The secret of creating effective Google ads

Traditional forms of advertising like TV, radio and print have pushed often irrelevant and unwanted messages out to consumers of media for over five decades — and been paid a fortune to do so.

This ineffective “spray and pray” format of advertising assumes that one in a certain number of people will buy a product or service and that if the message is disseminated far and wide enough, it will eventually lead to sufficient procurement of that product or service.

Before the advent of the internet, and Google in particular, the Yellow Pages was heralded as an information searching masterstroke and had people desperately thumbing through it in order to find the services they required — usually in an emergency.

To this day, the Yellow Pages advertises with the “Click, Flick, Dial, Find” byline to give you the information you require to get your burst geyser fixed, for example. By today’s standard, this is clumsy, slow and requires the mass cutting down of tons of trees to produce.

In the 21^st century when people search on Google they expect to see results that are relevant to what they are looking for. The same applies from the perspective of the advertisers; they expect to be delivered customers who are interested in what they have to sell.

When people type search queries into Google they are stating their intent. Marrying that intent to advertising at ‘the moment of relevance’ is how Google generates billions of US Dollars in profit annually.

Users click on ads that are relevant to what they searched for. It is therefore extremely important that your ad is displayed only when it is relevant to the search query and to your business. It is no good having an ad show on the query “Electrician in Randburg” when you are neither an electrician, nor do you operate in Johannesburg, for example:

Here is an example of a poor advert that wouldn’t get clicked on:

This is a more relevant ad to the search query:

What’s the difference?

• Reflect the search query: The second example is applicable as it mentions the actual suburb associated with the search query.
• Feature your unique selling point (USP): The ad gives compelling reasons to click — ‘no call out fee’ as well as ‘beating all quotes’. This is vital to making your advert compelling to a user.

By creating relevant adverts that appeal to users who are searching for your product is a guaranteed method of making your ads popular. In the process, Google charges you less for your ad and you increase your marketing return on investment.