Us page, About Us, or other areas of your website that are relevant
  • Location Extensions – if your ad represents one location, absolutely add in a location extension…this too makes your ad more significant and will include your address and phone number in the ad. If your ad represents many locations in one geo area, likely you should not use Location Extensions as Google will show location extension that performs the best, not necessarily the one that is closest to the searcher.
  • Click to call extension – a great way to increase phone calls
  • Message extensions – can you handle messages coming to you from ads? If yes, consider adding this.

Keyword Tools: What Keywords Should I use?

Below are several tools to help you identify the best keywords for your restaurant Search campaigns. A best practice is to identify 10 – 15 keywords per Search ad group.

Cluster your keywords in ad groups around tight themes – for example, searches related to “best hamburgers in town,” or “best hamburgers near me.”

Google Keyword Planner

To access the Google Keyword Planner, just set up a free Google Ads account.  The Keyword Planner is located under Tools & Reporting and then Planning.

Let’s say you’re creating an ad group for “Best Hamburgers” – I typed in two seed keywords below.

Make sure you set your geolocation to where you are targeting your ads otherwise you won’t have realistic numbers – in the below example, we need to change this from the United States to the specific area we’re targeting (e.g., within specific zip codes, a town or city, etc).

When I update the geo-targeting to San Diego, as an example, I get accurate monthly search data. Google also gives you data on the “keywords you provided” and then many additional recommendations.

In the below example under “Keyword ideas” there’s one additional keyword with “best” – if I were targeting terms related to “best burgers,” I would use the two I suggested, and the one Google suggested in the ad group, but not the others. For the other terms, I might create another ad group for “best burgers” where all the keywords have “best burgers” in them.

Keep in mind Google Ads will not show you all the keywords people use to search…it is primarily showing you the keywords it believes have value since it doesn’t want you blaming them that your campaign didn’t work if you choose other keywords.

So to cover your bases, use different tools to uncover potential keywords. Big G is not always right.

Keep in mind Google Ads will not show you all the keywords people use to search…it is primarily showing you the keywords it believes have economic value since it doesn’t want you blaming them that your campaign didn’t work if you choose other keywords. So to cover your bases, use different tools to uncover potential keywords. Big G is not always right.

Brand and Competitor Terms
Don’t forget to consider bidding on brand and competitor restaurant terms as well – set up ad groups for your brand terms and consider going after competitor brand terms. If it’s a well-known restaurant brand, you might be blocked from using the keyword if they filed with Google to protect the term, but it’s worth a try. Competitor terms will be more expensive since you don’t own that word on your site anywhere.

Why Go After Paid Brand Searches?
Some may question why you would set up brand queries in a Google Ad campaign when you know you will win that organically. A couple of reasons this can make sense:

• There’s a chance your competitors may bid on your brand terms so by you bidding on them too you will raise their cost
• The cost for you to bid on your brand terms is typically inexpensive. You can also highlight different features/benefits in ads that you cannot display easily in the organic results that Google serves up – for example, maybe you’re having a special promotion that is only today, for example.
• You can deep link your ads into specific parts of your site

Keywords: Google My Business Insights

Within your Google My Business page, there is an area called Insights, which will show you all the terms your Google My Business page has shown for in Google Search and Google Maps (go to business.google.com).

Google Related Searches

Anytime you do a Google search, if you scroll down to the bottom of the page Google serves up searches related to your initial query – these are additional restaurant and food searches that people are using.

Below is an example for related Google searches to “catering services.”

Any additional terms you find from Google My Business Insights and Google related searches, throw these terms into the Google Keyword Planner to check for metrics, such as competition, seasonality, and CPC (cost-per-click).

Choosing The Correct Keywords

When you’re finalizing restaurant keywords for your ad groups within your Google search campaign here are things to consider:

• Monthly search volume – is there volume enough to make it worthwhile?
  • It’s ok to use search terms with low volume or no reported volume from Google but know you are not likely to drive much traffic
• Competition – is there too much competition to make it profitable? Remember, the Google Keyword Planner will show the competition level along with the CPC.
• What is the CPC per keyword?
• Relevance to your food and services

And you can always add keywords to your actual plan and test and later remove them if they are not meeting your goals.

