Analysis of the influence of using Google Ads for Digital Marketing

Dr. Anita Soni[1]

Abstract:

In the current trend, Digital Marketing has become one of the prominent ways to promote products and services for companies. In 2021, Google wasthe largest digital marketing provider in terms of digital advertisement expenditurewhich shows the importance of the Google Ads in the digital marketing channel. The ability of companies in generating more leads was identified as the top marketing priority of Google success stories. Hence, this research paper focuses on the concepts of Digital Marketing with Google Ads as the marketing channel. It includes the study of concepts of Digital Marketing and Google Ads search engine marketing. Information was collected, analysed, and structured with a literature review and study of success stories of Google AdWords. Based on the result of the research,there was an increase in number of visits to the websites, increasing number ofnew customers, increasing sales and even business expansion. It could be concluded that Google AdWords isa highly useful tool as a digital marketing channel. The study suggests the utilisation of Google AdWords to promote products and services. Future researchers are suggested to use the revealed data as the basis of further research in their relevant field.

Keywords: – Digital marketing, Google Adwords,SEO(Search Engine Optimization),PPC (Pay per Click)

Introduction:

2020 saw millions of consumers migrating online. From shopping to services, new users who may have begun their online journey due to necessity are now proactively deepening their usage. Speed, convenience, and price are just a few of the reasons why more consumers are now choosing digital-first lifestyles.On the other hand, 2021 showed the staying power of Digital with India showing higher digital adoption growth than other regions like the U.S,China and the E.U.even if thetotal offline moderesumes, with 65% of Indian shoppers who have grown morecomfortable with thedigital platforms will prefer to stay online. Benefits like time and cost savings, flexible payment options, diversity of product offerings, and delivery services are motivating shoppers to choose digital-first experiences.Today, India has 600 million smartphone users and that number is increasing by 25 million every quarter. As new users come online, businesses are evolving in their digital strategies to meet them there. Growing searches show businesses seeking to understand more about digital transformation strategies and online inventory management, while new online shoppers are adopting new behaviours to search for information.There is always a huge interest in digital marketing trends and innovation in marketing around the turn of each year. The pandemic has forced downward pressure on marketing budgets. This means that marketers are looking for new cost-effective techniques.

Literature Review:

Marketing has seen a shift in what is known as ‘the Digital Transformation’ of Marketing, Digital advertisements, e-commerce, mobile services, just to name a few technologies, have led to a revolution in how to interact with and provide products and services to consumers [1]. However, due to the evolving nature of the digital ecosystem, it is crucial for businesses to stay updated through evolutionary methods to how they influence, interact, and connect with customers by means of a Digital Marketing Strategy [2], the pandemic has put an emphasis on social media and mobile marketing [3]

The implementation of a Digital Marketing strategy into an organization’s overall marketing strategy tends to be an essential organisational solution for long-term and profitable business outcomes[4]Recent years have seen a significant change in the marketing industry, and one platform that has contributed to this transition is Google Ads. Google Ads, formerly known as Google Adwords, is a Pay Per Click (PPC) tool that enables entrepreneurs or marketing experts to promote their brands online. There is no doubt that Google Ads may assist you in achieving your objectives by placing your advertisement on a website with over 259 million unique visitors, 4.8 billion daily interactions, and more than 5 billion search queries each day.This studyhas been done to analyse the impact of Google Adwords in Digital Marketing.

Objectives and Significance of the Study

  1. To analyse the influence of using Google Ads in Digital Marketing
  2. To explain the advantages of using Google Ads in Digital Marketing
  3. The result of this study is anticipated to be the source of useful information and reference for similar studies.

