If you’re a new business owner, or if you’re a seasoned business owner new to paid advertising, you might think there’s only one approach to running paid ads.
It’s easy to mistake paid ads as the strategy itself — but it’s not. Paid advertising is a marketing channel. The strategy is how you use paid ads and what you use them for, which is determined by your top goal.
There are many ways to get paid ads to work for you. In this post, we discuss how to choose the best Google Ads strategy for your business.
Start With Your Goal
If you run a childcare business, the primary goal of your Google Ads strategy should be lead generation — driving interested, qualified parents to your childcare center.
A successful sequence looks like this:
A targeted, qualified user sees your ad → the user clicks your ad → the user performs the desired action (completing a form, scheduling a tour, or calling/contacting you).
Lead generation is your main goal, but it may not be your only goal. You may also want to increase your brand awareness, which means getting your brand in front of as many people as possible.
You’ll need a separate budget for a brand awareness campaign. To measure its success, you’ll only track impressions — not clicks, leads, phone calls, or form fills.
Know the Differences to Reach Your Goals
Your entire Google Ads strategy — campaign type, how you bid, the assets you need, how you interpret results, etc. — will depend on the goal you set. So, it’s crucial to understand the differences between lead generation and brand awareness, and how those differences will impact your strategy.
Lead generation is much more important to childcare centers than brand awareness. Qualified leads are your bread and butter — they convert to enrolled tuition and sustain and grow your business.
Brand awareness may seem equally important, but it’s really just a nice side effect.
Different Google Ad Types Suit Different Goals
Google Ads offers many ad types, each of which lends itself to a different goal and strategy.
Google Ad types include Search Ads, Display Ads, Video Ads, Shopping Ads, App Ads, Smart Ads, Performance Max Ads, and Discovery Ads.
When it comes to lead generation specifically, you have the best chance of reaching users interested in filling out a form with Search Ads and Performance Max Ads. That’s where you’ll find qualified leads that result in the highest conversions.
Use Different Google Ads Strategies for Different Goals
You’ll adjust your Google Ads strategy or bidding strategy according to your end goal. These strategies include maximizing clicks, maximizing conversions, manual CPC (cost-per-click), targeting for lead generation, impression share, and more.
As you can see, there are many Google Ads strategies you can focus on, so it’s easy to get distracted. That’s why your goal must be crystal clear.
For example, let’s take look at the primary goal of lead generation (getting someone to fill out a form or make a phone call). To achieve our goal, we’d use a Google Ads strategy that maximizes conversions and tracks conversion metrics. Conversion metrics include the number of conversions, conversion rate, cost per conversion, and conversion value.
Don’t judge the success or failure of your campaign on anything other than your goal. Everything else — clicks, impressions, losses, gains, etc. — isn’t as impactful because Google’s AI will optimize itself over time based on your goal to get better at finding qualified leads.
Putting Your Google Ads Strategy Into Action
If all this seems overwhelming, we get it. Google Ads strategies are complicated!
When you begin to learn the ins and outs, you’ll realize just how much there is to know and how many opportunities there are to make a mistake. It can be discouraging.
That’s why we’re here.
At Rose Marketing Solutions, we’re experts with decades of experience executing successful Google Ads strategies for clients. If you’re ready to harness the power of digital marketing and paid ads to get qualified leads in your door, we’d love to help you succeed. Contact us today.