Search Match types

For Search campaigns, Keyword Match Types are Google’s way of allowing you to narrow your searches to precisely that query or broadening it to expand to all the possible query variations your ad can show for.

Here’s a table from Google that summarizes the different match types your keywords can have. This table can be found at Google as well here.

Broad Match Keywords:
Be careful using “broad match” – this can match to some wild variants you would not expect and that likely won’t be a good fit for your business so you run the risk of wasting ad spend on non-valuable keywords. We rarely use this match type.

• Pros: can expose you to many different queries that perhaps you would not have thought of that could be valuable
• Cons: you can waste ad spend on keywords that are not relevant

Phrase Match Keywords:
If you want to be slightly more conservative, use phrase match, “best hamburgers”- this will ensure that your ad only shows for queries where those terms are used in precisely that order, but words can appear before and after…so same example as above, the ad could show for, “best hamburgers in San Diego.”

• Pros: Narrow your focus on core set terms and eliminate wasteful keywords
• Cons: Still allows your ad to show for some search terms that might not be a good fit, but more restrictive than Modified Broad

Exact Match Keywords:
Exact match is the most conservative – “best hamburgers” will only match those two words, so this match type is very restrictive, and you would miss out on “best hamburgers near me,” for example.

• Pros: the most precise, least wasteful keyword setup
• Cons: The drawback is that you will lose out on keywords that were valuable. Another drawback is that search volume for exact match is low compared to the other match types so you will not drive as much traffic. There are times when using Exact Match makes sense – for example, if one particular keyword generates a sufficient volume of clicks and conversions, sometimes pulling just that keyword out of its existing ad group and creating its own ad group with just that keyword can help drive even more clicks for that word – this can focus your ad spend on one of your most
  successful keywords.

Using Negative Keywords

What are negative keywords? Keywords that you don’t want your ads to show for. Adding negative keywords to your campaign is one of the easiest and most important things you can do to make your campaign more efficient and waste less money.

Within your Google Ads account, you can run a Search Terms report for any Search campaign to uncover the actual terms that your ads showed for. Below is where to find that report.

In this example, I checked the phrase match term, “restaurant near me” which is a term that was added to the campaign then clicked on Search Terms. Below are the keyword variations that matched to “restaurant near me” with a 2-week period. With the Search Terms report, you can see terms that your ad showed for based on that particular keyword you added to your campaign, for example:

• Breakfast restaurants near me
• 24-hour restaurant near me
• Indian restaurant near me

For most restaurants, Remarketing ads (i.e. serving ads to people who have previously visited your website) are some of the most common types of Display ads and often cost very little compared to Search ads.

An example of a remarketing ad is:
Someone visited your website and then left your website and went to read the news on NBC, for example, and a banner ad for your restaurant showed on that website.

You should be running Remarketing campaigns if you do nothing else. The benefit of remarketing ads is that it keeps your brand front and center with your customer and helps you maintain mindshare, which ultimately results in increases in new customers and repeat customers. Except for Facebook, no other marketing tactics allow you to do this.

The other targeting methods outside of remarketing for Display campaigns drive more branding and upper-funnel awareness – while branding is essential, for most small to medium-sized restaurants it’s hard to justify the expense versus actual conversions to the store.

Campaigns, Ad Groups, Ads, Targeting

The hierarchy of the campaign structure is similar to a Search campaign. The most significant difference from a Search campaign is:

• The targeting to reach your customer
• Where the ads show
• And that you’re using banner ads, not text (although you can run text ads, too)

Here are some of the Display targeting options which are very different from Search campaigns:

Audiences

• How they have interacted with your business (i.e. Remarketing and Similar Audiences) –
  • Remarketing: targeting past website visitors. This is by far the most common and effective Display campaign targeting for most restaurants. Can cost very little and the benefit is huge
    and encourages repeat business or closing longer sales cycle customers that didn’t convert on a first website visit. Website visitors can stay on your Remarketing lists for longer than 1 year!
    • Requires the Google Pixel to be placed on the
      website
  • Similar To – with Similar To audiences you can take your Remarketing audience of website visitors and tell Google to create an audience with similar demographics and behaviors – another effective way to leverage your remarketing audience and the Google pixel

What are their interests and habits:

• Affinity Audiences – people grouped by their habits and preferences. There are some excellent options here if you're a restaurant.
• Custom Affinity Audience – here you enter interests, URLs, types of places, or apps to generate a custom audience

What are they actively researching or planning? 

