ARK BLOG
When Will My Google Ads Start Working?
Don’t panic if you are not seeing instant results for your Google Ads Campaigns.
If you’re working with us, you know what I’ll say to that… “We need to give Google time to learn your searches, your website and your audience. This can take anywhere from three to six months at a minimum.” But let me dig into that a bit deeper than we usually do on our first ad review calls.
What does “working” mean to you?
Every advertiser will have a different performance indicator; is your phone ringing, are people filling out your contact form, or are people even seeing your ads? Each of these conversions can be tracked but will define the structure of your ads and campaigns. To ensure that we’re working towards the same goal, make sure that you’ve communicated exactly what you want customers to do once they’ve seen your ad. We’ll build the campaigns based on that customer journey.
You’ve defined your goals, now how long does it take for your Google Ads to work?
The timeline of how long it takes Google Ads to work varies from business to business. How much is your budget? What are your keywords, and how much search volume do they typically see in a month? You can’t look at your neighbor from the chamber group and expect the same results. Some companies have super popular keywords that will hit right out of the gate any time of year, while others may be more specialized and ebb and flow with the weather. It can be a matter of months, or sometimes up to a full year before you start getting the results that you want from your Google Ad campaign.
Google is always gathering and analyzing the data from the ads and campaigns that are created. Working from performance history, data is generated so that advertisers can make appropriate changes and improvements to the campaigns. Typically, Google Ad campaigns will go from a researching stage (months 1-3), to enhancing (months 3-6) and then finally to a high performing, mature campaign.
Months 1-3: Researching Stage
When we set up your Google Ads campaigns, there are many factors that will decide how well your ads perform. The amount of search volume for the keywords we’ve chosen, your ad spend budget, how aggressively we are bidding, and how much competition is out there. Google will take all those factors into consideration and use its machine learning to gauge the quality of your ads over time.
In this initial phase, we are casting out a large net and trying to collect as much data about your ads as possible. Analyzing that data and making small adjustments is a process that we go through in this phase to attempt to get your campaign appropriately focused. During this time, Google will take your ads performance history and the minor tweaks that we have made and start to mature into a solid PPC campaign.
Months 3-6: Enhancing your ad campaigns
Now that Google has collected a couple of months’ worth of data and you have some performance history to look at, we can improve efficiency and boost the metrics that your goals are focused on.
Improving call to actions and ad copy to keep up to date with your business and creating new campaigns are important to help optimize the performance of your account. With all the data that Google has collected over the first couple of months, should be able to target your exact audience and the correct market.
We hope that this helps you understand your PPC advertising journey. As a Google Partner, we’re here for you and promise to do the best we can with your Google Ads account! If you need some direction on the term we use when talking about your Google Ads, check out our Google Ad Glossary.
Check back soon for more useful tips on PPC and the wide world of Google. If you’d like to inquire or learn more about the services ARK has to offer, email us or comment below! Also, follow us on Facebook and Instagram for industry news, inspiration, and helpful tidbits for finding small business success.
Sincerely,
