Google Responsive Display: A Cost-Effective Alternative to Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Google Responsive Display: A Cost-Effective Alternative to Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Marketing in today's digital age requires businesses to adopt innovative strategies to target and engage with their audiences. While pay-per-click (PPC) advertising has long been a popular choice, Google Responsive Display offers a refreshing and cost-effective alternative. Gray Water Ops, a leading veteran-owned small business specializing in custom minted coins like the patented Smart Coin™, can leverage these benefits to enhance its online presence.

Key Benefits of Google Responsive Display:

1. Cost-Effectiveness: With Google Responsive Display, businesses can buy impressions in bulk on a Cost Per Thousand (CPM) basis. This means you're paying for every thousand impressions rather than every click. For keywords like "Custom Challenge Coins," this can translate to significant savings compared to the $11.84-per-click cost through PPC.

2. Dynamic Ad Placement: Google's responsive technology automatically creates ads that fit any of 60+ different ad sizes. This ensures your banner is displayed on the websites your target audience already visits, increasing the frequency of impressions.

3. Retargeting Capability: Responsive display follows your target for 30 days, maintaining your brand's presence across various platforms. This ongoing visibility nurtures customer interest and engagement.

4. Broad Reach Across Google Properties: With Responsive Display, you're not confined to search results. Ads are placed across Google's properties, allowing you to target audiences more broadly and effectively. This includes Google search, Google Maps, YouTube, Waze, your G-mail account and Google my business.

Key Negative Points for Pay-Per-Click:

1. High Costs: Bidding on competitive keywords can quickly become expensive, especially for small businesses. In Gray Water Ops' case, targeting "Custom Challenge Coins" via PPC would incur a hefty $13 cost per click.

1. Budget Depletion: Without careful management, PPC campaigns can deplete marketing budgets fast, leaving limited resources for other essential business functions. If you had a $500 Google AdWords budget and didn't know how to properly set up the campaign, you could blow through the budget in a single day, leaving no coverage for the rest of the month. Responsive display evenly distributes your impressions across the 30 day period, allowing consistence through the month, keeping your ad in front of your target.
2. Limited Scope: PPC targets search results, restricting the ability to reach audiences across different platforms and sites they frequently visit.

FREE MARKETING TIP: Did you know working with an agency will get you better results and lower cost per clicks? You may know HOW to set up your own Google AdWords campaign but having a team who works with it daily, and knows how to properly sets up your account and manages it through the month, will get you better results than anything you can do on your own. Your focus should be on running your business, not surfing the complexities of pay-per-click bidding that goes up and down all the time. I'm not saying you don't know what you're doing, I'm saying your time is better spent growing your business than watching your AdWords account through the day.

How Google Responsive Display Relates to Gray Water Ops:

For Gray Water Ops® , utilizing Google Responsive Display means tapping into a more budget-friendly and dynamic advertising approach. By focusing on impressions rather than clicks, they can efficiently promote their custom-designed challenge coins, including the innovative Smart Coin™ with embedded NFC microchip technology.

The Responsive Display's ability to create ads on the fly, coupled with its retargeting features, aligns perfectly with an AdWords campaign because it will piggy-back off the pay-per-click and STAY in front of these people over the next 30 days. It's also reaching a broader audience without the exorbitant costs associated with traditional PPC models. Dial back your PPC campaign and put some of it into a Responsive display. If you need help, reach out.

This is an actual report from May, for the Gray Water Ops digital display campaign and my Google Responsive display campaign. This is a 30 day period. I've been running this advertising campaign for the past three years. Each year I've increased the spend because I continue to see results from it. Here's what I want to point out.

Cumulus guarantees a .6% click through rate. The national average for digital display CTR is .05 - .06. so they're guaranteeing 6X more traffic than the average. If you notice on the Gray Water Report, the CTR is 11.35. That's huge.

I just changed my messaging from custom challenge coins, to the new Smart Coins™, to start promoting my new book and the fundraising tool that started out as a hi-tech magic trick and transformed into a magical tool to help every fundraiser raise more money. If you notice, my July report took a big drop in CTR because of that change. But, even with the change I'm still sitting about 2X above what Cumulus guaranteed.

Conclusion:

In an increasingly competitive online marketing landscape, Google Responsive Display offers a smart alternative to traditional PPC advertising. By embracing this approach, businesses like yours can optimize their marketing spend, increase visibility, and harness the benefits of a more dynamic and flexible advertising strategy. It's a game-changer for anyone seeking to reach their target audience without breaking the bank. Reach out if you would like help with that!