• In-market and Custom Intent – these people are actively searching for recipes, food, and more.

Here are some excellent In-Market Audiences for restaurants. Keep in mind this list is only a sample of what's available. 

Demographics – you can target based on age, gender, household income, parental status and combinations thereof

Topics – you can have your ads show on websites and pages that are about a topic. For example, if you’re a barbeque restaurant, you can choose to show ads on topics related to BBQ & Grilling.

Keywords – keywords used in Display \campaigns are different than in Search campaigns. Keywords are used to target contextually relevant pages which just means pages talking about those keywords. Typically, 5 keywords help Google understand the topic well enough to identify website pages to show your ads on.

Placements – specific websites or pages on websites that you choose to have your ads show.

Creative

Make your ads visually appealing. Showcase your food and people having fun. Include calls-to-action (CTAs) and some benefits but not too much text as you have limited space. Tell a story with your images.

If you’re promoting an event, showcase the best image for that event.

If you’re showcasing a promotion, highlight that in the ad creative.

Consider using social media to help you split test which creative works best. Run Facebook ads with different creative and see which performs better then roll that creative out to your Google Display ads for your restaurant.

Consider dayparting

Dayparting is just running your campaigns during specific times of the day. For example, we run breakfast ads – in both Search and Display campaigns - for a client only during the morning from 6 am to 10 am, and then lunch ads from 10 am to 2 pm so we’re always promoting the most
current options.

Geo-targeting

Set your ads to show within the radius that the majority of your customers will travel from to visit you. The only exception to consider with this is for your retargeting campaign. Anyone that has landed on your site or a specific page on your site is likely local traffic – likely got there from
an organic search or social efforts locally. So, if you want to reach those people even if they’re traveling with remarketing ads, then consider not limiting your geotargeting for remarketing. Here's a related post on Google Ads local targeting options.

Bidding Strategy

Google Ads offers many different bidding strategies, depending on what your goals are.  Below are the bidding options Google Ads provides.

Often Maximize Conversions are the appropriate choice for Search and Display campaigns – in this scenario, Google will try to maximize the number of conversions it gets for the budget you have allocated. The conversion you choose could be phone calls, directions to your restaurant, app downloads, or online orders, among others.

Conversions – make sure to set this up.

For each campaign, there are many types of conversions you can setup. Make sure to set up all that are appropriate for what you are trying to achieve. Not setting this up means you not only won’t be tracking important conversion events for your campaigns, but if you cannot run a Maximize Conversion bidding strategy.

Quality Score

Google Ads are an efficient advertising platform that rewards advertisers with lower costs that run quality campaigns.

In a search campaign, your keywords will have a quality score of a low of 1 to a high of 10. Google will charge you more per click for lower quality score keywords. And the differences in CPCs can be significant – more than double or triple the cost from a high of 10 to a low of 1. Also, Google will restrict your exposure and limit how many searchers see your ads with lower quality scores – meaning your ad won’t always show.

Here’s an example:
If you are advertising catering services, make sure the keywords you use in your ad group are all about catering, make sure your ads are about catering, and finally make sure the landing page you’re sending the traffic to is about catering.

To get even more specific, perhaps you specialize in barbeque catering. Don’t just use basic catering terms – use barbeque catering keywords and send the traffic to a page about barbeque catering.

If your specialty is vegetarian burgers, use vegetarian burger keywords, ads that reflect the keywords and landing pages that are about vegetarian burgers.

Google will assign an initial quality score once you start, but that will adjust as the campaign runs.

What is too low of a quality score?

If you have keywords with quality scores at a 5 or 4, you need to consider pausing those keywords.

