Small Business Owners: Is Google Ads Worth Investing In?

As a small business owner, you’ll doubtless be aware of how hard it is to get noticed and stand out online. No matter where you turn to market your business – be it social media posting, search engine optimisation (SEO) or even email marketing – you’re up against stiff competition from thousands of other brands just like yours. You know you’re different and that you have something special to offer, but getting that message across to potential customers can be extremely difficult.

If your marketing efforts thus far haven’t yielded the results you were expecting, you might want to consider a paid media advertising campaign. Provided they’re well-managed and adequately-funded, paid ad campaigns can drive traffic to your site and generate leads in a relatively short period of time, giving your small business the helping hand it needs to grow.

What are Google Ads?

Google Ads is the number one paid media platform, with a market share that its rivals can only dream of. As the world’s most popular search engine, Google receives more than 8.5 billion search queries each and every day, with many of those results being paid advertisements from businesses just like yours.

Search for a specific product or service and the first few results are likely to be paid ads. From Google Shopping through to search ads and even priority spots in Google Maps, ads are everywhere across Google, attracting millions of clicks day in, day out.

As if that wasn’t enough, Google Ads extend far beyond just the search engine results page (SERP). They can be placed on third-party websites or shown on YouTube videos too, allowing you to grab the attention of customers at various stages in the marketing funnel.

In short, Google Ads is the ultimate paid media platform – and it’s unlikely to be dethroned any time soon. Considering that north of 90% of all web searches take place on Google, it’s the best place to attract customers and grow your business.

How many businesses use Google Ads?

Although exact figures aren’t known, it’s clear that millions of businesses around the world use Google Ads to market themselves. According to those same statistics from Analzify, Google Ads generated a whopping $237.8bn in revenue over the course of 2023.

These numbers make it impossible to truly comprehend the scale of Google Ads: the internet really would be a different place without the platform.

The benefits of using Google Ads

We’ve already covered one of the main benefits of Google Ads, its scale. As the world’s largest paid media platform, it has the largest audience and the largest pool of potential customers, giving you plenty of room to grow. If you’re serious about expanding your business, Google Ads should certainly be a part of your marketing strategy for this reason alone.

But the benefits don’t end there. Thanks to its increasingly advanced algorithms and automation features, Google Ads can deliver results more quickly than most other paid media platforms, let alone SEO. Although SEO is essential in the long run, if you’re looking for quick results, Google Ads is hard to beat.

Once you understand how to use the platform, you’ll be blown away by the level of insight it offers too. With a full suite of performance tracking and analytics features available – and dozens of metrics to keep tabs on – you can see at a glance how well your ads are performing and make adjustments as and when required. And because there are so many different ad types and formats to choose from, there’s bound to be one that suits your needs perfectly. It’s just a question of finding it.

You’ll also have full control over how much you spend. Google Ads allows you to set a budget and it will only bid up to that amount, meaning you won’t have to worry about overspending.

Are Google Ads worth it for a small business?

Now, onto the big question: should you use Google Ads to market your small business? If you’ve read the previous paragraphs, you probably already know the answer. It’s an emphatic yes from us, especially because we’ve seen first-hand how a successful Google Ads campaign can kickstart a brand’s growth and turn its fortunes around.

Let’s be clear: Google Ads isn’t a substitute for long-term marketing strategies like SEO, CRO and content marketing. However, it’s a great way to achieve relatively quick results, and works in tandem with those other marketing channels to generate leads and sales.

A successful ad campaign alone isn’t enough to win customers over – your site still needs to be well-optimised and it still needs to have the right content in all the right places. But because Google Ads can drive a huge amount of traffic to your site for a relatively low cost, it should always be a part of your overall marketing strategy.

What to consider when using Google Ads 

With all that said, getting the most out of Google Ads is easier said than done. In order to maximise your ROI and engineer a successful ad campaign, there are a wide range of different metrics and best practices you need to consider, from cost-per-click (CPC) through to click-through rate (CTR) and the all-important ROAS figure (return on ad spend).

You’ll also have to bear in mind that, because of the somewhat automated nature of Google Ads, there is a ‘learning phase’ to go through before your ads can perform to their full potential. The platform has to learn what your audience wants and what your goals are before it can confidently use your monthly budget to bid on search terms, so you won’t necessarily see any significant results within the first month.

If you’re interested in learning more about the potential of Google Ads and how the right ad campaign could benefit your business, why not speak to our experienced paid media team? Since 2000, we’ve been helping up-and-coming brands gain a foothold with our paid ad services – and yours could be next in line. Feel free to get in touch with us to learn more about what we could do for your business.