If you run a business, you are likely going to make some changes in your advertising efforts from time to time. Some failing companies believe that running paid ads will be the one action that saves them, which is usually not true. On the other hand, there are business owners who stubbornly refuse to pay for advertising, believing that AdWords or other paying platforms will not benefit their goals.
While paid advertisement is not a cure-all, you still have to implement it using strategy and research. You have to evaluate your efforts in order to figure out how to scale your business to maximize your goals.
Set Yourself Up For Success Before Scaling Your Business
One of the most important strategic decisions you’ll have to make while running a business is when and how to scale it to be able to adjust to changes in a cost-efficient and time-saving manner. Scaling your business does not refer necessarily to growing your business, but rather optimizing it to your present business needs.
This requires planning, strategy, and targeted execution, and there are several steps you need to take before you even tackle your paid advertising campaigns, including Google AdWords, regardless of your decision to manage your ads in house or to hire an agency.
Build a Website
If you want your brand to show up anywhere on Google (or any other ad platform), you absolutely have to have a web domain – whether you operate a brick & mortar business, advertise on Facebook, or use another platform to sell your products and services.
There are many affordable options you can use to quickly create a simple website on your own, like Wix and Squarespace, but if you are looking more long-term, you might need to consider hiring a web designer to set you up with WordPress. After all, it is not enough that you have an attractive site; you have to make sure that it is functional and invites people to buy what you want to sell. If your website is ineffective, you are going to have problems running ads and scaling your business.
Here are some factors that will greatly improve your advertising efforts:
- Make sure your site is mobile-friendly. People spend about 70% of their media time on smartphones and it is crucial that your site loads quickly and appears in scale with the mobile screen. Check with your web hosting provider, as most of them offer mobile-optimized templates.
- Design your site so that it’s not too text-heavy as you have only a few seconds to convince a visitor to click on a paid ad. The layout and copy of your website should be functional, clear, and easy to navigate.
- Your website should be modernized, as the landing page is the first impression users have and the most important factor in deciding if they are going to buy something or not.
Set Up Google Analytics
Unless you are an experienced marketer, you might think that all you have to do is start advertising and all the tracking will be dealt by your advertising platform. But integrating Google Analytics is the best way to track traffic to your site and all actions that follow. Setting it up might sound daunting for a beginner, but it is one of those integral parts of your strategy which will make your life much easier. The Google support page will help you set up Google analytics, or you can watch a step-by-step how-to video.
Create Your Conversion Goals
You have to be able to figure out what actions are most beneficial to you and tracking your goals will help you determine how to scale your business. Check out this page to learn not only how to set up conversion goals through Google Analytics, but what they mean. What you want to achieve is to learn how many people visit your site, which pages are most effective, and what percentage of users complete your previously set goals. If a user converts from AdWords, it will show up as “goals” in Google Analytics. The most important information you’ll gain from this is connecting your costs to results, which will help you immensely in scaling your business. And don’t forget to make sure that you have processes implemented that would ensure that you can handle all the actions derived from your paid-ads campaigns.
Build a Brand
Most businesses fumble in this area, as they dilute their brand and don’t set the firm, unambiguous, and consistent tone over various platforms.
In order to even think about scaling your business, you need to develop a consistent brand identity. Your brand will be visible and you have to make sure that it makes the impact it should. Think about your logo, the colors, the design, and make sure they are professional, discernible, and well-executed. Having a blurry logo will not bring you a sense of legitimacy or inspire the confidence in your users. Your brand represents you and your business goals and the more consistent it is, the more it can grow efficiently, across various platforms.
Everything you put out should uniformly conform to your goals: the tone of your copy, the design, and your sale-promotions. Of course, your business might encompass various products or services, but the most important aspect is to find a unified concept that will offer the users a connection between your brand and your offer.
How to Scale Your Business, and Why It’s Important
When you think about scaling your business, you have to keep in mind that SEO and PPC go hand in hand. When you use them together properly, you will attract new customers and build your brand awareness.
Google AdWords is one of the best, but most complicated advertising platforms. It offers many options to build an ad campaign that aligns with your business and it gives you a bunch of metrics to evaluate. Yes, you can spend hours and hours working on your campaigns and at times you can be discouraged. But this is one of the most important tools and you need it, as it’s invaluable to driving traffic to your site.
Here are some ways you can scale your business and make the ads work for you.
Add Keywords
This is one of the easiest ways to gain more traffic with AdWords utilizing SEO. You can use a variety of tactics to find new and relevant keywords and one of the best ones is to search in your term report. Some of these keywords (and you’ll be surprised at the variety of keywords that brought users to your site) will be extremely useful to targeting your ads.
- Use Google Keyword Planner (found in “Tools” menu in AdWords) to find new relevant keywords and add several of your best converting keywords to get suggestions (make sure that keywords are connected to your business and not too vague
- If you want to find new keywords, you should spend some time researching several of your competitors’ sites for different keywords they are bidding on. The easiest way to do this is to Google your competitors and see what pops up.
Use Ad Extensions
Adding new keywords will not be enough to scale your business, but using ad extensions can make your ads become more relevant in SERP (search engine results page.), which will bring more traffic to your site and increase your PPC.
There are a few different ways you can use ad extensions:
- Sitelink extensions are placed underneath your ad on the SERP and they allow you to direct traffic to various pages on your URL, like FAQs, resources, similar services or products.
- Callout extensions do not provide additional links to your site, but rather add more text to inform the user about your products and services. They are a perfect vessel for call-to-action and combined with some creative language they can drive traffic to your site.
- Location extensions allow you to make your business known in your local community by displaying your address, phone number, directions to your business and Google Maps pin along your ad.
- Call extension lets you include your phone number with the ad. Most people spend their media time on mobile phones, and having call extension will make it easier for them to get hold of your business, as all they have to do is press the “phone icon”.
- RLSA (Remarketing Lists for Search Ads). You can find your remarketing ads on the Google Display Network and they let you reach out to the people who have already visited your site. You will have to tag your website for remarketing using Google Analytics or AdWords and set up your targeting settings and your audiences. You have to think strategically when selecting your remarketing ads and offer something different from your usual content. Remember that your goal is to revisit your site and click on the the ad.
Summary
Mastering Google AdWords to scale your business can be time-consuming, but even if you spend hours and hours figuring it out, it will be worth your time as it is the best when it comes to search engine advertising and it’s the fastest, cheapest, and most effective way to drive new sales to your website.
Make sure you implement the best strategies for your business goals to grow your AdWords account in order to generate more traffic and increase sales. If you need a little help, consider taking advantage of Mutesix, a leading full funnel ad agency with proven results. Contact us today and see why we’re the industry choice for successful brands worldwide.
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