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Does Google Adwords Work For a Wedding Business?

“How effective are Google Adwords? Though I have a regular controlled ad budget running, I have not been able to convert any leads! Is there something I am doing wrong?”

Answer: Depends on what you do with it.  🙂

Does Google Adwords work?  There are thousands of businesses, including wedding businesses, who would tell you absolutely YES.

However, it’s kind of like asking whether bridal shows work or Facebook or Pinterest or blogging or…

Every type of marketing works when it’s implemented in the right market with a smart strategy that gets results.

You’re right on target with your observation: if you’re not getting results, you’re doing something WRONG.

5 Reasons Why Your Google Adwords Campaign Isn’t Working

1.  No one is seeing your ads.

Your bid needs to be high enough to get visibility at the top of Page 1 for the keywords you’re targeting.  If your Average Position isn’t high enough, very few people see it, which means no clicks.

2. You’re targeting the wrong keywords.  

The keywords you’re targeting with your campaign have to match the buying keywords (buying is the important phrase here) of your potential clients.  They also need to match the copy in your ad and the page people land on after clicking through.

If the right people aren’t seeing your ads, you won’t get results.  Learn how to find profitable keywords for your wedding business here.

3. Your ad isn’t designed to get a RESPONSE.

Your ad needs to get the click.  Most wedding business ads include the name of their business (couples don’t care) and a blurb about why they’re great.

You must include a strong call to action that’s all about the benefit for your couples in order to get them to click through.

4. You’re sending ad traffic to the home page on your website.

Let’s say you have a great ad that includes a special 20% off discount offer, and it works like gangbusters to get people to click through.  If they land on a generic page…like your home page…that makes no reference to that special offer, they’ll leave.

Send your ad traffic to a special landing page designed to reinforce your offer and capture the lead.

Learn more about how one wedding business kicked butt on WeddingWire with an irresistible landing page.

5. You aren’t tracking your results and optimizing.

Google Adwords PPC offers fantastic statistics so that you can see what’s working, what isn’t and make changes accordingly.  However, most wedding pros don’t know what to do with them.

Learn what all those fancy acronyms mean (CPC, CPA, CPM, etc.) and make changes to improve your results over time.

You PPC campaign is a sales chain with each link a step that brings the potential client closer to booking you; even one broken link means your marketing fails.

The first step is to determine which link in your PPC campaign sales chain is broken.  Answering these questions can help:

  • Are people seeing your ad at the top of Page 1?
  • Are people clicking on your ad?
  • Are people visitors turning into leads?

If your answer to any of these questions is NO, that link is broken.  Once you know which links are broken, you can focus on fixing them.

Google Adwords is pretty complicated for starting out with PPC marketing.  I recommend running some highly targeted Facebook Ads first.  Once you get that working, you can use what you’ve learned to create a powerful Adwords campaign.

What do you think about Google Adwords?

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