If it’s not all-that-obvious already, there are heaps of reasons why paid search and display campaigns could be an invaluable, game-changing investment for your business. Not only are they an effective strategy for increasing traffic to your website, but they’re cost-effective, laser-edge targeted, and deliver fast results.

If you’re not already convinced, here are six extra reasons to consider:

Paid search is one of the most cost-effective ways to advertise.

Let’s dive into why that is! Think back to traditional advertising methods - newspapers, on TV, on billboards... you pay for the space that your ad occupies, and that fee can usually be rather extortionate, without a guarantee the right people will even see it in the first place. The best way to think about pay-per-click advertising is imagining it as if it were the same kind of thing as TV/newspapers/billboards in principle (reaching large numbers of people), but with a whole load more specificity in its reach (and being solely digital). Many people then think that they will have to pay crazy money for the search engine results, but that’s one of the big benefits of paid search ads — you don’t! If you’re a little confused, that’s okay! Basically, instead of paying for the ‘space’ that your ad takes up on search results pages, you only pay Google for your ad when someone clicks on it. It’s like only buying a car once you’ve test driven it. This makes paid search management cost very reasonable, because the only time you pay Google is when there is serious potential for making a sale - paid search ads are so direct in their targeting, that if someone clicks on it, they’re usually ready to buy from you or they’re definitely considering it. In fact, paid search visitors are 50% more likely to purchase something than visitors who arrive on your site organically. And, there are STILL more benefits!

Would lightning-speed results turnaround be enough to convince you!

Since ads start to show up for your targeted keywords (such as ‘cabinet makers’ or ‘new kitchen auckland’) as soon as you make a bid (decided how much money you want to put into pushing your business) on that keyword and have a great quality score (a relevant service to offer the person clicking), it’s not unlikely you’ll see a bunch more traffic to your website within the first week of starting your online advertising campaign. When it comes to other longer-term strategies, like SEO (search engine optimisation), it can take a few months to really reap the benefits — though those benefits are amazing, and worth the wait. However, if you’re looking for a strategy that delivers fast results (especially now that even more businesses have increased their online presence post C-19), paid search is the strategy for you. Just make sure you audit your campaigns often to ensure it's working optimally.

Tracking campaign results is key!

Without being able to dig into the analytics of your campaign, you won’t know what’s working, and what’s not. When you’re able to track the results of a campaign easily, the hassle of finding out what’s going wrong is much easier to see and change. For example, A/B tests are a great way to track how users interact with your ads. You simply decide on a variable to test, and make two identical ads - except for the variable. To give an example, imagine in ad A you see a child playing on a swing set that has been custom-made, and in ad B the swing set is against a studio-like white background. It would be very interesting to see if the humanised, personable ad is more effective than a clear, distraction-free ad that simply shows the product. At the end of the day you need leads or online transactions to keep the lights on - and we can track those ‘conversions’ back to the keyword used to find your website and optimise that to increase your success! Result tracking is priceless, and the fact that paid search campaigns allow you to do it so easily is a remarkable benefit for your business.

Paid search ads are hyper-targeted.
Your ads allow you to target your specific audience with specific content that is most valuable to them. Combined, this makes for a higher chance of conversion. My old boss used to say “I wanna fish where the fish are!” Here are a few ways Google Ads allows you to target your audience: Demographics - one of the best ways to target your ideal customers, the demographic audience targeting allows you to serve ads based on a person’s age group, gender, household income, location, and even the kind of device they use to search. In-market - means people who are already searching for solutions in your category or industry - people who you can target with your offer. This allows you to have a leg up on your competition, since your ads show up — almost intuitively — to customers who are the most interested in solutions that your business provides. Custom intent - we’re having lots of success with this targeting type. When you set a custom intent audience within Google Ads, you’re able to choose words, phrases, and keywords that relate strongly to those who are most likely to make a purchase on your website. Remarketing - one of the most beneficial advertising strategies out there, remarketing allows you to essentially re-serve your ads to users who have visited your website before but didn’t buy or fill in your contact form. Remarketing ads are extremely beneficial because they keep your business and products at the top of customers’ minds — especially those who were close to making a purchase before. It’s basically like a reminder that will revive the interest they may have lost somewhere along the journey last time for whatever reason. Similar audiences - to take your display campaign a step further, you can also target similar audiences to the ones that you target with your remarketing campaign. For example, if the overall demographic of your remarketing list is 50-year-old homeowners, and the intent is to sell a new kitchen, you could also serve this ad to other 50-something-year-old homeowners — regardless of whether they’ve searched for your business. Their similar interests and demographic triggers the ad when you target in this way. Content keywords - targeting specific keywords within the content of your ad allows your ad to appear to users who search that key term. The great thing about targeting with keywords is that you can change them to reflect the time of year and what people are likely to search for. You get creative control over the keywords you use to target a specific demographic or search intent, too.

With paid search ads, it's like spoon-feeding your customers an easy way to buy one of your products or services.
That’s because after a user clicks on one of your ads, they are dished up the most relevant page on your website to their search query. This page will include opportunities to entice users to take the next step in the buying process, whether it be providing you with their email address, or even making a purchase. Some examples of these sales pages would be a page with a contact form on it, a page with a quote form, or even a page where a user can simply click “buy now.” No matter how your page is set up, it’s the first place a user will go after clicking on your ad — which creates the perfect opportunity to provide an easy way to contact you or buy your product.

If you combine all the info you’ve just read about paid search and display ads, it’s obvious that they can increase your revenue — simply due to the increase of targeted traffic to your website, the effectiveness and relevance of the page they land on, and the ability to manage costs. The combination of these three key features of a paid search ad allows you to see a huge revenue increase for your business, and quickly. It’s the fastest way to appear on page one, and in fact, on average, 41% of clicks go to the top three paid ads that show up on search engine results pages. That means that ad clicks account for nearly half the clicks that are made on the first page of results. Surely, you want to do everything in your power to make sure potential customers see you before they scroll?!