It generates a comparable amount of revenue to the second, third, and fourth-placed platforms combined.

When you consider that these just happen to be Facebook, Alibaba, and Amazon, it is an even more remarkable feat.

The fact that it is the top online advertising platform does not necessarily mean that Google Ads should be chosen just for that reason, although it is certainly a signal that it produces results if businesses invest so much of their ad spend into it. There are more reasons that resonate with what business owners wish to achieve.

Highly Targeted Advertising

With most media advertising, the targeting is very broad. Even having an ad in a niche magazine about pets is going to be shown to pet owners of all kinds, which isn’t a great help if you are trying to sell a dog training course. It is being seen by owners of cats, birds, fish, and reptiles. Even many dog owners aren’t going to be that interested if they’ve already got a well-behaved dog.

Compare that to Google Ads, where you can set up ads for specific search terms like “dog training course” and write the ad copy so it speaks directly to someone who is looking for a course to help them train their dog. Now apply this principle to the products and services you wish to sell, and you will see that you can use Google Ads to finely tune your campaign to be as specific as you wish in order to target the correct customers.

Be In Total Control

One of the greatest benefits of a Google Ads campaign is that you are in total control of it. The keywords can be whatever you wish them to be, following research into which will be the most effective. The ad copy can be written to suit your target audience and split tested to see which version works best.

Other factors that you have control over include the amount you bid for each keyword. This will also follow detailed research and can take account of what your competitors are bidding, with the potential ROI based on the products and services the ads are promoting also considered. You also have options to pause a campaign and restart it again to take account of seasonality or your business’s capacity to deal with the number of orders received, for example.

Suits All Budgets

The diversity in terms of the size and wealth of the businesses that use Google Ads successfully is massive. Whilst there are certainly multinational corporations that use Google Ads, there are even more small and local businesses that use it, often with great success. By that, we do not mean that they outsell the giants of their industry, but by implementing a properly planned and effective Google Ads campaign, they can outsell their closest competitors.

This is achieved by proper research in terms of keywords, effective targeting, and the use of ad copy that attracts clicks. Further to that, their landing pages are also optimised to convert. These conversions help to improve their Quality Score in the eyes of Google, which boosts the number of times their ad is displayed.

One of the greatest benefits Google Ads offers is the ability for businesses to outsource all the work necessary to create an effective campaign. Keyword research, ad copy, website development, and conversion optimisation are just some of the pillars of a Google Ads campaign that works. These are just a few of the skills and best practices a professional digital marketing agency can provide.

Some of the more basic reasons for this can be attributed to factors like insufficient budget or trying to operate within a highly saturated market.

There are other reasons which can cause a campaign to fail that are more attributable to the specific elements of how Google Ads work. We are going to look at three of the most important because if you get one or more of these wrong, your Google Ads campaign is almost certain to fail.

Poorly Designed Landing Page

This is certainly one of the most common reasons for a Google Ads campaign to fail. Despite good keyword research, excellently written ads, and clever bidding, if the traffic these generate is sent to a landing page that won’t convert, your efforts, and your ad budget, are simply wasted.

Some of the basics of a good landing page include relevant content, a clear call to action, attractive images, and trust signals. If web design isn’t your thing, then outsource to a website development company that can redesign your landing page and ensure it converts too.

Your Ad Has a Poor ‘Quality Score’

One of the determining factors as to how high your Google Ads are placed is the Quality Score. For your reference, the other is how much you bid. Quality Score is a value that Google assigns to your ad based on a few key elements. These elements include the relevance of your keywords, the quality of the ad copy, and the user experience when they click through to your landing page.

Quality Score is extremely important to the success of your Google Ads campaign as it relies on elements both on Google (your ad) and your website (landing page). While your bid amounts may be down to your budget and in a sense fixed, the factors that can impact your Quality Score can all be worked upon and improved.

More refined keyword research will improve their relevance, better ad copy will increase your click-through rate, and a better-designed landing page will increase conversions. Google can see all three of these happening, which leads to them increasing your Quality Score and the ranking of your ads.

Your Ads Are Irrelevant

One of Google’s number one priorities for those who use their search engine is to provide them with results that are as relevant as possible to what they were searching for. This applies as much to the paid search results via Google Ads as it does to their organic rankings.

With this in mind, Google wants every Google Ad that appears to be as closely aligned to the search term used. The ad headline and ad copy should be highly relevant to the keywords it is targeting. If it isn’t, you will struggle to get clicks, and when Google identifies this, your ads will not be displayed anywhere near as highly or as often as you’d like.

Alternatively, if you are paying for impressions rather than clicks, you will literally be throwing money away because, when your ad appears, no one is clicking it due to it being irrelevant.

If your Google Ad campaign is failing, due to the reasons highlighted, or for reasons you are unsure of, one way to solve this is to get a professional digital marketing professional to help. They can assess your Google Ads campaign, make the necessary improvements, and turn a failing campaign into a profitable one.

