Google Ads

[El Barto]

Today I signed up for Google Ads for the first time. Has anyone used it and received business as a result?

I understand that in theory it is an incredible place to advertise yourself and be seen but I am still skeptical at this point.

 

[sunnybob]

from a business point of view, all advertising is good advertising. from the viewers point of view...... (hammer) (hammer) (hammer) (hammer) (hammer)
Back in the mid 80's (before fax machines, let alone computers), The mrs and I sent out 500 printed flyers advertising our business, all in hand written envelopes to every professional in the area. :shock:
I got ONE customer from it :roll:
But, he spent enough money to cover all the costs and then some profit as well.

 

[El Barto]

Yeah it’s a funny one. Whenever I see “Ad” on google I immediately dismiss it as Spam.

At least their pricing and terms are flexible.

 

[Trevanion]

Sounds interesting, so you're essentially paying to be top of the queue of google searches for a particular thing in your area?

I know a couple of people who have had serious boosts in their business through Facebook and Instagram and having friends and family share the posts. I guess it does limit you to a fairly small pool of people but word of mouth goes very far, even if it's through a keyboard rather than spoken word, "Ugh, I could really do with a new front door..." "Oh, I saw a post on Facebook about a bloke down the street who makes doors the other day" "Oh! I'll have a look at that, send me the link!"

For traditional adverts like you see on the sidebars of websites and stuff I have Adblock, I don't see ads except for on this site where I made an exception, and even then I don't pay attention to them much. The amount of tat that comes through the post should be illegal too, I've probably binned a few trees worth of Everest windows and similar flyers by now.

 

[eezageeza]

Just be careful that you have targeted your ads very carefully - its possible to rack up big bills very quickly if not (DAMHIKT!).

 

[thetyreman]

I'd say showing your work on instagram is an essential in business thesedays, I've heard good things about facebook ads, it's highly targeted so you can choose your area, age, and loads of other details, ideally you should just use it to drive traffic to a website or blog whatever you prefer to sell your actual core product, there's still a lot to be said for making youtube vids if you have the balls to get in front of a camera and speak, again as long as you use it as a tool to drive traffic to your main site or products you are trying to sell. My guitar teacher/mentor told me that paying for google ads didn't do much for his business, so he stopped it, you could always try it and if it doesn't work move on.

p.s it's worth being on twitter as well, tiktok is supposedly exploding.

 

[El Barto]

I'm sure Google Ads can be fantastic, if you get it right. And yes I imagine it can get expensive!! Although the budgeting tools look ok, you can choose a daily amount to spend and it only charges you per click/website visit/interaction. Which does make me wonder, if you exceed your daily usage, does your advert disappear or something? This I haven't found out yet.

Obviously Instagram is a massive one and again if you get it right can exponentially grow your business. But it's a lot of work - properly maintaining social channels is job in its own right. My plan for Instagram is to get a good body of work together, then properly start posting to it for marketing etc. As a business, posting every now and again isn't a great look.

As for Facebook, just no. Facebook is the lamest platform out there. But undoubtedly good for advert placement.

Food for thought!

 

[eezageeza]

Its horses for courses of course - I tend to think that Facebook is 'last years thing' generally, but we used it to advertise a sale locally, and it was fantastically successful - one post from us was shared several thousand times in 3 days, and our shelves were cleared!

 

[PeteBowen]

I do Google Ads full time, most of my clients run smaller businesses. Happy to discuss the pros, cons and potholes with a fellow woodworker.

If you want to stalk me a little I've written a lot about Google Ads from a business perspective at www.pete-bowen.com

 

[El Barto]

Its horses for courses of course - I tend to think that Facebook is 'last years thing' generally, but we used it to advertise a sale locally, and it was fantastically successful - one post from us was shared several thousand times in 3 days, and our shelves were cleared!

That's amazing!

 

[El Barto]

I do Google Ads full time, most of my clients run smaller businesses. Happy to discuss the pros, cons and potholes with a fellow woodworker.

If you want to stalk me a little I've written a lot about Google Ads from a business perspective at www.pete-bowen.com

Thanks Pete, much appreciated and I may well get in touch!! Going to have a read of what you've written too.

 

[El Barto]

I figured I'd make this public as it may be of use to other people looking to do the same thing. Since my ad went live I've had 475 impressions (from Google: An impression is counted each time that your ad is shown to someone visiting a search results page or website on Google.) and 15 clicks on the ad - this has cost £18.05.

So far this has resulted in no visits to my website (as far as I can see) - this isn't a complaint, more of an observation that the advert is being seen but not acted upon. Which leads me to think it needs to be tweaked.

I should note that my Google Ads budget is TINY, only a few quid per day for this, so that may or may not be affecting things too. It's interesting nonetheless - I'd like to figure out the formula!