What can you do to improve your quality score?

Consider not using the keywords if they are not a perfect fit for what people are expecting, or most importantly, what the searcher was expecting. Or consider creating a new ad group with those lower score keywords, write new ads with those keywords, and use a different landing page that is specific to those keywords.

Landing pages

What makes for a good landing page?

Any good strategy starts with the customer, and landing pages are no different. What is this person trying to achieve?

Likely they want to get a good sense of what you’re about, the food ambiance, pricing, are you kid-friendly? They probably also want to quickly find out where you are located and how to contact you. The internet is goal-oriented and so give them what they are looking for.

Also, your job is to reduce friction in the customer journey – don’t make it hard for them to find your phone number or where you’re located, or pricing information.

So, a useful landing page will have quality images showcasing your food and the restaurant. Write descriptions of your food and services that highlight your strengths.

Include trust marks to build confidence (testimonials, awards, etc).

Embedded video if you have – people like videos, and it’s a positive engagement factor for SEO and your ads.

Value of a customer

It’s essential to understand the lifetime value of a customer and not just your average order to run successful Google Ad campaigns. The majority of customers are repeat visitors – what is the value of a customer to you?

As an example, I probably go to a Jersey Mike’s 20 times per year and my average order is around $8 – just simple math puts my annual value at $160. In this scenario, a restaurant can afford to pay a fair amount to acquire a new customer. What is that value for your restaurant? This value
affects how you run your campaign.

Focus your campaigns on your most profitable foods and services before promoting lower value foods and services.

How Much Should You Spend On Ads?

I wrote an easy-to-follow process to help you identify how much to spend monthly.

Technical Website Issues

• Ensure your site is mobile friendly – most of your traffic will be coming from mobile devices. Google runs a mobile-first index now so if your site is not mobile-friendly you will not only suffer organically in ranking in the search results, but your ad campaigns will suffer from lower quality scores too.
• Hosting is important – don’t skimp – if you receive enough traffic, consider a dedicated server for your site. Slow site speeds negatively impact rankings. 

To wrap up this post, if you haven't considered Google Ads, I would encourage you to reconsider.

Remember on mobile devices, Google Ads take up the entire screen before the organic non-paid listings - that is invaluable screen real estate, especially when you consider that people spend up to 3 hours per day on their phones and check them as often as 150 times per day.

Google Ads is complex and it's not possible to cover all the strategies, tactics, and campaign optimizations for a restaurant, but feel free to ask questions below in the comments.

And if you are looking for an agency to help, reach out to us. We have worked with restaurants nationwide and can help you grow new customers. 

Your Next Steps:

It’s a missed opportunity to not leverage these Google ad tactics as a local business. But doing so will improve the ROI of your ad spend, grow sales, and increase repeat visits - most KPIs (key performance indicators) that local businesses want to improve. 

If you’re an independently owned business, these ad segmentation tactics will help you compete against local and national brands, many of which are not dialed in on hyper local digital marketing tactics.

So if your customer base is local and you need more customers this should be part of your media mix of local digital marketing tactics. 

Or perhaps your customers are only within 2 miles of your business. You can use the Pin Drop method and set your own radius. Here’s an example with a 2-mile radius. You can drop the pin anywhere you like.

But you can decrease that targeting size all the way down to 1 mile or 1km, and conversely, expand it out to your needs as well. The options are many for you to find just the right geotargeting and cut any waste out. 

Plus, when you are focused on a specific geographic area, you can customize your advertising so it speaks to that audience. For example, “Hey Poway, come see what’s new in our store.” 

Google has improved its demographic targeting abilities over the years. It continues to provide more detailed and granular options for advertisers that want to reach local audiences.

These options are similar to the more well-known Facebook demographic targeting options. Facebook has always had the most robust demographic targeting abilities but Google is definitely offering advertisers some comparable options. 

Remember this about Google, it has lots of data about people. Like more data than the God of your choice.

Here’s a shortlist of how Google collects such relevant demographic data on a massive scale:

Targeting Your Ideal Customer Segments

Here are some of the demographic options to layer on to your geotargeting and help you target only your ideal local customers. 

