Does paying for Google Ads create Gym Bunnies? How Google Ads benefit the fitness industry.
If you have
a gym, golf course, yoga studio, tennis club, online fitness business and you
want to increase membership or attendance, you will have heard about Google Ads
and wondered is this the answer? Will you turn everyone who sees your ad into a
Gym Bunny, golf loving, tennis loving, yoga person?
The short
answer is no. Google is not going to turn everyone who sees your Ad into a
fitness fanatic. Then, what’s the point? Google Ads is built on the same core concepts
as traditional advertising, you are not creating a need by advertising alone. You
need to follow the principles of good marketing first. Know your market, know
your product, know your audience and know the problems and needs you are solving
for your customer. The goal with using Google Ads is to create awareness, brand
recognition and let all the fitness enthusiasts out there know that you exist,
what services you offer and how you can cater to their needs. As with any marketing
campaign set the goals you want to achieve and what metrics you will use to
measure if you are achieving those goals. Just because you are not going to
create a fitness enthusiast out of someone who views your Ad does not make using
Google Ads a bad strategy or that it does not offer benefits to your business.
There are significant
benefits to incorporating Google Ads as part of your paid advertising strategy.
Google Ads build on the work you will be completing as part of your SEO strategy.
It has been proven in the past that organic placement will win in the ‘Google
Paid V’s Organic’ search results. Using Google Ads can help you get on that
number one spot. Getting on the number 1 page of search engine results page is a
large mountain to climb and takes significant time and resources. Using Google
Ads can quickly and efficiently give a boost to getting to the top of that
mountain. As part of SEO you have been working on finding the keywords of
searches by your customers and optimizing the landing pages on your website and
blog to convert traffic into sales. Google Ads should be conducted in parallel
with SEO as you continue trying to drive organic searches to your website and
blog. While doing this you improve your Quality Score within Google and your Ad
will achieve a higher Ad Rank and improve the likelihood to be on the number 1
page in Search Results by your customers for those key words.
Google Ads operators as a pay per click platform so you only pay for those that click on your Ads. This means that those people that are clicking through are doing so as they have been searching for what you are offering. Building on the importance of the keyword research that you have conducted for SEO. Create your Ads which can be either Text, Display or Video with ad copy that includes the key words that you have identified in your research to be what your customers are searching for.
Once these
high value customers click on your ad, the work does not stop there, to capitalize
on the investment you have placed in the Ad campaign you need to create a way
to covert them into a sale. At Hubspot they
have created a comprehensive list of best practices to increase sales and conversions.
It is worth a read so you can avoid some of the many pitfalls and incorporate best
practices in Google Ad creation. After all placing the Ad is only one step in
the process.
Google’s
own economic
impact study estimates that
“The economic value provided by Google Ads on observed
cost-per-click activity across a large sample of our advertisers. Assuming
advertisers are maximizing profits, is between 2 and 2.3 times their total
expenditure on Google Ads”.
With these
returns it makes sense to try and incorporate Google Ads.
You have
the ability to add in a monthly cap in spending so you can stay within your
monthly budget. Using Google Ad there is the potential to reach millions, so
the fact you can cap your budget is necessary so you won’t be left with a huge
bill when operating on a cost per click basis. As we determined in a previous
blog on why
SEO is so important Google is the number one search engine used in most countries,
it makes sense that Google Ads is the platform recommended to use as part of
your paid search strategy. One other benefit is that using Google Ads is an iterative
process so you can continually change Ad wording, keywords and keep trying
until you find the ads that work for you.
The benefits
of Google ads will be derived by doing your homework first so you can make the
ads work for you. Google coined the term ZMOT and it is based on being “ready
to meet shoppers in their way at their preferred time”. (Lecinski, 2012). This
is the great benefit of Google Ads; your business or service will show up in your
customers search when they are looking for your product or service. If you
match their keyword search with your Ad Copy then you are increasing the likelihood
you will find all the gym bunnies, tennis loving, golf playing, yoga enthusiasts
when they search for you. How much would you pay to appear in the search “Yoga
Studio in Navan”? Well zero if you are Dublin but it has a high value if your
business is in Navan. That is what Google Ads can do for you, it can help you
find your highly selective target market.
At RHOCK
creative we are specialists in Campaign Strategy, SEO and Google paid Ads in
the fitness industry, follow our blog to keep up to date on marketing trends in
the fitness industry.
By Helen Mc
Fadden
You’re right, Google won’t make anybody be your customer or a loyal supporter, it will most certainly drive traffic to your site if you know how to use it correctly – because after all, Google Ads, Google Analytics and so on are all tools. With paid ads it is no different, learn how to use SEO and Paid Ads in tandem and results will follow. We then create the content to go hand in hand with these tools and essentially hope for the best.
ReplyDeleteSuch an informative blog post! Paid Ads are definitely the first step in getting your business out there but there still is an awful lot of behind the scene work to be done too. I agree with Oxana, it is just a matter of learning how Google Ads work and how they can be used best to help achieve your own marketing goals. I will definitely check out HubSpot's link as they are super at highlighting the need to know tips and tricks in the industry!
ReplyDeleteReally great blog, Helen, especially liked the insight around not creating a need by advertising alone. Businesses who think it's just a simple 'throw money at the problem' could face failure quickly. You really have to do the hard yards first, as you said, know your audience, what do they need, and what can your business provide them, only then can you adopt a paid ad campaign strategy to get that information out there. If it's the other way around and people who have no interest in your product or service are getting your ad then really, what are the chances this will lead to conversions?
ReplyDeleteWhat a great post, Helen! Thanks for putting this together! You've really made it clear that while paid ads can be so useful for small businesses, work and research does need to be done behind to scenes to make these ads work and at the end of the day, placing the ad is only a small step in the whole paid advertising process. The ability to add a monthly spending cap for Google Ads is a great feature for small businesses who don't have deep pockets and I think could definitely be an incentive to explore paid ads more. Businesses are more likely to try our paid ads if they know they won't be overrun with high bills and in turn, more likely to invest more into their paid ads in the future after seeing the success first hand.
ReplyDeleteGreat blog post Helen! As you mentioned, knowing your customer is very important for your ads to be successful. If you don’t know your audience, their wants and needs and the results you want to achieve from creating the ad in the first place, well then you have a problem on your hands. Good point about how google ads can show up when your audience is looking for a product or service to meet their keyword search, who doesn’t love Google doing the hard work for them by finding the exact product they searched for.
ReplyDeletegreat post
ReplyDeletegreat tips and some excellent takeaways and food for thought.
Caitriona