There will come a day when all businesses in the Philippines will shift online. And as of today, there’s a big chance that a sales executive will knock on your door and tell you, “Ma’am/Sir you need to advertise your business online, it’s the best way for you to get noticed without a big budget.”

What comes after are the feelings of amazement and confusion. Questions like, “Does it really work? Will it really work for my business? Do I need to allot more budget? How will I know if I am getting more from it?”

I am pretty sure that these are the things that you have in mind and you’re probably seeking for someone to guide you in making a decision whether to go or not.

At iManila, we encourage you to go for it. However, we first make sure that our prospective clients know the following things before we actually proceed to do the Google Search Ads for them.

• First Mandatory: Website

One of the primary goals of a Google Ad is to bring web traffic through web clicks. The ads serve as a portal to bring them to a website of the client. If the client doesn’t have a website, we advise them to consider having one before we proceed with the ads.

A website serves as a primary online contact point of any online searchers to a prospective firm or business. The website must contain all vital information about the business including all contact numbers, email addresses, and physical address. We also highly recommend that the website contains all the offerings be it products or services.

Having a Website is NOT Enough

The website is mandatory but that doesn’t mean that having one is the end of it all. A website should be regularly updated. It should be well-designed and easy to navigate; otherwise, visitors will just bounce off.

The experience visitors have with a website is what matters to Google. If visitors are having a hard finding what they need to see on your website, then that means that the website is not well-made or it lacks content and substance. In return, Google will remove you from ranking high in the Google Search Engine Results Page, and it can also affect your ad rank in Google ads.

•  Second Mandatory: Research

We ask our clients if they have an accurate knowledge and sharp business intelligence about their competitors and their industry. This is for them to brief us about their positioning, prices and same with their competitors. If they don’t have one, we do some research to better understand their business and the competition within the industry.

What do we mean by competition?

We do not limit our research to offline must-knows such as location, prices, and their offerings. We also try running some keywords about the business and see if they are doing Google Ads as well. This will help us determine how tight it will get for our prospective clients should they push through with the service. And that’s how we adjust in terms of budget suggestion, keywords and even the landing pages of their ads.

• Third Mandatory: Landing Page

A landing page is a specific page in the website that serves as a catch basin of incoming traffic from the Google Ads. It is the first page that they will see, hence the importance of having a well-designed and well-written one.

A landing page should be well-made and simple to understand. Moreover, it needs to have one explicit and achievable goal. Goals could be sign-ups, purchases or downloads. These landing pages offer valuable materials that are needed to be a downloaded from a portal going to an e-commerce page to convert them into a client.

What we always tell our clients is: Landing pages should contain a relevant and easy to understand core message. It either instructs to download, persuades to buy or begs for sign-ups.

• Fourth Mandatory: Budget

Launching an ad means you are willing to pay a certain amount to post the ad. The same goes with Google Ad. It is universal for all ad platforms (both online and traditional) that an ad budget is required.

The difference between Google and other online platforms is that you have the power to dictate what budget works for you, unlike the traditional ones.

Fifth Mandatory: Understanding the Idea of the Bidding Scheme and PPC

Google Ads are created to operate on a specific model which is the pay-per-click type. Pay-per-click or PPC means that the advertiser gets charged for every click. If there are fewer clicks, there will be fewer charges as well. However, if there are a greater number of clicks, the higher is the possibility of spending your maximum allocated budget.

The bidding scheme, on the other hand, pertains to who gets the top spot in the allocated areas on the first page of Google based on the willingness to spend greater amount. However, Google rationalizes their bidding rules by incorporation of a quality score. Those advertisers whose ads obtain a high-quality score gets the spots.

How to Achieve Better Quality Score?

Quality scores of Google ads are computed using the following elements:

• Bid – refers to the amount the advertiser is willing to spend
• Ad Relevance – The resonance of the ad message to the online researchers. It is sometimes evaluated by Click-through rate. Click-through rate is the number of clicks your ad gets over the number of times it was shown by Google.
• Landing Page experience – The behavior of the visitors as they land on your page. The higher the bounce (quick and unexpected movement of visitors out of the website) rate is considered as bad landing page experience.

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As mentioned from the items above, clients need to make sure that they have everything in their arsenal before actually going for a Google ad – and one of those is having a well-made website with compelling landing pages.

Taking into considerations the ‘mandatories’ above will result in a higher success rate when doing the Google ad.

For further questions and inquiries about the Google Ad or with Website Development and revamp. Contact us at (02) 490-0000 or send us an email at [email protected].