• Parental Status - with the drop-down on ages of the children
• Marital Status
• Education level
• Homeownership

We can segment based on all ages of kids in the household.

Or, perhaps relationship status matters as a characteristic to your ideal customer. Are they Single? Married? Or “in a relationship.”

What type of education level does your ideal customer have? Is targeting based on education level important?

Perhaps whether they are homeowners matters? Do they rent or own? You can target on that too.

So those are the core demographic targeting options. However, if you need to drill down further, and perhaps reach people lower in the funnel (closer to buying right now from you), you have even more options available.

Keep in mind, though, as you layer on more targets it’s possible that your audience may get too small.

Affinity Segments

Affinity can you help you find people that Google knows based on past behavior signals (where customers are going daily, what stores they visit regularly, purchase habits, sites the customer visits often, and more) that indicate they would be interested in what you’d offer.

For example, perhaps you’re a beauty salon (related post here on using Facebook Ads for Beauty Salons and another post here on Google Ads For Beauty Salons), offer massage, or you do lash extensions, there’s an Affinity segment for Beauty and Wellness:

Or perhaps you’re a restaurant and want to target fast-food diners - there’s a target for that, too:
(a related post here on Google Ads For Restaurants)

This is the type of segmentation you’d typically associate with Facebook’s ad platform that Google now offers. 

In-Market Audiences - People Actively Searching  For Your Product and Services Now

In-market audiences are different from Affinity audiences. These segments comprise of people that are actively searching and researching right now for products and services that you offer. 

Here’s a partial list of the hundreds of options available to you. 

The targeting options are plentiful with high rewards for sales for those advertisers that have discovered these options. 

Overall, Google has excellent demographic and behavioral targeting similar to what Facebook offers its advertisers. 

Putting ad dollars here will grow your total customer base beyond what it would otherwise. Most importantly, if you’re using any traditional marketing tactics, this will cut out much of the waste in print advertising that is so prevalent. 

But remember, the best marketing campaigns layer multiple digital tactics. 

What Are Google (LSA)?

LSA (also sometimes referred to as Google Screened Ads) are Google ads are a relatively new ad product from Google that appear at the very top of a Google Search Results Page above all other Google results. LSA also appear above Google pay-per-click ads.

Here's an example that shows 3 LSA at the top of the page - the LSA show first, then  Google Ads (PPC), then the non-paid organic results. 

To be eligible to show for LSA you have to submit an application to Google and pass its background checks. For attorneys, Google wants to see your licensing, how long you have been in business, etc.

Keep in mind, however, you do have to be licensed in the state your ads show so you will not be able to run ads if you or someone in your firm is not licensed in that particular state and added to your LSA account. The approval process can take up to 2 weeks or more after you submit everything to Google. But once your account is approved, your ads will show with the Google Screened badge. 

When someone clicks on your LSA ad, they go to your LSA page in Google, not your website. Your LSA page has more information about your firm and contact information. Leads can call you or message you from the LSA ads directly and you have a permanent record of all the leads.

Google is keeping this traffic on your Google LSA page and not sending it through to your site. 

How and When Do My LSA Show?

LSA for attorneys are eligible to show in Google search results once you are approved. How often you show and when you show is partly based on your bidding and budgeting, among other factors. 

LSA are eligible to show when someone types a query into Google using keywords, such as, Immigration Attorney Near Me, Personal Injury Attorney Near Me, or Criminal Defense Attorney Near Me. This is similar to how the more common Google Ads (PPC) are triggered to show in a search result to users, but that's the only similarity between the two Google ad products. 

Not Keywords, Job Types

Unlike Google Ads, LSA are set up by predetermined legal categories (i.e. Immigration, Criminal, Personal Injury, etc) that you choose and then sub-specialties (referred to as Job Types), but not by keywords as is the case with the more common Google Ads. See below screenshots.

Your LSA ad competes with the other attorneys that are bidding for those law categories and specialties as well. But your LSA ad does not compete with the typical Google Ads (i.e. Google PPC) which show below LSA ads. 

