Setting up Google Ads for SMBs starts with a key technical consideration.
SMBs know that advertising online with Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and more is a great way to connect with their target audience, drive more opportunities, and grow their revenue. Small and midsize businesses don’t always have the expertise or knowledge base to properly set themselves up for success, though. (Boost post vs using the actual Facebook Ad platform comes to mind.)
In the context of getting started with Google Ads, being setup for success means your ad account has the capability to leverage all of the tracking data that you’re collecting for more complex, ‘funnelized’ campaigning.
Once you have the Analytics tracking script live on your site, you need to enable remarketing and advertising reporting features inside your Analytics account.
Step 1: Create a Google Ads Account
This couldn’t be easier or more obvious. Go to https://ads.google.com/home/ select “Start Now” and create an account. You won’t be billed at signup but have your credit card handy to finish the registration process.
Step 2: Connect Your Google Analytics Account with Google Ads
This is the key technical consideration for setting up Google Ads and to get the best advertising tools and features in the platform this is non-negotiable. Connecting Analytics and Ads allows you to:
- See ad performance data in Google Analytics
- Import Analytics metrics into your Ads account
- Most importantly, leverage Remarketing functionality
Remarketing is the feature that lets you show targeted ads to users who have already interacted with your website or other digital property that has the Google Analytics tracking script installed.
If you’re not sure if your website has Google Analytics installed, you can use the Tag Assistant Chrome extension to check. If you need to create an account and add it to your site, get started on the Google Analytics home page.
Next, you’ll need to enable remarketing and advertising reporting features inside your Analytics account.
Ideally, this should happen before you launch any Google Ads campaigns because building a remarketing audience can’t happen retroactively. You’re building these remarketing / retargeting audiences only on a go forward basis.
Why remarketing is so important
Remarketing allows you to serve ads to groups who have previously interacted with your site. These interactions can be further defined/segmented based on how they’ve interacted with your site. Traffic that has previously visited your site has a higher chance of converting, or doing what you want them to do.
The availability of remarketing audiences allows you to treat your advertising like a funnel. This gives you a higher likelihood of advertising success especially in B2B PPC advertising.
SMBs without a relatively deep understanding of Google Ads should tread lightly
Without knowing that remarketing is possible, this feature is almost certainly overlooked by small and midsize businesses that don’t have an appropriate amount of marketing expertise. To be frank, if this amount of marketing knowledge isn’t present in an organization, there’s a significant likelihood that PPC advertising is going to be a frustrating and costly endeavor.
All of the variables involved with Google Ads like keyword research, audience building, landing pages, creating good ad copy and media, and just using the UI can be complicated for first time advertisers.
My advice to SMBs getting into PPC is to start small. Don’t spend significant chunks of your marketing on budget with Google Ads until you’re sure that you have the capability to generate solid conversions and that your Google Ads leads reflect meaningfully into your pipeline.