Google Ads Performance

[stevent2323]

Three days ago I posted an ad on Google Ads for my startup painting company.

So far, we received 2.12K impressions (people scrolling past the ad), 29 clicks on the ad, and zero phone calls (I have now set up a free business phone thanks to this subreddit). Advertising has cost $7.92. I put a monthly cap of $150 to advertising on google ads.

The metric breaks downs were: 1.53K times on mobile devices, 1.14K (in my area), and 420 times to people between ages 25-34.

I will also try advertising on FB and may try print advertisements. Additionally, once I do start to generate sales, I can leave ads on neighbors of the customers where I can give them x% discount since I am already servicing the area. Additionally there is a form to fill out on my website where customers can fill out their information and needs of the paint job. I have received zero responses from potential customers on my form.

I don't expect instant progress but does anyone see any points of improvement that I can build upon? Any suggestions on how to make my ad translate into more sales? Are there certain people that I should be networking with to generate sales (e.g. real estate agents)?

 

[charli]

@stevent2323 Have you done keyword research? Are you bidding on keywords with high competition? Are you also targeting long tail keywords? Have you compared your keyword research with google to Bing? Bing can be an underrated place for search ads.

Can you share the copy of your search ads? Its hard to judge such a small data set without seeing the copy.

Are you a/b testing landing pages? Do you have any tools like hotjar set up? Do you have a submission form as well as a phone number? It can be hard to get users to make phone calls. With a short submission form you may get more conversions.

You should have another campaign retargeting users that visit your site. Once you have conversions you should be creating lookalike audiences.

Last thing: for KPIs, you want to focus on conversions more than anything. Impressions are mostly meaningless bullshit data from ad companies so they can put huge numbers in front of customers.

 

[stevent2323]

@charli "Have you done keyword research? Are you bidding on keywords with high competition? Are you also targeting long tail keywords? Have you compared your keyword research with google to Bing? Bing can be an underrated place for search ads."

Not yet, I want to wait about 2 weeks and then redo my ad with that data.

"Can you share the copy of your search ads? Its hard to judge such a small data set without seeing the copy."

I am not sure if this is allowed but here you go. I am not self advertising on reddit (if a mod reads this). My business phone number and website are in there but I took them out for reddit.

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"Are you a/b testing landing pages? Do you have any tools like hotjar set up? Do you have a submission form as well as a phone number? It can be hard to get users to make phone calls. With a short submission form you may get more conversions."

I have not used hotjar but this is a great recommendation. One thing that I am going to change is currently potential customers have to click on a link to fill out a form if they are interested. I will just put that form on the bottom of the home page so they don't click away.

"You should have another campaign retargeting users that visit your site. Once you have conversions you should be creating lookalike audiences."

I am not sure what this means. Please elaborate.

Thank you for your insight, time, and helping myself and others out.

 

[charli]

@stevent2323 I’m on mobile and busy so it’s hard to respond but just to your first response. You’re wasting your money if you’re not doing keyword research. How do you know what you’re bidding on? How do you know how much to expect to spend?

You don’t need to run any ads to do this research.

Edit: your ad copy is bad too. It doesn’t have a hook or great CTA, it has grammar errors, and you should capitalize the first letter of every word. It’s very amateurish right now.

 

[1hope4all]

@stevent2323 Let’s also see your landing page.

It’s good that you’re taking action but the others are right in that your keywords are super important and also your copy and landing page.

Get those right and it will make your life way easier with google ads.

 

[juelrei]

@stevent2323 If you are just starting put all your focus on facebook ads. Google ads comes later when you are more established.

You should be able to spend $20-30 to get each customer ($5 a lead, maybe close 1 out of 5). Use only the message ads.

The cool thing about facebook is you can go look at other companies ads in your space for companies you like and just copy them. No need to reinvent the wheel.

We are in the hardwood floor refinishing business and do 40x in revenue of our fb ad spend. And we’re only 6 months in. None of our competitors in our area even do fb ads, it’s pretty wild how untapped it is.

I’d recommend looking at what this guy is doing -

 

[stevent2323]

@juelrei Thank you for your time. I'll look into FB ads

 

[juelrei]

@stevent2323 Happy to help! Good luck

 

[nyupsych]

@juelrei No offense but I don't agree. Google ads for people looking for your service. FB ads for brand building or for products that are new. Both great platforms but when people want their houses painted their first reaction is to search on Google. There the difference between the platforms

 

[juelrei]

@nyupsych No offense taken. It’s not that I don’t think that google ads are worthwhile, just less so when you are first starting.out. People searching for services via google are likely to go with the contractor with lots of reviews that is well established, and because of that those contractors should be able to outbid you.

 

[nyupsych]

@juelrei I see what you mean. I have a client for Google ads and they had 4 reviews when I started working with them.

What I see also with the example above is that those bigger competitors they are quite easy to outbid because of the way that they have their ads setup.

I targeted specific services and by optimizing click cost have gone down and conversion up by being specific and setting up the ads.

The cost may be slightly higher for Google ads but it's also more linear. You know exactly what the user is searching for.

I think I may be biased as well. I find FB a pain to work with.

I'm sure many will benefit from our little discussion

Take care

 

[juelrei]

@nyupsych We should get more into google ads. Any resources you can recommend?

 

[nyupsych]

@juelrei What tyoe of business are you looking to run ads for?

 

[juelrei]

@nyupsych Hardwood floor refinishing, new floor installs, installs for sports courts.

 

[nyupsych]

@juelrei In your case local Marketing

Yt

Aaron young Google ads

Clicks geeks

Mike Mancini

The above should get the ball rolling for you

I don't know how familiar you are with Google ads but ideally you will want to do the following

Target by service and area
Page for each individual service. Don't send visitors to your homepage

Too much to put here.

Follow the above and you will see calls

Any issues. Let us know

 

[ecign8]

@nyupsych Why are you arguing with someone getting 40x revenue on ad spend? Why am I going to bid $40 per click for electrician near me against every giant multimillion dollar electrical contractor? Google won't even let me bid on smaller terms. Google search ads are a joke for small companies in big cities, they should be fully on Facebook

 

[nyupsych]

@ecign8 I wasnt arguing. I gave my opinion as you gave yours to which I also respect. I simply believe Google is more targeted. Each to their own. Thanks

 

[narniaforever]

@juelrei Other than this shared video ( thank you ) where did you learn creating and buying social ads? I'm starting this month at clients request to explore social network marketing ads

 

[juelrei]

@narniaforever I have a business that sells on Amazon so I’m familiar with PPC. But specific to construction and facebook I learned a lot from this guy - https://youtube.com/@mattthibeau

 

[daddyof2]

@stevent2323 Sounds like either a keyword issue or a landing page issue.

Impressions sound sufficient to get enough clicks for a few conversions.

What keywords are you bidding on and what Ad Groups did you put them in?