Immigration Attorney LSA Job Types

Below is an example of the 11 Job Types within the Immigration attorney category that you can target. Each Job Type can be toggled on or off:

Personal Injury Attorney LSA Job Types 

Criminal Defense Attorney LSA Job Types

Are LSA More Effective Than Google Ads/PPC?

In many situations, if your goal is only leads, LSA can be a more effective strategy than Google Ads. LSA are strictly bottom of the funnel lead generation - meaning people that typically need help now. And we have seen LSA that produce leads that cost up to 10x less than a Google Ads (PPC) campaign.

But with LSA, you are not advertising mid-funnel or upper funnel, there's no branding - meaning you are not advertising to people that are further away from converting to a lead right now. So with LSA there's no retargeting, no Display Ads, no YouTube ads, just search targeting for leads that are bottom-of-the-funnel. 

What Makes LSA Ads Effective At Lead Generation?

And if a lead was not valid, for example, it was for the wrong category of legal services or job type, or it was a sales call, you can contest the lead and ask Google for a refund. Google records all the calls so there's a history of what the person is looking for. Google seems reasonable when contesting illegitimate or incorrect leads and credits you - typically the next billing cycle. 

As a side note, we have found that the Google Ads (PPC) cost-per-click for many search terms goes up by 30% - 50% or more when LSA ads show. Google is cannibalizing it's own PPC ads with LSA. 

LSA Cost Per Lead For 3 Different Law Services

The below bar chart shows the cost per lead results for 3 different attorney categories: Immigration, Criminal, and Personal Injury. 

Cost Per Lead (CPL) Comparison : LSA vs Google Ads

To make this comparison simpler between LSA and Google Ads, let's look at the CPC (cost-per-click) for Google Ads and then estimate a reasonable website conversion rate for click traffic.

CPC & CPL For Immigration Attorney Keywords in Google Ads

For Google Ads, the CPC for immigration keywords ranges from $13 - $20 per click.

To get a conversion and an actual customer, it's reasonable to assume perhaps 10% of that click traffic will convert to a lead (your mileage will of course vary, but that's a reasonable conversion rate to use). So if your website is converting 10% of its traffic then your cost per lead (CPL) from Google Ads would cost approximately $130 - $200.

LSA CPL for Immigration Attorneys

Now compare the Google Ads CPL above to that of LSA cost-per-lead (CPL) below. In the below table, we captured 208 leads in 1 month at an average cost of $31 per Immigration lead! That is a 6x or 7x difference in cost per leads by using LSA!

Immigration Attorney Services CPL Comparison: LSA vs Google Ads

CPC & CPL For Criminal Defense Attorney Keywords in Google Ads

In Google Ads, the CPC for criminal defense words costs between $53 and $75 per click. 

To get an actual criminal defense customer, we assume 10% of that click traffic converts to a lead so your CPL from Google Ads would cost approximately $530 - $750. Compared to immigration, we can see as the space becomes more competitive so do the leads.

LSA CPL for Criminal Defense Attorneys

Now compare the Google Ads CPL for criminal defense attorney keywords above to that of LSA CPL below.

In the below table, we captured 42 leads in 1 month at an average cost of $111 per criminal defense lead! That is a 5x or 7x lower cost difference per lead by using LSA versus Google Ads.

Criminal Defense Attorney Services CPL Comparison: LSA vs Google Ads

CPC & CPL For Personal Injury Attorney Keywords in Google Ads

In Google Ads, the CPC for Personal Injury keywords costs between $195 and $300 per click (more than that if you are chasing "car accident" phrases). 

To get an actual personal injury customer, we assume 10% of that click traffic converts to a lead so your CPL from Google Ads would cost approximately $2000 - $3000 per lead. 

LSA CPL for Personal Injury Attorneys

Now compare the Google Ads CPL for personal injury keywords above to that of LSA CPL below.

In the below table, we captured 22 leads in 1 month at an average cost of $229 per personal injury lead! That is a 10x or more difference in cost per leads by using LSA versus Google Ads.