Theoretical Framework

The development of technology and the digital market

The internet was born at the end of the 1960’s. That is one of the technological advancements which mark the starting point of Digital Marketing. However, wider use of the internet began only around the late 1980’s when the World Wide Web (www) and the first graphic browsers entered the market. The actual practice of marketing digitally emerged around the mid 1990’s as the early digital services such as online banking, first search engines and when the first e-commerce stores launched. At the time of this so-called “first wave” or phase of Digital Marketing, the industry struggled especially with the uncertain factors with technology, for example, online payments, delivery, and other involved risks.[5]Some notable steps in the early years of the evolution of Digital Marketing include: the launch of the first search engine Archie in 1990, first e-commerce sale through Netmarket in 1994, the launch of Google in 1998 and birth of Facebook in 2004, accompanied by a wave of new social platforms in the early 2000’s. The evolution of Digital Marketing can be divided into three phases (figure2). All these phases contain their unique themes that have shaped the evolution of Digital Marketing.

Figure 2. The History of Digital Marketing (Lahtinen et al. 2022, 19–21)

Digital marketing is currently in the third phase of its evolution which began around 2015[6]. The characteristics of this phase are especially the transformation of Social Media platforms into Advertising Powerhouses, Content Marketing, and “mobile first” thinking. This development is also outlined by the constant expansion of devices that can be used to reach potential customers, together with the combination of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and rapidly evolving applications [7].

The Strengths of Digital Marketing

One of the major changes that occurred in traditional marketing was the emergence of Digital Marketing.This led to the reinvention of marketing strategiesin order to adapt to this major change in traditional marketing [8]. As Digital Marketing is dependent on technology which is ever-evolving and fast-changing, the same features should be expected from digital marketing development and strategies. Some of theremarkable strength of digital marketing are:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): This is the process of optimizing website to “rank” higher in search engine results pages, thereby increasing the amount of organic (or free) traffic your website receives. The channels that benefit from SEO include Websites, Blogs and Info graphics.

Social Media Marketing: This practice promotes brand and content on social media channels to increase brand awareness, drive traffic and generate leads for your business. The channels of Social Media Marketing include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest and Google+ [8,9].

Content Marketing: It denotes the creation and promotion of content assets for the purpose of generating brand awareness, traffic growth, lead generation, and customers. The channels that can play a part in content marketing strategy include Blog posts, eBooks and whitepapers, Info graphics, Online brochures and look books [10, 11].

Affiliate Marketing: This is a type of performance-based advertising where you receive commission for promoting someone else’s products and services on your website. Affiliate marketing channels include Hosting video ads through the YouTube Partner Program and Posting affiliate links from your social media accounts [12].

Native Advertising: Native advertising refers to advertisements that are primarily content-led and featured on a platform alongside other, non-paid content. Buzz Feed-sponsored posts are a good example, but many people also consider social media advertising to be “native” Facebook advertising and Instagram advertising.

Marketing Automation: Marketing automation refers to the software that serves to automate your basic marketing operations. Many marketing departments can automate repetitive tasks they would otherwise do manually, such as Email newsletters, social media post scheduling, contact list updating, Lead-promotion, Campaign tracking and reporting.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC): PPC is a method of driving traffic to a website by paying a publisher every time an Ad is clicked. One of the most common types of PPC is Google Ad Words, which allows you to pay for top slots on Google’s search engine results pages at a price “per click” of the links you place. Other channels where one can use PPC mainly include Paid ads on Facebook, Promoted Tweets on Twitter and Sponsored Messages on LinkedIn.

Email Marketing: Companies use email marketing as a way of communicating with their audience. Email is often used to promote content, discounts and events, as well as to direct people towards the business’s website. The types of emails sent in an email marketing campaign include Blog subscription newsletters, Follow-up emails to website visitors who downloaded something, Customer welcome emails, Holiday promotions to loyalty program members, Tips or similar series emails for customer nurturing.

A multinational marketing software company Adobe Creative Cloud (2019) lists two additional components as major ways for Digital Marketing: Mobile Marketing and Marketing Automation. [9]

This research focuses particularly on advertising through the Google Ads.

