As Gary Vaynerchuk once said, “The days of relying on your mother are over. It is now Google”. And of course, he is quite right – nowadays, when we need to look up a recipe, discover the best restaurant nearby, or purchase a new set of headphones, we go to Google for advice.
The statistics are insane – according to Wordstream, Google handles the mind-blowing 3.5 billion searches per day, and the volume of searches grows by 10% every year.
For this reason, today we are going to see some of the biggest Google Ads benefits that make it probably the most important platform to advertise on.
1. Leverage the unique nature of search intent
First on our list of Google Ads benefits, and probably the most important, is the unique way in which search works.
When it comes to other advertising channels such as Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn, advertisers tend to impact their audience in a moment in which they are looking at pictures of cats, getting carried away with memes, or seeing what their family and friends are up to.
In other words, when users see ads, they are typically not in the mood to see ads. They are busy doing other things. Search, on another hand, works in a totally different way – let me explain.
Informational search intent: Someone who wants to know the weather in Atlanta
When you go to Google, you typically have a certain goal in mind. You are looking for something in particular, whether it is to learn something new, get a response to a question, or purchase a product.
These goals can be divided into 4 categories, also known as search intent:
- Informational intent – if you are looking for information on a certain topic, such as the weather in Atlanta or the history of the chocolate, the terms that you are going to type in the engine will be categorized under informational intent.
- Navigational intent – people who go to Google looking for a specific website, such as Facebook or Hubspot, typically have navigational intent. They want to go to this website, but don’t know or remember what the correct URL is.
- Transactional intent – search terms with transactional intent are the best for advertisers because they show an intention to purchase. This could be words such as “email marketing software”, “buy new Acer laptop”, and so on.
- Commercial investigation – these terms imply that the user may have a purchase intent in the future, but they are just investigating at the moment. Some examples can be “Stripe reviews”, “What is the best washing machine”, etc.
The reason why I’m telling you all of this is the same reason why the essence of search is one of the biggest Google Ads benefits.
As an advertiser, you can leverage keywords with transactional intent or even commercial investigation to capture people searching for a product like yours in the right moment that they are searching for it.
Google Ads benefits: Leveraging the power of search intent
This is something that no other platform can do in the way that Google does.
For example, if I’m looking for “email marketing software”, advertisers who are bidding for the term “email marketing software” will show right in front of me with their product, in the exact moment that I am looking for something like this.
Search is extremely powerful – but of course, it’s not the only ad format that you have in Google Ads. Which is bringing us to the next point:
2. Reach 90% of Internet users worldwide
Next on our list of Google Ads benefits is the versatility of their ad formats, and the incredibly huge audience that you can reach with them. In fact, according to Google itself:
“The Google Display Network reaches 90% of Internet users worldwide, across millions of websites, news pages, blogs, and Google sites like Gmail and YouTube.”
Let’s take a look at all Google Ads formats that you can choose from:
| Google Ads Formats | About them | |
| 1 | Text-based ads | They consist of words only, and you will most often find them on Google Search. |
| 2 | Responsive ads | They automatically adjust their size, look, and format to fit different ad spaces. |
| 3 | Image ads | Image-based ads help you showcase your products with static or interactive graphics. |
| 4 | App promotion ads | With this ad format, you will be able to send users to the app store to download your app. |
| 5 | Video ads | Video ads are perfect to gain visibility on YouTube and other partner sites. |
| 6 | Product shopping ads | With this ad format, you will be able to showcase your products with all their details. |
| 7 | Call-only ads | This ad format is perfect for driving direct phone calls to your business by placing your number. |
This versatility allows you to reach a huge audience of potential customers, whether they are searching directly on Google, reading a blog post on their favorite website, browsing through their email, or scrolling down their YouTube feed.
Not every platform offers the variety of ads that Google Ads offers, neither the amount of people you can reach with them.