Personal Injury Attorney Services CPL Comparison: LSA vs Google Ads

Summary

So wrapping this up, LSA ads from Google are a far better option in most cases to generate qualified leads for attorneys. Your mileage will vary based on variables such as the your legal niche (i.e. Immigration, Personal Injury, Criminal, Family, etc), competition in your local market, your budget and more. But it's clear that these ads deliver far more economic value versus Google Ads for attorneys.

Google Ads are still useful, of course, but if your budget is limited and your primary goal is only leads then LSA might be a good option for you. But depending on the legal niche, your geotargeting, and other variables it can be challenging to produce the volume of leads you may need. 

Running a digital marketing agency, the one question we are frequently asked is:
How much should I spend on Google Ads (formerly known as Google AdWords, also referred to as PPC), Yelp ads, or Facebook and Instagram ads?

Below I outline a simple approach that you can use. The approach is not limited just to Google Ads spend.

Going through this stepwise process has many benefits for you:

• How much should you spend to reach new customer goals?
• How to arrive at a recommended Google Ads budget
• Clarification of expectations and new customer growth
• Understand how to make marketing accountable and pay for itself

Generally speaking, how much you should spend on Google Ads varies widely. You can spend as little as $50 per month or upwards of $10,000 or more. How much you end up spending depends on your sales goals, how large of a geographic area you're targeting, search volume, and the competitiveness of the industry.

But my recommendation is:

1. What are your goals for new leads, revenue?
2. How much traffic do you need to reach your goals?
3. What is the gap in spending between where you’re at now and where you need to be?

Step One: What Are Your Goals for Leads or Revenue?

The first step in the process can be eye-opening. Ask yourself, what is your goal for new leads or revenue?

If the goal to grow leads is much larger than current results, the amount to spend in Google Ads to achieve that target is equally significant. As you will see in just a moment, after someone goes through the process, they are often surprised at how much they have to spend to achieve the goal.

Let me walk you through a real example.

 We have business-to-consumer (B-to-C) customer that provides mosquito control services. They indicated that they wanted to acquire 50 new customers per month over what they had done the prior year.

Currently, they do various guerilla marketing tactics and local tradeshows and had experimented with digital marketing the previous year. So, let’s see how we can arrive at a realistic Google PPC budget for achieving their goal of acquiring 50 new customers over the previous year.

Step Two: How Much Is the Traffic Going to Cost?

The next step in estimating the Google Ads budget needed to hit your goal is understanding how much it is going to cost you to acquire the traffic. With Google Ads (formerly Google Adwords), we’re estimating this cost based on cost per click for keywords which we can find in the Google Ads Keyword Planner.

A quick search for targeted keywords using the Google Keyword Tool shows that the average cost per click (CPC) is going to be approximately $5 for relevant terms.

The client has stated that they have a budget of $1,500 per month – based on the average cost-per-click, that would buy us 300 visits.

Here’s the simple math:

• Average cost per click in Google Ads: $5
• Monthly Budget: $1,500
• Visits to your website: 300

Step Three: Website Conversion Rate

Understanding your conversion rates requires some digging into your site’s Google Analytics and perhaps call tracking metrics if you have.

For this example, when I mention conversions, I am referring to people that have submitted a form, called you to request an appointment or purchase your product or service.

If you’re not comfortable in your website’s analytics, perhaps your webmaster can help. However, generally speaking, for retail services we’re looking for form submissions (i.e. inquiries) and phone calls. If you don’t use call tracking, I can tell you that phone calls come in at 1-3 times the rate that a form submission does. So if you received 10 form submissions, you could reasonably assume somewhere between 10 – 30 phone calls too.

In general, for a retail services site, the conversion rates (forms + phone calls), if your site is well designed, are probably in the 10% range (your mileage will vary). If you are an e-commerce site, conversion rates are usually much lower and in the 1 – 2% range. However, to better understand this look to your website’s Google Analytics.

