As of the third quarter of 2020, Google had more than 1.5 billion active users. This number means that almost 20% of the world’s population actively uses Google on a regular basis. Considering the booming popularity of the Internet and the enormous wealth of information that is available on Google, this is somewhat unsurprising. No other search engine really compares to Google. That’s why “Google it” is such a commonplace saying but “Yahoo it” and “Bing it” are not. For this reason, many businesses want to invest in ads, but always want to know, how much does it cost to advertise on Google?

Based on Google’s overwhelming popularity as a search engine, many businesses of all sizes utilize Google as a tool in their advertising campaigns. Advertising on Google can help you attract more traffic to your website, heighten your conversion rate, and increase your overall profits. Google advertising campaigns tend to be very lucrative, but they can also be very expensive. It is important to weigh the cost of advertising on Google against its effectiveness before pouring your entire marketing budget into Google Ads. 

Keep reading to learn more about how much it costs to advertise on Google and find out how to ensure that your Google Ads budget is in the right range depending on your business’s size, goals, and marketing budget as a whole. 

Google Advertising Costs Vary Across Industries 

Answering the question of how much it costs to advertise on Google is a challenge, primarily because the answer to that question varies dramatically depending on your business’s industry.

What is the cost for advertising on Google?

What is the cost for advertising on Google?

Advertising on Google for a certain keyword depends on the competitiveness of that keyword. The more competitive your business’s industry is, the more competitive it will be to target keywords that are relevant for your business and the more expensive it will be to advertise for those relevant keywords. 

How much advertising on Google for your business will cost you depends primarily on the competitiveness of your business’s industry and the strategies you use to build your budget for advertising on Google.

However, you can calculate estimated costs of advertising on Google for relevant keywords for your business by using a simple formula: Total Monthly Clicks for [Keyword] x % Clicks Made on Paid Ads x Cost-Per-Click on [Keyword]. This formula isn’t foolproof by any means, but it can be useful for budget estimations. 

The most effective way to use this formula is to use it to calculate the cost of advertising on Google for the top 10 keywords for your business’s industry. Adding up all the costs of advertising for each individual keyword should yield an estimated amount of your budget that you will need to allocate toward your Google advertising campaign if you want the campaign to be effective. 

How to Build a Google Advertising Budget 

There is no perfect strategy for building a Google advertising budget for your business. However, there are a few things that are important to keep in mind if your goal is to build a realistic budget for your Google Ads campaign that results in lucrative returns for your business. 

It is a good idea to take a look at other businesses that are in the same industry as your business and are of similar size to your business. Determining how much those businesses are budgeting to spend on their Google advertising campaigns can help you decide how to build a realistic Google advertising budget that works for your business. 

Targeting keywords that are less competitive is another effective strategy for building a realistic Google advertising budget—as long as the keywords you target are still relevant to your business. Many businesses are able to stretch their Google advertising budgets by honing in to target branded keywords that are not at all competitive but can still have a major impact on your business specifically. 

With that being said, it is also important to note that bidding on relevant non-branded keywords is another key part of advertising on Google. You won’t get very far by just targeting branded keywords unless general recognition levels for your brand are incredibly high across your target consumer population. 

Another effective way to determine a realistic budget for your Google advertising campaign is to delve into the costs of targeting individual keywords. By doing this rather than only focusing on the big picture of your entire Google advertising budget, you can more easily weigh the cost of bidding on an individual target keyword against its impact on your business.

When it comes to investing any amount of money into advertising, it’s natural for there to be some second-guessing about all of it. For more information about Search Engine Marketing and how much it cost to advertise on Google, contact us today!

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