How to Know if Your Business Is Ready for Google Ads

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Hey everyone's Regina at starter PPC.

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We often work with new businesses,

businesses that are just starting

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out, or maybe they've been around

for a few years, but they haven't

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really pushed for growth yet.

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They haven't really done the Google

ads thing or done any ads really.

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we often get asked the question, is

my business now ready for Google ads?

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What do I need to do?

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To make sure that I'm not

doing Google ads too soon.

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So I wanted to run through a couple

of the main items that I run through.

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When I'm trying to answer that question

for them to decide like, is Google

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ads right for you at this time?

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So the first thing that I

look at is their website.

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Of course, if your

website doesn't convert.

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No amount of Google ads expertise is

going to be able to get it to work, right?

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So it has to be an up

to date design, right?

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It has to look like someone cares

about it and someone has been

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keeping the design up to date.

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More importantly, it has to have,

a call to action above the fold.

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It has to have some clearly laid

out sections that show what you

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do and why they should care.

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And why you're better than the competitor.

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That's a good rule of thumb.

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Sometimes if I'm not sure about the site,

I'll just do a Google search as though

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I'm looking for that product or service.

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And I'll look at the other

competitors websites.

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And if your website doesn't look as

good or better than the competitors that

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are also running ads, You're not ready.

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Okay.

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So do a couple of Google searches.

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And you'll know.

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The other thing to think about too

is if your website is converting good

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enough it's going to convert less

good with cold leads from Google ads.

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When you run ads, these

people who are seeing your ad.

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They want to buy now, right?

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Because they have search intent

that proves that they are ready.

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They have wallet in hand.

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And not only that, but they just

came from a search results page where

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there are plenty of other competitors

willing to sell them the same thing.

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your website has to hold

up to the competition.

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It has to have a high conversion rate.

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People that come direct to your site,

people that come from referrals,

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even people that come organically

are going to convert at a much

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higher rate than a cold lead will.

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So just keep that in mind.

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Your website has to be extra good.

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Along those same lines, make sure

that your sales funnel is good too.

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Right?

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Like I said, cold leads,

they're going to be ready to buy.

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Now, if you're lead generation business

and you have a phone number on your

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site and you're not answering the phones

they're going to leave and call the next

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guy on the list who answers his phones.

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just make sure that, if you thought

it was okay to call people back

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after 24 hours with the referral

leads, unfortunately, that's not

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going to hold up with cold leads.

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You also want to make sure you have the

email follow up sequences in place, right?

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If you're lead gen, you might

need to make sure that you know,

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your sales funnel is buttoned up.

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If you're e commerce, you want to make

sure that you have a system going for

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people who have bought from you to

buy again people that you guys know

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the basic sales funnel stuff, right?

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You need to make sure to kind

of pull out all the stops.

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Get your ducks in a row

with your sales funnel.

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Because if you don't, your competitors

will, and what happens is you end

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up having to pay the same for a lead

or or a sale as your competitors do.

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So if they're making more on repeat

sales, if they're making a higher average

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order value than you are, if their

conversion rate is higher than you, you're

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still paying that same cost per click.

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you kind of have to pull out all

the stops before you run Google ads.

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lots to think about.

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The other thing is cost.

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Unfortunately, there is a little bit of a

barrier to entry with Google ads, right?

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You can't just kind of dip your

toes in with 500 and see what you're

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going to be paying for a click or

see what your return is going to be.

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Unfortunately, it doesn't

work like that because in our

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experience, it takes about 90 days.

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And a minimum of at least 1, 000 a month.

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Although, if you have Certain industries,

I would say it's higher than a thousand.

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So a thousand is a minimum, right?

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So if you have like a B2C product, maybe

a thousand is enough to start out with.

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If you go to our help center, actually

go to the help center at Solutions8.

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It's help.

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sol8, S O L 8.

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com and search for budget.

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You'll see an article that

talks about, what is the minimum

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budget that you guys recommend.

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you don't want to set aside like

a minimum of 3, 000 cause you want

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to also run it for about 90 days.

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Don't give up after 30 days.

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If you don't have the budget to run it

for 90 days, you're not ready to start.

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Save up until you have

90 days worth of budget.

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The reason why is because the

first month or month and a half,

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it's just data collection, right?

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The algorithm has no idea when to show

what, to who, where, how, why, right?

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We don't either.

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So we're collecting all that data.

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Then the next 45 days is

where we start to optimize.

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The algorithm optimizes, right?

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Cause it, catches some

patterns of conversions.

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We start to optimize.

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We might change some

settings here or there.

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Try a different campaign,

one that's not working.

