Business owners hear it all the time: to make money, you have to spend money. Online advertising can certainly attract new customers, but it’s way too easy to just throw away money buying ads that don’t work. What is your strategy now, and what are your goals in beginning or reforming an ad campaign?

Unless you have been hiding or are technology free (how are you reading this?), ads pop up on your searches, articles, apps, and just about everything else you do online. Ads work, even if you think they don’t! A big draw to go with Google Ads is that your business website shows up at the top of a search, making it more likely that it will be clicked on and you will convert that person into a customer. Before you start paying for ads, the following will help ensure your online advertising budget justifies itself.

Landing Page
When your ad is clicked on, what will prospects see? That’s the landing page. Presented with irrelevant information or no call to action, prospects are more likely to move on to another site despite your having paid for their click. Your landing page should address the customer’s problem and show them how your product or service is ready to help them solve it. Invest in your landing page before investing in ads.

Mobile Friendly & Responsive Website
Nobody enjoys opening a website that cannot be properly seen on a mobile device or tablet. The majority of people will leave it immediately. Be sure that your website looks and performs equally on a desktop, mobile or tablet. Otherwise, the negative experience will not net you any positive results.

Audit Your Web Pages
Before you sell a home, there is a lot of time spent cleaning, repairing, and making it look attractive. The same should be the case for a website before purchasing ads. Are the titles accurate and descriptive? Does the website have quality images that download quickly? Is the content relevant and informational? Is the web content easy to read and the site easy to navigate? Your ad might be getting a lot of clicks, but if the website is not attractive, the conversion won’t happen.

Budget
This is the biggest question that has no concrete answer. Google Ads allows you to set your daily and monthly budget and gives you approximate numbers of what that budget can do for your campaign. Of course, the larger the budget, the more clicks your ad is likely to get; the more clicks, the more potential new customers. However, your campaign can be successful with a smaller budget if the ad is written to narrowly target your audience and the landing page hooks them. Our recommendation is to play around with your budget from month to month and settle on an amount that makes sense for you, and one that is netting results.

Monitor Analytics
An ad campaign running without monitoring analytics and making adjustments is pretty much like throwing money away. If you’re considering investing in ads on your own, be ready to educate yourself on key analytics like Click Through Rate, Cost Per Click, Keywords, Search vs Display, etc..Put in the time to get your money’s worth, or pay for a competent consultant.

You’ll hear by many that Google Ads is the way to go, but before you make that investment, take the time to lay the foundation so that the clicks on your ad actually pay off