Calculating Website Leads:

Website conversion rate: 10%

Total website leads: 30 (10% * 300 website visitors)

Step Four: Lead-To-Customer Conversion Rate

This step is all about how effective you and your staff are at converting leads into customers. Any operational issues you have (i.e. low staffing, poor customer service, etc.) will greatly affect this variable. Operations are intimately tied to marketing effectiveness. Nonetheless, you should have a pretty good sense of this number – if you do not, I would make that a top priority. My experience in working with many different businesses is that their conversion rates when they get an inquiry via phone or email range between 50% to 90% (at least for retail services).

Total New Customers:

Lead to Customer Conversion: 60% (your ability to convert a lead to a customer)

Total New Customers: 18 (60% * 30)

Conversion rates in other channels outside of Google are a lot lower, so you have to be careful about applying this logic so concretely to Facebook ads, or Instagram ads, for example. However, because customers coming from Google are actively typing in queries, they are pre-qualified leads – we know they have a high level of interest because they typed in a search query. Customers coming from Facebook or other channels are not as pre-qualified primarily because they are not actively searching for your product or service since they are on the platform for other social reasons.

Pull It Altogether – Build A Simple Excel Model

I create these types of simple models in Excel, and then I change the monthly budget to see how my total new customers change with increasing or decreasing spend.  Of course, there are advanced Excel formulas you can use, but in this case, it’s just easy to vary your spend to see how your new customers change.

So, getting back to our client that wanted 50 new customers per month – from this, it’s clear that based on $5 per click and the website’s conversion rate along with the lead-to-customer conversion rate, $1,500 per month budget is not going to achieve their goals of 50 new customers per month. The client will need to spend over $4,000 per month to hit the goal. While $4,000 may be a lot for many small businesses, don't get hung up on this - the point is to help you understand what is a reasonable spend to hit your goals. You can spend whatever you want on Google Ads, but in doing so now, you will have a better sense of what's realistic to expect for leads.

Making Sure It Makes Sense Financially - The Final & Most Important Step

The final piece of this process is making sure the cash flow and profit are there because if it's not you have to fix one of these steps:

1. Improve your margin (increase price or lower expenses)
2. The conversion rate of your website
3. Improve lead to customer rate

Let's use the above example to calculate the financial return. Below are two financial ratios, return on ad spend (ROAS) and return on investment (ROI).

The ROAS is just sales derived from the effort divided by the marketing spend. For this client, the average revenue was $500. Thus, ROAS is: ($500*48 new customers)/$4,000 in Adwords spend, so $24,000/$4,000 = 600% ROAS. This is a very healthy return. But what about taking into account the expenses to produce those sales? That's where ROI comes in.

In comparison, ROI takes into account costs and profits. So if the client has a 50% margin on $24,000 in sales, in other words, it cost $12,000 in labor or parts to produce those sales, that's $12,000 in gross profit. Then subtract the Adwords expense of $4,000 from the gross profit of $12,000 which leaves us $8,000. Now that we've accounted for the expense to produce the sales, plus the marketing expense, the ROI is then, ($12,000 - $4,000)/$4,000 = 200% ROI.

I like ROI as a metric better because it takes into account margin/cost of sales, advertising expenses, and profit. Really what ROI has shown us is that out of $24,000 in revenue generated, we paid $12,000 in expenses to produce those sales (labor and parts) and we paid our $4,000 marketing expense which gave us 200% ROI. In essence, after all expenses, this effort generated $8,000 in cash flow! With those kinds of numbers, I would be making this investment continually.

Wrapping It Up:

This model can be used with any marketing channel. The real value comes from understanding that there are several main variables that will affect your success:

• Cost to acquire a customer
• Website conversion rate
• Lead to conversion rate
• Financials

By adjusting these variables, you can gain better insights into how to be more successful and squeeze more profit from your marketing tactics, and most importantly how to make marketing accountable.

A word of caution with other channels. While you can certainly use this approach, balance it with other KPIs (key performance indicators) like reach and impressions within your target audience for awareness.  Facebook ads can contribute upwards of a 30% lift in conversions in other channels which Facebook will not receive all the credit it should.

Hope this has helped you answer the question of how much you should spend on Google Ads and arrive at a monthly budget. Please leave me any comments or feedback below.

Are your customers local? A related post here where I cover Google Ads Local Targeting features to attract customers searching for you now.