Google ads as the digital marketing channel

Adword was chosen as one of the theoretical frameworks of this study for the reason that, according to (Statista 2021), Google is the most prominent search engine for modern Digital Marketing since its market coverage is massive. There is a wide selection of search engines on the internet. Google search engine has

Figure 3. Search Engine Market Share Worldwide statista 2022

90 percent of the total market share (Statista 2022). The list of competing search engines reported by Statista 2022). (FIGURE 3), includes Bing (under 3% market share), Yahoo! (around 1.5% market share), Baidu (under 1.5% market share) and YANDEX (around 1% market share). As is evident from this data, Google dominates the search engine industry. Consequently, advertising on Google search could be viewed as one of the key elements of a well-planed digital marketing strategy. Google Ads (until 2018 called Google AdWords). It was introduced in October 2000. [10] Since then, Google Ads has grown into one of the most used digital marketing platforms. It is robust in its features and offers access to a massive audience of internet users through one unified marketing dashboard. According to Google Ads Help (n.d.a)[11], Google Ads allow marketers to build and show diverse types of advertising campaigns Table 1

 Search campaigns (ads with search result)
 Displaycampaigns (image and video ads on websites)
 Shopping campaigns(product listing on Google)
 Local Campaigns(Promoting physical locations on many channels
 Video Campaigns (Video ads on YouTube)
 Discovery campaigns(images & videos ads on various google owned placements
 App Campaigns(Promoting applications on many channels
 Smart campaigns(Automated Campaigns)

 

(Table 1): Google Ads Campaign Types (Google Ads Help n.d.a)

This advertising can be shown on platforms Google owns or is in collaboration with, depending on the campaign type. The basic campaign type of Google Ads is the search campaign. It lets marketers place advertisements within the search engine results page before the organic, non-ad results (maximally four ads) and after the organic results (maximally three ads) on each results page [12]. The below figure (Figure4) is an example of the Google SERP’s (search engine result pages) top of page view for the query “bags”. Numbers from 1 to 3 represent the ad placements and the text “organic” shows where the first non-ad search result appears.

Figure 4. Example of the Google Search Results Page (Google 2022)

Incorporating Google Ads as a channel does not automatically mean the advertising will be profitable. 2% of Google Ads advertisers get 50 % of the overall traffic [13].The competitiveness of advertising on Google search is based on an auction. Every advertiser who wishes to show an ad on a particular placement at a certain time competes against other advertisers for the visibility. These auctions are executed by the underlying algorithms of the platform every single time an ad can potentially show to a user [14]. In Google Ads SEM context, the algorithms determine in a split-second whether, and in which order, to show the ads. However, the highest bid does not necessarily “win” the auction. The algorithms also consider how well the ad matches with the search intent of the user and how high-quality the ad itself is. In other words, a solid bid combined with quality ads equals a “win.” [15] Whenever an advertiser wins and auction and their ad is shown on the Google search results page, an impression occurs [10]. An impression does not necessarily mean the advertiser will be paying for showing the ad. Instead, in Google Ads SEM an advertiser is charged for advertising on a pay-per-click (PPC) basis. PPC means that advertisers only pay when a user clicks on the ad to visit their website or call their business [10]. This way, if the ads work, the advertiser will be using a higher percentage of their maximum budget. Different industries, geo- graphical locations and targeting choices affect the average cost-per-click (CPC) amounts significantly. The controllability of variables allows marketers to run multiple kinds of ads from the same Google Ads account. The search campaign type is also often a great option as a core campaign for capturing traffic that is already interested in the products or services of the company [16]. At the time of writing Google Ads offers only one ad option for basic search campaigns. The available option is called a responsive search ad. Responsive search ads let advertisers use up to fifteen headline variations and four description variations for the ad.The algorithms then decide what combination of these assets best serve the search intentions of a user. [17]

Communication TheoryReferred   

Communication theories help Public Relation professionals to understand the way people respond to different marketing efforts so that they can effectively create a campaign that reaches the appropriate audiences. The Diffusion of Innovation (DOI) Theory (Rogers, 1962, 2006) focuses on knowledge transfer leading to behaviour change. Under the theory, information transfer of current skills, knowledge, attitudes and practices via the mass media is vertical, moving from the innovator to the adopters. Anaeto, Onabajo and Osifeso (2012) state that for a new idea or innovation to diffuse, there must be Awareness stage, Interest stage, Evaluation stage, Trial and Adoption stage. Rogers further posits that organizations or people being targeted for impartation of new knowledge characteristically have five types of traits (adoptee categories) [18]