We will discuss pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, as these ads are the most used and effective.

There are numerous online websites where you can run paid ads for your family law practice to attract new clients, which are some of the most visited online. That includes the #1 website at the time of writing, which is Google,  although some websites covet that top position and are doing all they can to acquire it. That is good news for advertisers as it means more competitive pricing and increased traffic as these websites seek to attract more visitors.

One issue for many family lawyers reading this is that they may not be aware of the top websites for PPC ads and how each works. We will address that issue by highlighting the top two so you have what you need to know about ads on the two premier PPC platforms.

Google Ads

Google uses two main networks,  namely Search Network and Display Network. Most businesses can use either. For search, companies will bid on search terms, and when their bid is successful, their ad will be shown when that search is entered. The display network exists across thousands of other websites that partner with Google and display ads relevant to the website or page that a visitor lands on.

You can set up different types of campaigns using Google Ads. These are:

• Search: Traditional PPC ads based on bidding for keywords on Google’s search engine.
• Video: Ads of up to 15 seconds that appear on videos published on YouTube.
• Display: Normally, image ads appear on a vast network of websites.
• Shopping: This is for retailers selling goods via their e-commerce store or Google’s merchant centre.
• App: For businesses with an app, and every business should, these ads allow them to promote it.
• Smart: These are campaigns that are auto-generated by Google.

The total budget you set will be influenced by several factors, which include:

• How competitive are the keywords that you are targeting
• How many keywords are you targeting
• Whether you opt for pay-per-click or pay-per-impression
• The performance of your ad in terms of click-through rate
• What are you willing to spend daily

Microsoft Ads

Previously known as Bing Ads, Microsoft Advertising works for businesses in numerous sectors, including the legal industry. It operates on a principle almost identical to Google Ads: a company will bid on keywords and only pay when someone clicks on their ad or when a certain number of ad impressions have been instigated.

As Microsoft shows ads on the Bing, Yahoo and AOL search engines, it allows your ads to appear on all of them. Microsoft also has a network of partner websites where their ads are displayed.

Microsoft ads do not offer as many campaign types as Google; the three they offer are Search, Shopping and Dynamic Search, which is the display ad network.

Calculating your budget is done by taking account of all the same factors as you would with Google, although you may find that, on average, your overall spend with Microsoft Ads is less than on Google Ads.

Further, you may also have decided that you want the campaign to be managed by a Google Ads management company rather than trying to do it in-house or by yourself.

This then begs the question, “How do I choose the right Google Ads management company?”, so we are going to help you to answer it.

In truth, there are many approaches to this, however, the tried and tested one is to measure any Google Ads management company you are considering against several key elements in terms of how they operate, and the results they can potentially achieve.

The first is to assess the experience they have, and specifically their track record. This can be done in several ways, but one of the most effective is to ask them to show you the results they have achieved with previous campaigns they have managed. This does not necessarily mean having access to commercially sensitive advertising data relating to another business but an overview of previous campaigns and how they performed.

Speaking to previous clients is certainly something you should seek to do. One of the benefits of this will be not only can you ask about results, but you can also get an understanding of how the Google Ads management company interacted with its previous clients, and whether these clients considered the experience to be a positive one.

As you discuss your needs with a potential Google Ads management company you should be asking them questions about some of the specific elements that are required to make any campaign successful. You do not need to be an expert on Google Ads to ask about these factors, and the answer the company gives should be clear and understandable. Be cautious of any company which goes overboard with industry jargon, as they are often doing so to simply to impress.

If you think about it, if any Google Ads management company truly had your interests at heart, they are going to want you to be comfortable working with them, and that includes the communication between you. If, before you have even become a client, they try to bamboozle you with buzzwords and marketing lingo, what is it going to be like when you are questioning them on results?

Assuming your prospective PPC company isn’t full of jargon, you should clarify that they have knowledge and experience of proper keyword research, especially as this is one of the most critical elements of PPC advertising. This is especially important if you are a small, local business as effective keyword research can be hugely advantageous when it comes to using Google Ads to target local customers.

Another aspect of Google Ads that any decent marketing agency should be able to show a track record of conversion optimisation, and especially as it relates to landing pages. This is an area that many digital marketing agencies overlook, or simply ignore, which is alarming, as it can be the difference between a successful or unsuccessful campaign. Even if they optimise an ad properly, and generate a decent amount of traffic, it is no use if once that traffic reaches the website, it leaves almost instantly.

This creates two issues, the first being little or no conversions for the traffic you paid for. More seriously, a poor landing page causing visitors to click away quickly is identified by Google as a negative, and as such your ads will receive fewer and fewer impressions. This is why it is essential that you ensure any Google Ad management company that you employ is also able to offer you services relating to website development , and specifically, optimising your landing pages, as otherwise all the other services you pay them for will be compromised.