Google is by far and away the best tool in your advertising Arsenal. Most consumers' first port of call when looking for any information, products or recommendations is to go to Google. This is why you ABSOLUTELY should be advertising on Google!
When you sign up for Google, it’ll actually take you through the setup of your first Google Advert. Google has lots of handy features to help you if you’ve never used Google Advertising before and they also have dedicated support teams in place you can contact over email, phone or chat who are there to assist 24/7.
Google really is fantastic.
That being said, how do you use such an amazing tool? Looking at it, it can be quite overwhelming with lots of options, ‘bidding strategies’ and keywords you can use.
In my opinion, I would have a look for a basic Google Advertising course if you’re wanting to start out yourself. Or look at getting someone to assist you (like us here at F365!) who know the market and have already done the work before so know exactly what's needed to go into successful adverts.
If you feel confident to go it alone, awesome, my best piece of advice is to do research before you start your advert. Researching KEYWORDS is huge. Google uses keywords to determine where to place your ad. If you have a keyword of “Sandwich” Google will make the decision to show your ad to people who want to “make a sandwich” that are looking for the “best sandwiches in the world’ that want to find somewhere to eat a sandwich but actually your advert might be about a sandwich you’re selling so you only want to target people that are looking to buy a sandwich.
What do you do? Well, KEYWORD doesn’t actually just have to be one word, you could set a keyword of “buy sandwiches near me” that way, anyone searching for that specific phrase should hopefully see your advert!
You’ll want to add around 20 relevant keywords to your first advert. Anymore and you could risk spreading your advertising budget a little too thin!
Google actually has a free handy tool called Google Trends where you can put your website in and it picks out your keywords. Whatsmore, you can even put in a competitor's website address and see what keywords they’re using!
In reality, you know your business better than anyone, unless you’re using a specialist in the field (like F365) to setup your campaigns, you’re probably better spending the time to work on upskilling on Google Advertising because it really is extremely power and will be a driving force behind your marketing efforts.
Facebook is a little different to Google. Most companies use Facebook for Business to Consumer advertising (not business to business) as the majority of its users are potential customers for your business. Facebook also doesn’t use keywords but allows you to define the type of person - their age, gender, interests and behaviours - that you’d like to show your advert to.
Facebook is also very powerful. From the person type or audience you have defined it will then narrow this down using AI (artificial intelligence) and target people who are most likely to interact with your advert.
The longer you run an advert on Facebook the better as Facebook is constantly gathering information and data to make your advert smarter and smarter.
My best piece of advice when advertising on Facebook is to try and really define your ideal customer, who are they? What are they searching for? What is their age range?
By understanding your customer it’ll allow you to give Facebook lots of information for Facebook to use to target those people.
With all advertising you should always keep your eyes on your ROI - Return on investment. How much are you spending per day, per week and per month and how many enquiries, leads and eventually new customers are you getting from this?
Reporting is something lots of businesses really put on the back burner when it comes to advertising. Especially if the advertising is working well, at that point. HOWEVER if you know which adverts perform best, which audience responds best to each type of content this will really help you maximise profit from advertising and ensure that no budget is being wasted.
If you’re unsure where to start with marketing reporting you’re not alone. We set up a Practice Coach Clinic as a way to coach practitioners just like yourself in everything on the marketing side of running a business. If you’d like to get in touch with us to see how we can help with your marketing or marketing reporting, use the contact us page here:
