Google Ads Inbound Marketing Strategy for Small Businesses

Why should you use Google Ads Inbound Marketing for your small business?

For a long time, there was disdain towards PPC from those professing the inbound marketing methodology. The coiners of the term inbound marketing, HubSpot, threw it in with the likes of cold calling, cold emails and billboard ads as broken, impersonal and interruptive marketing.

I believe that PPC is a great way to increase sales quickly, but it can be very costly if you don’t do it properly. Generally, it is outbound PPC advertising that is the costly option. When Google Ads are mixed with inbound marketing strategies such as boosting blogs or video content, it can make the cost of acquisition much cheaper than normal.

Lets go through everything about Google Ads and how they can aid inbound marketing.

What is AdWords?

Google AdWords is a paid advertising platform where businesses can target specific keywords, locations and offers to compete for the space to display to searchers. When most people consider AdWords they think of paying for advertising and, in 2010, HubSpot declared PPC campaigns wasteful and unhelpful to the consumer in an over-saturated web.

however, HubSpot has changed their mind, agreeing that PPC campaigns can be an effective marketing channel as part of a complete marketing strategy. Search marketing is unique in that your customers start the conversation by searching for a topic.

AdWords gives marketers the chance to highlight their content to searchers looking for an answer, information, or solution, making it easier for customers to find their business.

The buyer’s journey

AdWords targets customers when they’re actively searching for something, increasing the likelihood that they’ll make a purchase decision. It is profoundly different from traditional advertising, where many people are targeted with ‘disruptive’ outbound marketing.

Source: Hubspot

The buyer’s journey is the cornerstone of inbound marketing, targeting prospects with content at different stages of the buyer’s journey: awareness, consideration, and decision. When people search online, they’re looking for an answer; inbound marketers can set up their ads to answer questions and target people that will find them relevant.

At the awareness stage, marketers can hit a large audience who have become aware of a problem or opportunity, using broader topical keywords to capture traffic.

At the consideration stage, we know that consumers tend to compare services and products as they are aware of a solution. Here marketers can use more targeted and service/product specific keywords to show their ads to more targeted traffic.

In the decision stage, PPC becomes highly competitive as searchers know exactly what they are looking for and advertisers compete to engage with and display their specific solution to those searching with ‘commercial intent’.

The ability to target specific keywords which reflect buyer intent can help move prospects down the funnel towards a purchase decision. Remarketing can also help drive those who have previously engaged with your business further through the buyer’s journey.

AdWords campaigns aren’t only dependent on keywords; they can also be used to target people based on geographic location, websites they visit, and the content they consume online.

AdWords Ads

Keeping your ads relevant and useful is helpful as it boosts your “quality score,” in turn lowering your bids for keywords. It also maintains the inbound marketing ethos:

• Show ads to people at the right time
• Answer searchers questions
• Move leads down the buyer’s journey

In some cases, AdWords can deliver a better user experience for the online searcher. If someone was in Sydney looking for a “mechanic”, they are not going to want to ship their car to Melbourne to get their car fixed.

The Mechanic in Melbourne can elect to show ads only to people in Melbourne or within a certain distance from the shop. This creates a positive user experience for the searcher and saves the Melbourne mechanic on unnecessary clicks and costs.

Content Amplification

Combined with your content efforts, AdWords is an important tactic to amplify your content, allowing you to dominate the search results and take traffic away from your competition.

Set up a system to understand the keywords and search queries that bring people to your site to be sure you’re advertising relevantly for what they’re looking for and how you can help.

Use this data to inspire and write compelling content around these topics on your website for search engine optimisation – once you show up in organic results you won’t have to pay for clicks.

The best results come from making full use of your AdWords findings to shape your inbound campaigns and efforts.

Inbound Google Ads

Before you go away and start (or increase) your Adwords activity alongside your inbound marketing, a word of warning – we are still inbound marketers, we want to do things the ‘right’ way, so make sure you ads are made for inbound.

PPC + Inbound = Inbound Ads!

to keep us on the straight and narrow we created the following criteria for classifying your ads as inbound and staying true to the inbound way…

• The ad is shown to the right people, at the right time
• The ad presents a direct solution to a search query / problem
• The ad moves the searcher further down the Buyer’s Journey

At least two of the above must be true for the ad to be considered an ‘inbound ad’.

Why merge Inbound Marketing strategies with Google Ads?

Google Ads uses the bidding model to position your paid search ads in the browser. Based on all the information entered, the Ads platform awards the most relevant positions to the highest bidder.

It is an amazing tool for those companies looking to increase brand awareness and traffic, taking their digital marketing campaigns to the next level.

Some of the characteristics of Google Ads compared to other platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram or Twitter are:

1. Campaign creation is faster and results are instantaneous.
2. Fantastic exposure in the largest search engine results on the Internet.
3. Ads have grown in size and are becoming more attractive.
4. It allows you to measure results and maintain control of expenses.
5. You pay per click to your website, with the most competitive industries having a higher cost.
6. There’s a set up for the campaign that allows you to stop the ads when the budget is spent.

Fast Ad creation, fast results

The effect of Google Ads is practically instantaneous. Before creating and launching your campaign, it is advisable to do a little keyword research, decide on your budget, set a goal, and some ad groups. It’s also important to write short but direct ad copy to increase effectiveness.

By activating the pixel, a large amount of user data can be collected very quickly. The pixel is the best way to see what happens when traffic is generated to your website. In this way we will be able to measure the results and draw conclusions in order to have full control of the ads.

More exposure in search results, better reach.

Google Ads offers the opportunity to appear on the first page of the largest search engine on the Internet when users are actively searching. Did you know that every day 1 billion people type www.google.com and make a total of 3 billion searches?

Thanks to the combination of Google Ads and inbound marketing techniques, we achieve a greater impact of the campaigns due to the suitability of the content we disseminate.

Google Ads is a great way to reach your target audience, increase your online presence, and drive conversions.

The Serial Seller Conclusion

We are massive fans of combining Google Ads with Inbound Marketing content as it can reduce your bidding costs.

We suggest a a slow approach to Paid Advertising. Focusing on high ROI ads which is most likely your retargeting ads, customer lists which are targeted and then going into your cold advertising through lookalike audiences.

Book a call with us to understand how we advise our clients to scale their PPC strategies in the most cost-effective and successful ways possible.