3 Ways To Lower Your Google Ad Costs

Yes, folks, today we’re talking about Google Ads (formerly known as Google AdWords), the advertising platform you can use to help spread the word about your commercial diesel repair shop. Specifically, what kind of costs are associated with it.

Let us clarify: This is not going to be a deep dive into the primal nature of Google Ads. We’ll provide an overview of why it’s an important element of digital advertising, but we’ve found our customers and potential customers are more interested in what it will cost them. So the bulk of this article will focus on how much you can expect to spend, how you can trim costs, and why you should probably just hire us to do it for you. ;) 

To that end, we brought in three experts:

• Jacob Arrington from Fullbay
• Marina Kolesnikova from Dieselmatic
• Khrystyna Masych from Dieselmatic

Before anything else, though, let’s do a brief refresher on how Google Ads works and why you need ’em.

HOW DO GOOGLE ADS WORK?‍

As much as we’re all afraid of Google taking over the universe, we have to admit their advertising platform is pretty darn effective. You can target very specific customers in very specific areas; heck, we wrote a whole article about how it works last year, so head over there for a more complete review. 

Another reason to focus on Google Ads? Most computers and cellphones these days automatically default to a Google search. “If you’re on your iPhone and you searched for ‘food near me,’ it’s gonna bring up Google Maps,” Jacob says. “If you search for a ‘diesel truck repair shop near me,’ it’ll probably bring up Google results. It’s become very integrated into how we find things online.” 

When you invest in Google Ads, you’re essentially paying for higher visibility in search results. You become that much easier to find.

Okay, importance established. Let’s move on to costs.

HOW MUCH SHOULD I BE SPENDING ON GOOGLE ADS?‍

First things first: you aren’t going to score a ton of qualified leads without some outlay of money and time. If you’re going this on your own, that means keyword research, updating bidding, and setting up ads. If you hire a team, well, you’re paying them to do it. Google Ads do work, but they ain’t free.

First things first. Head to the Keyword Planner, located inside Google Ads, and from there you can type in any keyword you want (for example, “truck repair shops”). The planner will tell you: 

• Average monthly searches for that keyword
• Page bid you can expect to pay on the low and high end (so you have a spending range)

From there, you can estimate how much you might end up spending per keyword, and after doing some math, you can put together a general budget.

But you’ve also got to test it. 

Jacob doesn’t recommend throwing a couple hundred bucks at one keyword. “An exploratory budget for Google Ads is a couple thousand dollars,” he says. 

(Sorry.)

Influencing factors include how far of a reach you want your shop to have; if you’re in a rural area, for instance, you might have to extend your advertising radius a few hundred miles. If you’re in a metro area, however, you’ll be competing with lots of other repair shops for the same traffic.

OH NO I’M SPENDING TOO MUCH…HOW DO I CUT COSTS?‍

If you just looked at your monthly ad spend and felt the uncomfortable urge to hide under the desk, fear not! 

There’s three big things you can do to cut down on your costs and reach more qualified leads:

• Targeting: Take a look at where your ads are appearing. Google Ads lets you cast a net across entire countries if you want. But if your repair shop is located in Utah…you probably don’t need to be advertising in, say, New Zealand. So look at the areas you’re targeting. Shrink them down if you need to. Maybe you target Salt Lake City, Provo, or Logan. Look at places immediately around you—areas where you can feasibly pull in customers.
• Keyword research: This is where a lot of shop owners get nervous. Right now, in the United States, the term “truck repair shops” has an average monthly volume of 49,500. That’s 49,500 people searching per month. It’s trending up, so it will get more popular…and it adds up. By zeroing in on more specific services you offer (“truck tire repair,” for example), you can trim down on overall spend.
  Pro tip: More isn’t always better! Finding a lower-cost keyword that brings in 100 highly qualified visitors to your website in your geographical region is much better than targeting a keyword that brings in 1,000 visitors that are less qualified or not in your region.
• Bid adjustment: In Google Ads, you can see a breakdown of how people are finding you, who’s clicking on you, and who’s converting…all segmented by device type. Are they reaching you via mobile phone? A desktop search? A bid adjustment attempts to convince Google to show your ads to whatever device is converting better. 

HOW DOES DIESELMATIC LOWER YOUR GOOGLE AD SPEND?‍

If you’ve read through this article, you know that successful advertising on Google comes down to knowledge of the industry combined with a deep understanding of how digital marketing works.

You already know that Dieselmatic works exclusively with commercial diesel repair shops and the services they offer. We bring that deep industry knowledge to the forefront of everything we do. We pair that with expertise in all things internet.

• Our top-tier SEO team will research & deploy the keywords that will put your shop’s site on the first page of Google.
• We’ll review your site map and work with web developers to make sure Google sees your website as an authoritative, high-value source. 
• We review everything about your particular situation: your current traffic, your competition, and what you could be doing to improve one (while eclipsing the other). 
• We’ll ensure the quality of the leads you get. We aren’t just aiming for bulk traffic here. Yes, we can get you many calls, but we want them to be high-quality calls from your ideal customers. We have a call tracking service that allows us to monitor the calls you receive, which means we can zero in on what services people are requesting when they reach out to you. 

These four practices allow us to chip away at extraneous traffic and tweak your existing and new Google Ads so that you reach the right people. The more specific and targeted your advertising, the less you spend. Here’s a specific example: one of our customers was spending $90.28/per conversion and $11K per month overall. We lowered their cost per conversion to $43.58 and $7.57K per month overall. 

Boom, money saved. We did it for them and we can do it for you. 

Of course, we don’t just handle your Google Ads. We’re here to manage every part of your digital marketing campaign to broaden your reach and bring in the customers you need to grow your operation. Get in touch today.