GENERAL
Not necessarily but it’s a big help to your digital reputation and provides a solid online foundation of information about your business .  If you’re just starting out as a local business and marketing budgets are tight, you only need a Google My Business page to be found on Google Search and Maps.  This is also all that is required if you wanted to do paid advertising through Adwords Express (which AdHawc typically does not recommend to clients). However having a website can only help and with Google My Business you can create a website for free.
Technically anyone can but if you don’t know what you’re doing you can end up wasting a lot of marketing dollars for little return. That is why it can be very important to work with an honest & experienced marketer who knows and understands the full breadth of online products and services to make sure that you’re using them effectively and making every one of your marketing dollars count.
According to the Boston Consulting Group, business with an online presence grow 40% faster than businesses without. But creating a website is not enough. You need to find customers to visit your website and reach users with the right message when they’re in the right state of mind to purchase your products or services. It’s like starting a restaurant in the middle of the desert and not telling anyone what you serve or how to get there.
This depends on several factors. First off, if you have no online presence whatsoever then how are your customers going to know you exist beyond word of mouth? If this is the case then you will definitely benefit from online marketing.
Secondly, if your a poor business with a poor product or service to offer your customers then chances are online marketing won’t help. But if you’re a good business with a great offering then chances are online marketing will only enhance what your business already is.
Lastly, like anything else the effectiveness of your marketing really depends on the work you put into it on an ongoing basis. Are you setting and forgetting about it or really trying to make sure every one of your marketing dollars is being used appropriately? Are you leveraging all the different products, levers, and automation tools necessary to get the most out of your marketing budget? There’s no one-perfect strategy that works for every business so continual focus, thought, and an open-mind needs to be paid to your online marketing strategy on a consistent basis.
Results can vary by advertiser and industry. Some industries and local markets can be more competitive than others, therefore auction costs can be more expensive. However one recommendation would be to allow a campaign to run at least 3-5 months before prematurely deciding it does not work. This is especially true for advertisers in service-oriented businesses, where the cycle can often take several months before a customer decides to make a purchase.
Again this depends on several factors. Different industries and local markets have different auction dynamics and competitive pressures. In certain services industries where competitors are paying as high as $100 per click, then spending $50/day might not even be worth it to test. When setting up an initial consultation you can request what an appropriate budget amount will look like for a given market.
Also consider thinking about how much you pay on marketing now. How much are you paying on billboards, local TV ads, circulars, network marketing? Are these methods really working out for you given that most people do their research online? If not, you might want to consider shifting all of what you’re paying over to online marketing, where you can actually reach people who are looking specifically for products and services that you offer!
AdHawc can offer setting up and implementing a campaign for you for a one-time cost. Or if you’re a local business then you can choose a package where a Google My Business profile will be created along with a simple, quick and streamlined website can be created with all of the most important details about your business. If you’d like to manage your campaigns yourself, AdHawc can offer individualized trainings via Skype or Google Hangouts at an hourly rate.
Sometimes it helps having a consultant who can see the big picture and knows and understands ad distribution products that can help execute an overarching online strategy that aligns with your business objectives. Premium tier service goes beyond implementing and managing a search or video campaign and can help influence your entire content and marketing strategy.
BILLING
Check out the pricing sheet here
It’s better for clients to own their own Google Ads account and have their own credit card associated with their accounts. This way in the very unlikely event that your not happy with services, you can take your account and historical data and work with another specialist. Because of this clients are responsible for automatic payments made directly to Google for any click activity from their campaigns. AdHawc separately charges a one-time campaign setup fee and flat monthly fee for ongoing campaign management and optimization, independent of Google.
At this time payments can be made in the following ways: PayPal, Venmo, Chase Quickpay or through monthly checks. Please inquire with steve@adhawc.com for more information
Yes, customers who setup a recurring payment through Chase Quickpay, Paypal or Venmo will receive a 10% discount on their campaign setup fee and a 5% discount on monthly payments. Please inquire with steve@adhawc.com for more information
We understand that changes happen and businesses might need to tighten up marketing spend. If you need to cancel your service please email steve@adhawc.com immediately and your service will be canceled 30 days from teh day of your notification
Please email steve@adhawc.com or call (949) 534-2198 and leave a message immediately. Your campaign will be paused within three hours from notification.
In order to help maximize your ROI, Google can potentially show your ads more often. When this happens your total daily spend can be as high as 2x your max daily budget. However over a full month the system tries to average the daily spend out so it will not exceed the daily budget you spent multiplied by the number of days in a month (30.4). More information can be found here
There are numerous ways you can see what type of conversion value your online campaigns actually drove. With Google Analytics and Adwords conversion tracking you can append a piece of code on your website and find out if your customer came from one of your marketing campaigns and performed some type of action on your website that you deem valuable (ie.. sale, filled out form, signed up for newsletter…etc). If you actually have physical store locations and want to know if your online ads led to customers visiting your store, then this can be done simply by linking your GMB to your Adwords account to track in-store visits. More details about this can be found here
SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and refers to methods and tactics you can use to improve your organic or natural listings on Google.com. These listings are basically everything on the search results page that is not a paid ad. Pay-per-click search engine advertising refers to the actual paid ads that show up on the top or bottom of the search results pages. This includes text ads, text ad extensions and product image ads.