  1. i) Innovators: Like to be the first to try the innovation;
  2. ii) Early Adopters: Already aware of the need to change and are very comfortable adopting new ideas;
    iii) Early Majority: Need to see evidence that the innovation works before willing to adopt it
  1. iv) Late Majority: Skeptical of change and will only adopt an innovation after it has been tried by the majority
  2. v) Laggards: Bound by tradition; they are the hardest group to bring on board in a change programme.

Diffusion of Innovations in Digital Public Relations and Advertising

In the fields of public relations and advertising, technology innovations remain the hallmark of effective practices. PR and advert have advanced from one technological era to another, with drastic improvement on past operational techniques. Those technological innovations from one era to another era were diffused to professionals through the process outlined by Rogers in his theory. For example, PR and advertising agencies have dramatically changed over the last few years with the advent of the internet and online advertising. Most businesses have realized the importance of getting online and processes associated with forms of internet advertising. They have added such methods as search engine positioning, pay per click marketing and social media marketing to their arsenals. Not only do agencies develop video clips for television airtime, they now create motion visualsfor the internet and viral videos for YouTube. In essence, PR and Advertising today are quick to adopt new trends since media technology is constantly and rapidly changing. To keep up with ever-changing marketing options, PR and advertising practitioners are rapidly adopting new strategies and outlooks on how consumers interact with brands. The interaction between PR/advertising practitioners and media technology is within the arc of diffusion of innovation theory. It is with the diffused (spread) innovations (media technology) that practitioners are able to launch PR and advertising in new realms of sophistication,advertising and public relations practitioners can rely on the assumptions of Diffusion of Innovation Theory to test the characteristics of their innovations in terms of

– Relative advantage

– Adaptability

– Ease of use

– Triability

– Relevance

Not forgetting the factors of change agents (opinion leaders) and appropriate media channels that will culminate into acceptance of the innovation diffused.[18]

Research Method

This is a qualitative research study which aims to analysis and explain the use of Google Ads in enhancing digital marketing, the source of data is secondary data.Data analysis was done by comparing increase in percentage of sale by use of Google Ads platform for digital marketing. Datawas collected from successstories available on https://ads.google.com/intl/en_in/home/case-studies/using Google Ads to help grow their business.

S.no. Company Aim

 

 Digital Marketing Approach Outcomes
1 Saraf  Furniture Boost brand awareness, Increase leadsand  online sales, Drive more visits to the website

 

 Besides Search Ads Launched ,display Ads and Shopping campaigns also

 

 Saw an increases in Monthly leads to an average of 3,500/month(2019) ,Revenue grew up to  2.5x in 2019 year on year, whereas the return on investment for Google Ads increased to  80x during (2020)
2 Sitara Food Boost brand awareness, Increase visibility globally

More visitors  to the website

 

 Focused on locally relevant, high intent search terms, targeted international audiences through Display Ads ,supported  YouTube creators to drive brand awareness Supplies to 160+ countries, and  90% of international orders coming in via Google Ads ,3x more orders generated during Covid-19 lockdown

 
3 Juicy Chemistry Boost brand awareness, develop high conversion rate and ROI on the website, enhance local and global visibility

 

 Created customer  awareness on certified organic products  through Search and Display ads, effectively used  YouTube influencers to improve  brand awareness, Applied SEO was applied to blog content shipping now internationally initially was only pan India, an  weekly increase in orders  of 3X,now has 150% increase in monthly orders and 20% increase in sales
4 ORRA Stores Create brand awareness as one of India’s most prestigious jewellery retail chains, targeted digital marketing strategy was adopted to serve  to different regions Google Display Network featuring region-specific creatives was adopted