3. Drive high-quality leads for your business
One of biggest Google Ads benefits for businesses of all sizes is its capability of driving high-quality leads – especially with text-based ads. In addition, if you connect Google Ads and Stripe, you can also monitor how many of them convert into customers and what revenue they are driving.
This is a result of the unique nature of search intent that we discussed previously in point 1. And that is, the fact that search ads manage to capture the potential customer at the exact moment that he is searching for a product or service like yours.
Of course, every advertising platform has its unique segmentation criteria that allows you to reach a certain target audience.
For example, LinkedIn allows you to target profiles that hold certain job functions, work in specific companies, or have an X years of experience.
These segmentation criteria allows companies advertising on LinkedIn to generate high-quality leads based on the unique attributes of the platform.
Google, however, has an extremely powerful way of reaching a good quality audience with search that no other platform is able to offer.
By allowing you to bid for keywords that already show a purchase intent, you can capture leads in a very “hot” moment of their buying journey, making the lead even more qualified than other platforms.
4. Get faster results than SEO
Next on our list of Google Ads benefits is that you can see results really fast – quite often in the matter of days.
While Search Engine Optimization is an extremely important part of every company’s Marketing strategy, the reality is that it may take months and even years to get on the top of Google’s organic search results.
- Almost 95% of newly published pages don’t get to the top 10 of search engines’ results within a year.
- And the ones that do manage to get there take about 2-6 months to rank on the first page.
Image source: Ahrefs.com – Days to rank in top 10 for 5.7% “lucky” pages.
This means that, compared to SEO, search ads deliver one of the best Google Ads benefits for businesses. And that is, extremely fast results so that companies can continue driving more sales.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that companies shouldn’t be investing in SEO.
Ideally, every business should be investing in both Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing in order to max out Google’s potential.
5. Leverage the abundance of data
Our list of Google Ads benefits continues with the powerful data that is available to advertisers.
Compared to other digital advertising platforms, Google offers a huge amount of metrics and data to help you measure the performance of your ads and monitor your key performance indicators (KPIs).
Here are just some of the metrics that you can measure with Google Ads:
- Impressions
- Cost
- Clicks
- Average CPC
- Conversions
- Conversion rate
- Cost per conversion
- Interaction rate
And a lot more! You can also get auction insights, drill down data by location, age, gender, household income, and device, among other criteria. In fact, the amount of data that you can get with Google Ads is more than a lot of other advertising platforms.
Google Ads benefits: making the most out of your data
This means that you have a lot of opportunities to optimize and constantly improve your performance.
Additionally, you can even pair Google Ads with Google Analytics to get the most out of your data.
6. Learn more about your target audience
While every company has an established buyer persona and a well defined target audience, the truth is that we don’t know everything about who they really are.
And sometimes, what we think a potential customer looks like doesn’t end up coinciding with his actual traits and characteristics.
By testing different audiences and continuously optimizing your campaigns with Google Ads’ abundant data, you can actually get to know your target audience a lot more than you already know.
It can help you answer questions such as:
- Who is interacting with my ads the most? What kind of people are clicking on them?
- Who is converting the most? What ad or campaign resonated the most with them?
- What are their demographic characteristics?
- Where are they located? What is my positioning in a specific geographic location?
For example, if you are targeting the United States, and you notice that most people who click on your ads and convert are coming from New York, this could mean that you are better positioned in New York than other locations.
Undoubtedly, one of the biggest Google Ads benefits is getting more insights about who your target audience really is. Which is extremely valuable not only for your Google Ads campaigns, but also for your overall Marketing and business strategy.
7. Measure the results from other campaigns
Apart from the existing bidding strategies that most businesses are quite familiar with, one of the most underrated Google Ads benefits is that it helps you measure your brand awareness campaigns.
Let’s say that you are planning to advertise on TV, but you are concerned about the results that you are going to get from there. Despite the improvements in this area, results from TV campaigns are still very hard to measure as compared to digital platforms.
