How to be sure Google Ads will work - before you sign a contract.

You must not sign up for a long-term Google Ads contract before you know these three things:-

1. How many suitable sales enquiries you’re likely to get every month.
2. How much those enquiries cost to generate.
3. If that cost makes sense for your business.

Google can’t tell you if Google Ads is a good fit for your business. And, many agencies want to lock you into expensive long-term contracts before you’re sure that you’ll make sales from Google Ads.

We think that’s reckless, so we have a different approach: low-risk testing.

Enter the pilot campaign.

A pilot campaign is a low-risk way of testing Google Ads. It usually runs for a month or two. It’s designed to help you figure out if Google Ads is right for your business, without committing to ongoing advertising.

By the end of the pilot campaign you’ll have evidence to judge:-

• How much each enquiry cost.
• How many enquiries you’re likely to get.
• How well the enquiries fit your business.
• Whether the results justify spending more.

The pilot campaign consists of:-

• Research to determine how people in your target market use Google to search for what you sell.
• Adverts to be shown to those people when they use Google to search for what you sell.
• A specialist lead generation website designed to encourage those people to fill in an enquiry form.
• A lead delivery engine to send those enquiries to you and your team.
• Monitoring and intervention to keep the pilot campaign on track.
• Analysis of the campaign performance to give you the solid data you need to decide whether Google Ads is a good fit for your business.

We handle building and running the campaign. Your part is to respond to the enquiries and tell us if they’re a good fit and what happened to them.

How much does a pilot campaign cost?

The budget for the pilot campaign must cover two things:-

1. The cost of building and running the pilot campaign: $2,000
2. Google’s charges during the pilot: Agreed before we start

Building and running the pilot campaign costs $2,000.

This covers:-

• Keyword research to identify phrases that people in your market use to search Google when they want to buy what you sell.
• Writing adverts to show on Google in response to those searches.
• Assembling the phrases, adverts, and other information into a Google Ads PPC campaign.
• Building the lead generation microsite.
• Hosting the lead generation site for the duration of the pilot.
• Delivering enquiries to you.
• Managing the advertising campaign for the duration of the pilot.

Google will charge you every time someone clicks on one of your adverts.

Nobody can tell you exactly how many people will click on your advert or what the cost of any given click will be. It’s one of the things the pilot campaign is designed to learn.

We’ll suggest a budget for Google’s costs, but you’ll always have the final say on how much you spend. You’ll know the total planned cost before you commit.

We will walk you through the process of giving Google your card details at the appropriate time.

How long does the pilot last?

The pilot needs to run for long enough to gather enough data to make a sound decision about if Google Ads is a good fit for your business.

In most cases, we can be confident after about a month. It’ll take longer if your market is small or if there are only a few people searching Google for what you sell.

Will I make sales during the pilot?

You might. Many of our clients do, but they usually make more sales after they’ve been using Google Ads for a few months. Two reasons:-

• Enquiries during the pilot could turn into sales after the pilot has ended. Common when your industry usually has a long sales cycle.
• It might take time to tune the selling process if you don’t have much practice selling to website enquiries. Selling to website enquiries needs a different approach to selling to word-of-mouth referrals or walk-in customers.

We’ll look at the quality of the enquiries and what happened to them. But evaluating Google Ads only on sales completed during the pilot can be misleading because:-

• Making sales doesn’t automatically mean the advertising is profitable. The profit from those sales needs to cover the cost of generating them.
• If Google Ads sent you a steady stream of people who wanted what you sell, but you made no sales, we’d need to find out why. The sales process may need attention, or the enquiries may need more time to turn into customers.

What happens after the pilot?

At the end of the pilot, we’ll review the results together and recommend whether to continue, make changes or stop.

• If the results don’t justify continuing, you can stop before spending more.
• If they do, you’ve got a running Google Ads campaign that’ll be the foundation for your future efforts.

Either is a valuable outcome.

If you want to carry on using Google Ads, we’d be happy to help, but you are under no obligation to use our services after the pilot.

Ready to test Google Ads?

Please use the form below and I’ll get right back to you to arrange a time to discuss what you’re hoping to achieve.

We’ll discuss whether a pilot makes sense for your business and what a sensible test budget would be.