Search ads are a type of pay-per-click (PPC) marketing that allows advertisers the chance to bypass a search engine's organic search rankings and place their ad at the top of the search results page. With pay-per-click ads campaigns, advertisers only pay a small fee each time a user clicks on their ad making PPC ads a cost-efficient way to reach your target audience.
Platforms like Google Ads offer the unique chance to show ads to users at the moment that they are actively searching for a product or some information. In this article we'll give an overview of how search ads work and how you can leverage the power of PPC campaigns to grow your business.
PPC search engine ads were invented in 1998 by a small startup called GoTo.com. It wasn't until 2002 that Google launched their own search engine ads platform and quickly became market leaders. In 2024 around 90% of internet searches are made through Google, dwarfing its closest competitor Bing who only have around 3-4% market share.
With such a huge user base it's clear to see why Google Ads is such an attractive platform for businesses looking to market their products. With Google Ads the average cost-per-click is around $2.69 while Google claims that the average ROI for search ads is around $8 for every $1 spent (link to stats here and here). Although these reports are focused on the US market and are averages across all industries, they paint a pretty positive picture for search ads and show why the search ads market continues to grow year on year.
Search ads make it possible for marketers to achieve quick results by targeting people who are actively looking for something, whether that’s a product or information. This is the main strength of search ads - you can access potential customers at the point at which they are looking to buy. It's a lot easier to convince someone to buy your product if they're already looking.
The search ads market has historically been larger than the social media ads market (the other form of PPC marketing). However, social media recently surpassed search ad spend and is forecast to reach $247.3 billion in 2024 while search ad spend is forecast to reach $224.8 billion in 2024. Both markets overtook TV advertising in 2022 and look likely to continue to increase market share at the expense of TV advertising in the near future.
Even so, search ads continue to provide excellent opportunities to digital marketers and could provide your company with a quick boost in traffic, leads and sales.
To get started with search ads you need to be clear about what you’re offering, which should help you to figure out which keywords to target. Keywords are the words or phrases that tell Google what your ad is advertising allowing Google to show the ad in relevant searches to potential customers.
Let’s say that your website sells dog leads, so you start off by building a campaign around the keyword “dog lead” and a few variations and closely related phrases such as “dog walks”. Google has some great tools for expanding your pool of keywords or there are plenty of third party keyword tools. You can add more keywords and phrases as your campaign develops.
When Sally wants to buy a new dog lead for Rover she might search for “best dog lead for small dogs” into Google’s search engine. At that point you have an opportunity to show your advert to Sally above all the organic, non-paid listings on her search results page.
We mentioned it above but it's worth repeating - this is unique to search ads because the user is making their intent clear with their search and is therefore much more likely to buy. In marketing terms you have the opportunity to jump in and show your product to potential customers right at the end of the sales funnel. In the real world it would be like getting a notification when someone is thirsty and being able to appear out of thin air and offer them an ice cold beverage, a great sales opportunity!
As you can see from the chart above, the opportunity that search ads offer is reflected in the cost-per-click. Search ads are much more expensive per click than social media ads, because with social media ads you don't get to jump in just as the user is looking to buy - on apps like instagram there's no way to tell!
When a user performs a search on Google they are looking for something specific. If that’s a product they’d like to buy then you don’t even need to convince them to buy, you just need to get them to buy your product.
A common question when it comes to search ads is “what should my daily budget be in order to see results?”. Every business, brand and product are different so it’s impossible to give a one-size-fits-all answer.
How prominently your ad is displayed will depend on factors including your budget, but also the number of other adverts competing for your keyword and the quality and relevancy of your ad and landing page to the users search. The final position of your ad is decided through an automatic auction process based on these factors.
Your daily ad spend will depend on a number of factors such as…
Google Ads generates estimates of how many clicks your ad is likely to receive based on your budget and keywords, and can also give you the industry standard spend so you can get a very rough estimate of how effective and competitive your budget will be. You’ll need to stay on top of your statistics like CTR (click-through-rate) and conversion rates to refine your campaign efficiently.
For small businesses the search ads budget could start out as low as £10 per day while large corporate brands can spend as much as £500,000 per month or more. As your campaign runs you’ll start to get data on the performance of your ads. When it comes to setting search ad budgets, much of it comes down to analysing the data and trial and error adjustments.
The main part of your ad consists of a headline and a description and you can add variations of each so that Google's algorithm can mix and match to see which combinations work the best. You can also augment your ad with callouts, site links, phone numbers and images. It's advisable to make use of as many of these extras as possible because as well as providing extra info to the user - it also makes your ad take up more space on the screen!
You'll also need to add a link for the users to land on when they click your advert. The landing page could be a page on your regular website or a specially built landing page that funnels users into a particular course of action such as submitting a lead form or watching a video.
Marketers often use dedicated landing pages because they have a better chance of achieving the specific goal of the campaign and can be easily tracked whereas a link to a normal page on your website leaves the user journey more open ended. For instance if you’re advertising a course then the landing page could be focused on getting the user to fill out a lead form.
It's important to score high on Google’s quality score so the landing page should be highly relevant to the keywords you are targeting with your ad as well as the wording of the ad itself. Relevancy is a huge ranking factor and can drastically alter the CPC and the profitability of your campaign. If your ad is about dog leads then your landing page should be too and reflect that in the content and meta data!
Google Ads also includes an AI assistant that can help build your ad from the content on your landing page which makes it easier to put a campaign together quickly. Google will suggest new keywords to target based on users searches as your ad is shown and can also draw assets from your landing page such as images and text.
Once your ad is running you’ll want to track how many people take the action that you wanted them too. Conversion tracking is really important when it comes to optimising your ads and improving your return on investment (ROI) and will help your ads get better results over time. The algorithm looks at any conversions you’ve made and tries to replicate the success by showing more ads to the type of user that previously converted or at a certain time of day or in a certain location or by focussing on showing your ad for some keywords more than others.
Conversion tracking is done through the use of tags that trigger when a user performs an action on your page such as a button click, watching a video, scrolling down the page or submitting a form. Google offers some easy template versions but it’s often better to get an expert to set up a more advanced tag so that you can track actions more accurately.
To run an efficient campaign you should also keep an eye on other metrics such as click-through-rate (CTR), cost-per-conversion and the percentage that your ad is shown at the top of the page compared to your competition.
While search ads provide quick, short term results, they can take a little while to reach their potential. As your campaign progresses you’ll receive more data allowing you to make better decisions and informed adjustments. In the first few weeks the algorithm is in the learning phase so you don't want to be adjusting too much straight away.
When it comes to any PPC marketing campaign good data and good analysis are crucial so Google Ads provides lots of metrics to analyse your campaigns performance and you can into even more detail by implementing Google Analytics.
Search ads are a great way to target potential customers who are actively looking to buy now and Google has a range of tools to help you show your ads to your target audience and get your ad performing effectively.
Relevancy, budget and competitor campaigns are all important ranking factors for your ads and you should be able to get a good idea of what you'll need to spend to rank well as you are setting up your ad.
Use conversion tracking to help the algorithm optimise your campaign and stay on top of your other Key Performance Indicators (KPI) such as CTR and cost-per-conversion to make sure that your campaign is running smoothly.
While it is totally possible to set up and run your own PPC search ads campaigns successfully, it can also be even more valuable to hire a professional PPC expert to avoid mistakes and make sense of all the information platforms like Google Ads provide.
Jimi Mac offer expert advice and campaign management services for Google Ads so feel free to reach out at any point.