Google can help you get additional insights about campaigns that are typically harder to measure – such as TV campaigns, participation in shows or physical events, and so on.
All you have to do is set up a brand campaign, and monitor if the traffic and conversions increase in the days and weeks following the campaign.
Google Ads benefits: Measuring brand awareness with a brand campaign
For example, if you participated on a TV show on the 13th of July, you can observe if there was an unusual spike in your traffic and conversions in the upcoming weeks by measuring how many people are searching for your company on Google.
By combining your organic traffic data with the insights from your brand campaign, you can get a really good idea of the impact that a certain action had on your business.
8. Generate brand awareness with Google Ads
And of course, apart from helping to measure the results of other campaigns, one of the biggest Google Ads benefits is that it also helps you generate brand awareness with your own campaigns on the search engine.
Consider this – Google processes approximately 63,000 search queries every second, which translates to 5.6 billion searches every single day. That’s insane!
This means that every time someone searches for a product like yours, for example, “marketing automation tool” or “best pet food nearby”, you have the chance to show up on the top of search results.
The more you show up, and in front of your competitors, the more visibility your brand is going to gain, and more and more people are going to remember it and recognize it.
So, next time they are searching for a product like yours, they will be more tempted to purchase from you rather than from the competitors.
9. Showcase more products and features through extensions
Next on our list of Google Ads benefits that you can leverage for your business are extensions.
By adding extensions, you have the opportunity to showcase additional products and services that people aren’t searching for initially, but may be interested anyways.
For example, let’s say that I am searching for the “best dresses” for this summer.
In this case, I get an ad for “women’s dresses to wear on vacation” – however, in extensions, I also get the opportunity to purchase with 65% off selected items.
The brand Revolve has leveraged the opportunity to showcase additional products apart from what I’m looking for, which is dresses. However, by promising 65% off other items, they definitely drive my attention off the dresses for a moment. And end up increasing my chances for clicking on the ad.
10. Discover the potential of Shopping ads
While many advertising platforms give you the opportunity to advertise your ecommerce products, the reason why Shopping ads are so unique is because they work the same way as search does – by leveraging purchase intent.
In other words, Shopping ads will be triggered by a search term just like a regular search ad, and will give you exactly the type of products that you are already looking for.
Google Ads benefits: Shopping ads
This is what makes Shopping ads so magical – they don’t show up on your screen randomly while you are trying to do something else, like scrolling through your feed on Facebook or Instagram.
They show up exactly when you need them. Aka when I’m searching for the best dresses for my next vacation. This increases significantly your chances for driving more results and sales for your business.
11. Re-impact your existing audience
Next on our list of Google Ads benefits is the opportunities that the platform gives you to re-impact an audience that has already interacted with your business.
For example, somebody who visited your website and didn’t end up purchasing, or someone who viewed a video on your YouTube channel.
Additionally, if you meet these requirements:
- A good history of policy compliance
- A good payment history
- More than 50,000 USD total lifetime spend
You will also be eligible for Customer Match, which allows you to upload your own email lists of leads and prospects in order to continue impacting them with your ads.
12. Connect with Google Analytics
One of the Google Ads benefits that you can’t leverage with most other advertising platforms is the possibility to connect your account with Google Analytics.
By linking your accounts, you will be able to:
- Perform a better and more comprehensive analysis of your ads’ performance;
- Get a better understanding of your customer journey;
- See ad and site performance data in the Google Ads reports in Analytics;
- Import Analytics goals and eCommerce transactions into Google Ads;
- And import audiences to re-impact people who have already interacted with your business;
- Get an increased visual analysis of key data;
In other words, you have a lot of reasons to connect these Google products and get all Google Ads benefits that come with it.
And that was all from me for today! Thank you for taking the time to read my article on the biggest Google Ads benefits for businesses, and I hope to see you in the next one! In the meantime, do not hesitate to leave me any questions or comments that you might have.