Being able to effectively do both will only benefit you in the long-term. However note that SEO is more of a long-term investment without any guarantee of driving results. Many SEO companies require thousands of dollars upfront and promise higher results in 6 months time, which in many cases never happens. With pay-per-click you start seeing impressions, clicks and possibly conversions immediately. Also with changes to Google’s search algorithm, paid ads now only show up on the top and bottom of results pages, no longer on the right-hand side. This means in most cases paid advertising shows up above organic. Lastly, be wary that SEO companies can often make considerable content changes to your site to elevate your listings. This means bloating your site out with content related to queries to try and trick the system to think that it’s finding the most relevant content.
You can check out a great video by Google’s chief economist Hal Varian on the Tutorials page
There’s numerous factors (more than anyone knows about) that goes into determining auctions and ad rank. However the most important factors are CTR (clickthrough rate) + ad relevance. It are these signals that determine your ad rank and your quality score. A stronger quality score improves your ad rank and makes the amount that you have to pay per click to beat out the competitor below you a lot more efficient. Check out this informative video by Google’s chief economist on our Tutorials page
1) make sure to write effective ads that are relevant to the query and landing page,
2) make sure to utilize all of the right ad extensions that make sense for your customer,
3) choose the right keyword selection for your business,
4) use the right bidding methods to bid optimally against high value keywords. Check out this informative video by Google’s chief economist on our Tutorials page
GDN
The Google Display Network can help you reach people while they’re browsing their favorite websites, showing a friend a YouTube video, checking their Gmail account, or using mobile devices and apps. It is designed to help you find the right audience. Its targeting options let you strategically show your message to potential customers at the right place and the right time. A great overview of the Google Display Network can be found here
The display network can show text, display banner ads in numerous sizes across all devices, and responsive display ads that can automatically adjust their size, appearance, and format to fit available ad spaces. They can transform into text or image ads.
Google campaigns have exclusions in place that can prevent your ad from showing up against sensitive content. You can also implement things like keyword negatives or placement exclusions, and exclude sensitive topics like politics or religion. More details on exclusions can be found here
Video Advertising
Video is the most compelling form of advertising online. With video you can tell a story or speak to your customer in a way that you could never do with text or traditional banners. According to a ThinkwithGoogle article, 68% of online watched YouTube to help them make a purchase decision.
Video campaigns are charged on a cost-per-view basis. There are two types of video campaigns available: Trueview Discovery and Trueview In-Stream ads. With Trueview Discovery you only pay when a user clicks a thumbnail to automatically play the video. With In-Stream ads you get charged for a view when a user watches the completion of a video, or 30 seconds of the video, whichever comes first. More information about video ads can be found here
There are a lot of inexpensive services out there that can help you create a quality video or commercial. Fiverr and Upwork are two examples of sites where you can find talented freelancers who can create an effective video for you that you can promote on YouTube. If you need recommendations on a potential videographer, reach out to steve@adhawc.com
Here’s a great playbook that can help provide guidance on how to create really good video ads.
There are so many different robust targeting levers available for Google video ads nowadays. Whether it be demographics, people that are in-market for a product or service, people with a high affinity towards something, or using traditional keyword, placement or topic targeting where you’re reaching the content as opposed to the audience. In addition, when you layer on the ability to target different devices, existing customers, and networks, you can see how it can be a little overwhelming. That’s why it is helpful to lean on an expert to help determine exactly who you’re trying to reach, what you’re trying to say to that person, and how you want to interact with that person.
Mobile Advertising
Universal App Campaigns streamline the process of efficiently and effectively finding individuals that have a high likelihood to download your app by promoting across Google networks like Search, Play, YouTube, and the Display Network.
With Universal App Campaigns, you can optimize your campaigns to drive more in-app conversions. You can provide existing users with deep links to your apps that will allow them to make additional in-app purchases. More information can be found here.
Other products
At this time Google Shopping Ad customers will be reviewed and accepted on a case-by-case basis.
Right now the core focus is on Google ad products. However support for other ad products will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis
At this time Non-English campaigns are not supported
Google is always making changes to their products and policies. Some of these changes are minor like an enhancement to a particular product. However some are very big changes that can have a big impact to your campaigns. Two examples of this are when Google changed the character limits on their ad text to include two headlines and double the amount of characters on their description line. Also recently Google introduced a completely new user interface within Adwords with a completely new campaign experience. Staying on top of these changes and reacting quickly could have a huge impact in staying ahead of the competition for new customers