Google Ad spends on the rise but businesses bleeding money

26 February 2019

Google Ad spends on the rise but Kiwi businesses bleeding money

While the number of people clicking on Google Ads listings has risen in recent years, a large number of New Zealand businesses are still losing money on poorly run advertising campaigns.

CEO of Auckland digital marketing agency Insight Online, Kim Voon, says search traffic through Google Ads is slowly increasing. One study shows that since 2016, Google Ads share of traffic has doubled on mobile and increased by 44 per cent on desktop. From 2.7 per cent to 3.9 per cent of total search traffic (source).

“Organic listings are still a huge driver of traffic, accounting for 66.5 per cent of search traffic on desktop, but Google is consistently innovating and changing how ads are displayed to maintain the traffic through their Google Ads system.

“Google’s revenues are on the increase in New Zealand. We’ve certainly seen far bigger budgets coming through in the last year or two. People targeting consumers can spend between $5,000 and $25,000 a month on Google Ads, while those in the business-to-business space tend to spend around $3,000 to $5,000 per month.”

Voon says that frequently his agency finds that many people don't actually have a Google Ads strategy and no clear idea of what they want to achieve from advertising – they just need to drum up business, so they run a campaign for two or three months and waste a lot of money.

“One-in-four of the enquiries we get are from Google Ads failures. They tried it themselves without success because, ironically, they tried to spend too little money and it ended up costing them more money, or too much time, in the long run.

“There are also differences in click-through, consumer behaviour and how people respond between those who see your advert on mobile and those who see it on a desktop.”

Voon offers the following three tips to reduce wastage on Google Ads:

1. Budget: Sometimes more is less
An important part of an initial Ads campaign is to get enough cost data to optimise your campaign.

“If you set-up with a monthly budget of $50, and an average click costs $2.50, that’s just 20 clicks per month. To get anything vaguely statistically significant in terms of being able to measure success is about 100 clicks. That means it’s going to take you five to six months to find out if your campaign is even working – even if you do manage to save money, you’re losing time.”

2. Don’t go too broad on your search terms. Be specific.
A common mistake is to pay for big, broad keyword terms like ‘insurance Auckland’ or ‘electricians’ because of fear of being left out.

“Broad terms are expensive and competition for them is intense. This means your ads hardly ever get a look in and you’re missing out on the thousands of potential customers who are searching for more specific, less competitive and less expensive search terms,” says Voon.

3. Avoid sending people to your generic home page
Voon says that more than half of the potential customers who see your advert may not have heard of your brand before, and will be searching for something specific, so avoid sending them to a generic home page.

“Make sure your traffic is directed to a page that gives them exactly what they were searching for and is consistent with your advert. A promotional page with a specific offer is best.

“If people click on an offer, give them information on the offer. It might sound obvious but you would be surprised at how often people make this mistake.”

For more information visit: https://insightonline.co.nz/

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