Google Ads for Northern Ireland, UK & Ireland
I'm Chris Jones, in Hillsborough, County Down, close to Belfast and I provide Google Ads and Bing Ads account management throughout the UK and Ireland.
I'll manage Google Ads and Bing accounts for companies anywhere and I mention Northern Ireland since it is my location and businesses looking for local services can meet me face to face.
Also pay per click advertising for businesses in Northern Ireland can have unexpected characteristics and I can meet expectations with experience in that regard.
My Google Ads expertise stems from 2004 when it was called Google Adwords. I set up an account where I initially paid for the kind of mistakes your business is probably making now. I still manage an account where I pay some of the cost of advertising so I have always been focussed on making accounts as efficient as possible and that's what I offer to you.
Independent
I place myself alongside you as an experienced helper who recognises the search engines' desire to maximise revenue and possibly not offering the best value for your particular situation. As well as businesses who use pay per click advertising I am also very happy to help Ads Agencies when their workload peaks, just drop me a line any time!
In working life I have the space to think differently and indulge a core value to try to create something that outperforms and keep it that way.
Paying for my own Ads means I sometimes call myself a "click miser" where I look for the biggest bang per buck out of Ads campaigns and that usually comes from sticking to text Ads at least at the outset. However if in addition you also want to explore and measure the effectiveness of the plethora of other features provided by Google Ads and Bing Ads then I'll help with that too but you'll have your eyes wide open.
One of the most revealing reports in Google Ads
My favourite text Ad set-up would give you the best chance of working out if pay per click pays its way for you. I talk about that below so you can do it yourself, however it takes some discipline and is the kind of drudge I'm geared up for and that will leave you to do what you do best.
Machine Learning Magic
The Ad platforms are keen that you use their AI and machine learning facilities. Their machine learns through trial and error. They make the errors and you pay for them. It's genius but you don't have to fall for it.
Granular exact headline text Ads, here's a free tip
Some things work better than others, profoundly so for Google Ads. The traditional text Ads work the best especially when you stop letting Google show your Ads to the wrong people.
If you are already using an Ads agency, after reading this you might ask them "Can you match the headline to the search term like Chris Jones does?"
Bear in mind they will say yes but its take diligence and a particular kind of effort so they probably won't. Luckily it is easy for you test. Just type your favourite searches into the search box and check your Ad to see if the first line of your Ad closely resembles your search.
Search engines reward good performing Ads with a lower cost per click or better Ad positioning but which Ads perform best?
The range of Ad types available is bewildering but always begin with text Ads. Here's a tip that I have always found improves performance. Here's a technique I call granular exact headline text Ads.
Think of the searchers and their journey and their user experience. Try a little amateur psychology.
It starts in the head. A desire is formulated and articulated into words typed into the search box. The searcher invested a little bit of effort into deciding those words. The searcher sees those words typed and they are foremost in the searchers mind. Those words are currently the searchers main focus.
Your competitors produce Ads with a headline approximately "matching" those words because they are of the right topic. You produce an Ad that EXACTLY reiterates the words in the searcher's head. Your heading stands out and its very difficult to ignore despite your Ad not appearing in the optimum position.
The searcher has invested effort into the choice of words. Often a searcher doesn't find the answer first time and has to alter the words. There's a frustration in having to do that so now there's a little emotion invested in the new search term. It seems the least you can do is reiterate those words and if you do then your Ad headline is not only going to stand out, it will be compelling.
This might sound like I'm over dramatising the situation but presenting the searcher with a same thing they typed gets a higher click through rate (CTR) since few competitors do that.
There can be a sense of relief, a positive feeling for the searcher in seeing your exactly matching headline. It builds confidence that after clicking your Ad they have arrived at the best website and they begin their journey on your site in a positive frame of mind.
So long as your landing page re-iterates the search term you should see better engagement statistics in your Google Analytics and a higher conversion rate too.
All this in a split second but there's a lot going on. Is this a fantasy? Am I reading too much into this? I have been practising this Google Ads technique and getting outstanding click through rates for over a decade.
Your high click through rate gets noticed by the search engine who has an incentive to show your Ad more prominently and more often because it competes well against the organic results and that's how the search engine earns it money.
The example image is absolutely real except I have tweaked the product to say "thermal mugs". I'm not even sure if that's a thing. The example shows that competitors don't bother making their headlines match and if you do you'll get a good click through rate (CTR) and a lower cost per click.
There are several reasons competitors don't match their headlines but I can go into that later.
Matching the headline to the search term
Do you have campaign CTR like this?
The high CTR can also be a sign that your Ad is more prominent than it needs to be and you have the opportunity to lower your bid so that you spend less. Maybe you enjoy being in the number one slot on Google's results page but it's worth checking you are not upsetting a competitor with deeper pockets. A bidding war only helps one party, the search engine.
It's not too difficult to set up a highly granular Google Ads account but in order to force the headline to match the searcher's term you would ideally aim for roughly one Adgroup for every keyword and that's labourious.
In practice Google matches close variants of an exact match keyword so you can include those too as you discover them. However Google is a bit cheeky calling the matching "exact" since it is anything but exact. It is worth regularly checking the search term report and adding negative keywords when they get it wrong.
You also need keyword research and monitoring to cover many bases so that you don't narrow your focus so tightly that you don't get enough website visits.
There are other considerations too which impede the ideal scenario and you need to work your way through those after monitoring your results.
If you do that, or get someone to do it for you, you'll have a good basis to explore the plethora of other Ad types available. These boring old text Ads should be your starting point and if you are a small business with a limited budget then that could be all you ever need.
It's advertising Jim, but not as we know it
That's what Dr "Bones" McCoy said to Captain James T Kirk. Or was it life he was talking about?
Pay per click on a search engine results page is unlike any other form of advertising because uniquely the Ads exist only at the moment the searcher declares a need and done right, they respond precisely to that need.
All other adverts present themselves to a broad population most of whom are in no way interested in the Ad. The hope is that the portion of the population who are interested will encounter the Ad. Others who see the Ad become aware and could develop an interest.
So search engine PPC is a unique niche. It is highly controllable and can be switched on and off by a mouse click.
The efficiency of search engine PPC when proved to be cash positive for the advertiser made a fantastic source of revenue for the search engines. But I guess it is only natural that the golden goose was not good enough and they wanted more. The pay per click platform was expanded to other forms of online advertising such as display Ads and remarketing which did not work so well.
For any company on a tight budget it pays to confine expenditure to Ads of the search engine results page (SERP) or at least ensure it is the good foundation from which to expand. That's the bit that I like doing most. I see it as: stick to the best thing and do it better.
Pay per click on a search engine results page is a tiny niche of the digital marketing world and probably the most cost effective and measurably successful form of online advertising.
However, if few people search for the keywords relevant for your business or products then you could find you have allocated more money than search engine PPC can spend. This is a peculiar difference from othe forms of advertising. You can't make people search.
For a small company that doesn't happen often. A large corporate whose advertising budget is an amount decided by higher management is likely need their PPC supplemented by display Ads and remarking to accommodate the budget.
Lessons for my clients
I'm writing a few very simple PPC help pages particularly suitable for businesses that have started out but are not convinced that they are getting the best results.