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Try a new one.

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And so that all takes time.

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So you can't just dip

your toes in for 30 days.

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At the end of 90 days, I would look back

at the most recent 30 days and try to

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see whether things are still getting

better or whether they've plateaued.

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If they're still getting better,

hopefully you have the budget to

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continue for a fourth month, right?

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If they have plateaued.

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Then you have to decide whether

to continue, which brings

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me to my next point goals.

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You need to have clearly

defined your goals.

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If on day 90, you don't know whether or

not you're close to hitting your goal or

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you're hitting your goal to be profitable.

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you're not going to know whether

to continue or to hit pause.

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And if you hit pause, Everything, all

that data starts to get old, right?

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Everything kind of starts to die.

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So all the investment

that you've put in, right?

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So you need to be ready

with clearly defined goals.

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The biggest mistake I see people

making is they don't know their goals.

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And so they just choose

an exorbitant goal.

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Like we'll ask them, what

kind of a return do you need?

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And they're like, I would like a 10 X.

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No, you don't want a 10 X.

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And so I have to explain to

them why it's actually bad to

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have a goal that's too high.

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It's better to have a competitive goal,

one that's not too high and not too low.

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If you have a goal that's too high, it's

going to make you quit on day 90, or

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it's going to make you not increase your

budget and scale your business when that's

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really the best thing for your business.

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It basically holds your business

back from growth if you have a

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goal that's unrealistically high.

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I have an article all about this and

I will include it in the description.

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Of this video.

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it's another article on help.

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sole8.

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com.

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And if you want to go there and search for

it, just search for the word mer, M E R.

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And it's probably the

first one that shows up.

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It's what should my mer goal be and why?

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couple of other things, just things

to think about website speed.

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I can't tell you like 90, 95 percent

of the new clients that we work with,

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we find that their website speed is.

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Not ideal.

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And unfortunately, Google will favor

your competitors who have a fast website

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speed because Google is rating, grading

your landing page user experience.

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And so website speed

is a huge part of that.

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If your website speed is slower than

your competitors, you're going to

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ultimately have worse placements,

worse rank, or you're going to have to

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pay slightly more for a click just to

get as good of a rank as as good of a

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placement at the top of the page as them.

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These are the type of little

sneaky behind the scenes things

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that will destroy your campaign.

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So website speed is very important.

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Also inventory.

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If you sell well.

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Inventory and also bandwidth, right?

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So oftentimes we get, for

example, an e commerce client.

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And we say to them, well,

what are your best sellers?

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What are your high margin products?

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And they tell us their best sellers.

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They tell us their high margin products.

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We start running ads and their best

selling and high margin products

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go out of stock right away.

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Similarly, Well, let me pause there

and just say, this is bad because

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the algorithm is learning, right?

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It's learning about every SKU,

every product individually.

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So if it sells five of them and

then it goes out of stock, it's like

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you're starting at square one with

that budget that was being spent

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and learned about that product.

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Now the algorithm has to go, Oh

God, let me start from square one

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and see what to do with this SKU.

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So the products that you know are

going to sell well, or that you

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want to lean into and invest in.

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Get plenty of inventory on those

before you get started because those

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are going to start selling you.

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You don't want to pull the rug

out from the algorithm right away.

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The other thing to for lead generation

businesses is oftentimes we.

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Start sending them phone calls

and they can't answer the phones,

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or they say to us, Oh, you know,

our contractors are booked up.

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Okay, well just be prepared.

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If you're going to run Google ads,

you're going to start growing.

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So you want to also have the budget

to invest in having a little bit

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of buffer in your bandwidth, right?

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Make sure that those people are ready

to go to take those additional leads.

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Otherwise you're wasting money

wasting money, investing in the ads.

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You don't want that to be a waste.

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So I think those are the main things.

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So give it, give it a thought.

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If you have questions for us, you

can head on over to starter ppc.

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com and there's a little chat bubble.

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You can ask us questions

about all of this.

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We work with.

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Businesses that have budgets of

5, 000 or less, and we've designed

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a service that is affordable for

businesses that are just starting out.

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So check us out.

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The main way that we make it affordable

is we don't offer any meetings.

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seems to work out really well.

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We just have a support ticketing system.

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you do get a point of contact.

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One person who's with you consistently,

who works on your account.

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So you can ask them questions, send

them as many questions as you want.

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You can send them videos, you

can request videos from them.

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But we've made it extremely,

we've made the service extremely

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affordable by cutting out meetings.

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And that's how we've been able

to help small businesses get

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from 1, 000 to 5, 000 a month.