Promoted  different offers that would appeal to different communities (eg Tamilians), remarketing ads to increase conversions and sales

 problem of media fragmentation was Resolved , reached out to several communities, including Tamils in Chennai successfully,10X  more  investment by ORRA for  digital marketing

 
4 Craftsvilla Boost brand awareness Quicken growth and increase orders, increase investment  to more effectively advertise, Effectively used Google Ads for online ads,Sought out clients from around the world Increased daily orders from 400 to 10,000, 10x boost in brand awareness 60% reduction in cost per acquisition

 
5 Senco Gold Increase traffic to retail stores, Boost brand awareness and increase sales, measure and track results effectively

 

 Ads placed on relevant YouTube videos, location extensions was added to online Ads to measure impact of ads , To increase website visitors display remarketing campaigns were launched ,

effectiveness of YouTube campaign was measured by  Brand Lift Surveys

 There was a lift of 28% in Brand awareness ,30% year-on-year revenue growth in select cities, Revenue generated at 25% of the cost of traditional media used in the previous year

 

Analysis:

Boost Brand awareness was a common digital marketing approach adopted by majority companies, the graph clearly show that there was and increment of 10x in brand awareness of companies like Saraf furniture, QRRA stores and Craftsvilla   via Google AdWords.

 Findings

By using GoogleAds approach of display ads, shopping campaigns and search ads which includes sensitive and contextual ad creative, Saraf furnitures (insaraf.com) had an monthly lead increase to an average of 3500/month its revenue surged to 2.5 in 2019 ,ROI on Google ads surged 80x during 2020 .Where in Sitara foods (https://www.sitarafoods.com/) an online store for home made products by approach of targeting locally as well as launched display ads to reach international audience along with YouTube creators for brand awareness was successful in shipping to 160+ countries with 90% of international orders  coming via Google ads it generated 3x more orders during covid-19 lockdown. Ahome grown and certified organic cosmetic company Juicy Chemistry is revolutionising organic skin in India with Google Ads with approach of search and display ads as well as You tube influencersand SEO to blog content had 3X increase in weekly orders with 150% increase in monthly orders and 20% increase in sales both national and international  QRRA (https://www.orra.co.in/) used Google Ads to customise regional creative’s ,ORRA by  tested campaigns on the Google Display Network featuring region-specific creative’s and  targeted customers on sites that matched their interests, such as lifestylesites, resolved the problem of media fragmentation, successfully reached out to different communities, including Tamilians in Chennai. Craftsvilla (https://www.craftsvilla.com/) an online grocery channel launched online ads using Google Ads to reach out to consumers from across the globe as a result jumped from 400 orders to 10,000 orders per day and reduced Cost Per Acquisition by 60%,Senco Gold (https://sencogoldanddiamonds.com/ )used google Ads to grow year on year revenue by 30% it added location extensions to ads, in order to measure impact of ads more accurately and used brand lift surveys to measure effectiveness of YouTube campaigns as a result  there was an Brand awareness lift of 28% for complete views, Revenue achieved at 25% of the cost of traditional media used in the previous year.

Conclusions

The following conclusions are drawn as a result of the analysis: Google Ads offers an efficient platform for online marketing. One of the advantages of Google AdWords is that it offers a great ROI because of its demographics-based targeting options. Remarketing is another significant advantage of Google AdWords. Adwords helps to build a larger audience for business or brand. Google Adwords are 100% measurable and scalable. Accordingly, therefore, one can say that Google AdWords is one of the fundamental elements of digital marketing. It is up to the advertiser to use these advantages and raise brand awareness.

According to the theory of Innovation Diffusion,the test variables relative advantage, adaptability, ease of use, triabilityand relevance can be used by advertising and PR professionals to evaluate an innovation. Google Adword’s advantage, adaptability and ease of use trials the theory of Innovation Diffusion.

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Webography

[1]Faculty, Department of New Media Technology,Makhanlal Chaturvedi National University of Journalism and Communication, Bhopal, Email- anita@mcu.ac.in