How Do You Know When You’re Hiring a Google Ads Expert?

As a floor coating business owner, many of you have been in the sales aspect most of the time in your business.  It’s the lifeblood of your company and it’s what brings in the customers and keeps your techs from leaving.

But when it comes to hiring someone to help you with your digital marketing, how do you know you’re dealing with a true Google Ads Expert?

As you already know it’s about the hole, not the drill.

So if they’re jumping into selling themselves and how great they are, then that’s your first major red flag.

Another major red flag is when they start by telling you how bad your rankings are or that you’re losing so much business and they strike fear in you that you’re business is doing badly. 

How could they even know that without a conversation? 

I mean, there are of course some variables they can use to determine how many customers you could be missing out on, but that’s still not even reliable enough to make a proper determination about your business.

They should be asking the right questions.  Questions about you and you’re business and where you want to go.

Questions like “So tell me about your business, what’s the biggest struggle right now?” or “What plans do you have to grow your business this year?” or “Where do you see your business in 3 yrs as far as revenue is concerned?”

Aside from that, once you get into a conversation with an “SEO or Google Ads Expert” they will want to talk more about the strategies within a campaign and they will start to use terms and acronyms you may not understand.

You’ve probably heard many of them before, but what do they all mean?

That’s really what this article is about, so let’s get started. I won’t go into details about every single acronym or term out there but I will give you the most common ones and the ones you will hear the “Google Ads Experts” talk about.

Let’s begin with Google Ads – Which is a PPC platform, meaning Pay Per Click.  This means that every time someone clicks on your ad in Google Search, you will pay $X for that click.

CPC – Cost Per Click – This will be the amount Google charges every time someone clicks on your ad.

CTR – Click Through Rate – This is a percentage or ratio that tells you how often your ad was clicked on compared to how often your ad was shown.

Impressions – How often your ad is shown on the Google Network.  Each time it’s shown counts as one impression.

Google Network – The Google Network is a network of websites where Google either owns or has partnered with Google to show your ad.  There’s the Search Network and Display Network.

Search Network – This is Google search, and other Google sites like Google Maps and Shopping, and sites that partner with Google to show your ad.

Display Network – Think of this as Billboards.  There are thousands of websites that Google uses to display your ads like banners, or billboards.  Your ad will also show up on YouTube and Gmail.

LEAD – A lead is an actual person that has called your office or has filled out a form looking for an estimate or to book a time with you.

KPI – A Key Performance Indicator is a type of performance measurement. It’s used to measure the success, or failure, of activity in your business.  In this case, marketing and advertising.

CPA – Cost Per Action – In Google Ads this means it’s the average amount that you get charged for conversion from your Ad.  It’s calculated by dividing the total cost of conversions by the total number of conversions. A very important KPI to look at. If you’re CPA is $150, then you have to calculate your cost to pay the marketer, there’s a good chance this isn’t profitable.

Conversion – This is when someone interacts with your ad, like clicking the ad, then when they’ve landed on your website, they either call you or they fill out a form for you to contact them.  You’ll definitely want to be talking about this term. It’s also a Lead, and one of the most used KPI’s (Key Performance Indicator) to determine how well your ad is doing. 

Conversion Rate – Yet another key metric or important KPI in a successful campaign.  The higher the better! This is simply the ratio that’s calculated by dividing the number of conversions by the number of clicks on your ad. 

• So if you had 5 conversions and 100 clicks, you’d have a conversion rate of 5%. The average conversion rate will vary depending on your marketing and industry. Floor Coating can be anywhere from 8% to 30%. The ratio will also be dependant on how well your landing page is built – Is it built to convert traffic into leads?

ROAS – Return On Ad Spend.  This is not the same as your ROI.  This is simply the revenue you generated from your ad spend divided by your ad spend and the cost of the agency. 

• For example, if you spent $2000 on Google Ads and your Average Ticket is $500, you generated 40 leads, which means you generated $20,000 in revenue.  Let’s say your Agency cost is $1000. You spent a total of $3000 and made $20,000, your ROAS is this: (20000 – 3000) / 3000 *100 = 567% ROAS or 5.67:1. So for every $1 you spent you made $5.67. That’s a great campaign.

ROI – Return On Investment – The calculations are the same as ROAS but the difference is that you have to calculate the actual total cost to get that revenue – Cost of Goods Sold, Labor, etc.

**There’s a lot of confusion behind this – some agencies use this metric as it’s the most known acronym, but in reality, they don’t include your actual costs because how would they know this? Most of the time when they talk about ROI they actually mean ROAS.

Call Tracking – This is also an important metric to use and it can be done by using a Google Ads tracking number or to get even more accurate a call tracking software like CallRail or Phone Wagon.  You simply apply dedicated phone numbers to every campaign you have, and this can include direct mail campaigns or door hangers, or whatever you want.  You can have dedicated numbers that track your campaigns as well as have the conversation recorded so you can refer back to them anytime. This is highly recommended.

Landing Page – This is any web page that a user will land on.  If your website has 10 pages, technically they can all be landing pages. However, this term is used more on the marketing side of things to describe a page that someone lands on after clicking an ad.  If you have an ad for Garage Floor Coating you would want to send them to a page that talks about that service, instead of your Home Page, About Us, or Contact Us page.

Dedicated Landing Page – It’s almost the same as Landing Page, the only difference is there is no menu or footer (just privacy & terms links usually). This prevents the user from getting distracted and leaving the page.  The sole purpose of this page is to convert the user into a lead. It’s highly effective, but its use can depend on your market. Some people like to navigate around and see your reviews, or pictures, and other services you provide.  A dedicated landing page is right to the point and almost always converts people who are already prepositioned to buy.

Alright, you made it to the end!  I hope by the end of this you found it useful in a way that you can feel confident enough when someone is talking to you about digital marketing.

Of course, there are hundreds of terms and acronyms that are used but these are the most common ones, and probably the most useful.  You should by now be able to determine whether or not the “Google Ads Expert” knows what they are talking about and if they speaking to you the right way.  

If they are talking about conversions and leads and ROI, my hope is that you get it.  You should now be able to ask the right questions and get the answers you need to make a good decision.

If you’re looking for an agency to help you with your Google Ads, we are Google Ads Experts in the Floor Coating industry and would be happy to discuss your immediate needs.

Click the link to learn more about Floor Coating Marketers.