What’s the point of google ads in the age of virality?
Social media (especially TikTok) has made it seem like all a business needs to do is post a silly little video to get a line out the door every day for a month or longer. If seeing other businesses go viral + get a ton of business from a video that’s less than 60 seconds makes you question if your Google ads campaign is worth it, I don’t blame you.
Yet, if you start focusing on posting on social media, trying to please the algorithm so it makes you go viral, you might see that going viral is not so simple. So, before you close your ads account, let’s think about the difference between how Google ads bring you business + how you go viral on social media.
Google ads (aka pay-per-click ads)
PPC ads are ads set up through Google that appear as sponsored results when someone searches for a keyword or query that you have added to your campaign. The reason they’re called pay-per-click ads is because you only pay Google when someone actually clicks on the ad. For other ad forms like YouTube or television ads, social media ads, and print ads (like in newspapers or magazines), you pay an upfront fee for your ad to get shown.
Google ads meet people where they’re already looking for you. Instead of hoping your ad will be the one that sticks with someone (out of the thousands of other ads they see in a day), PPC ads only appear when a person is actively looking for a relevant product or service + if no one clicks on it, it doesn’t cost you anything more than the time it took to set up the campaign.
Social Media + Virality
There’s no denying that going viral can have a massive impact on your business. The issue with going viral is that there’s no clear path laid out for you to follow. There’s no step-by-step instruction guide (although people on the internet may claim to have one). Often, what goes viral versus what doesn’t can feel random.
Posts you put your heart + soul into + think are so creative can flop while posts you made in a hurry because you were out of ideas can do numbers. The lack of consistency lends itself to the extreme variability that causes virality, but it can also mean that you’re shouting into the void 9 times out of 10.
Unfortunately, cracking the code to social media success isn’t as simple as a lot of people like to make it seem – especially as a business rather than a personal brand. Posting consistently + engaging with other accounts is sadly not the secret to getting 100K+ engaged followers (although it *will* likely help you grow over time). You can be doing all the right things, all the things everyone tells you to do, and still, your content might not go viral or even semi-viral.
Plus, everything on social media is so fleeting that even if you do go viral, it may give you a lot of business in a very short period of time, rather than a decent amount of business that maintains its level long-term. A candy store (that I will not name) in Boston went viral on TikTok, leading to a line out the door every time I walked past (which was weekly) for a couple months, but now, about a year later, there’s rarely a crowd. Their product + aesthetic stayed the same, but people moved on to the next spot – the next business that went viral – after their 5 seconds of fame were up.
The TORTOISE vs The Hare
Whereas Google ads can feel like a less exciting, more slow-going method, we still think it pays off more in the long run. As opposed to social media where you’re hoping and praying that someone will see what you’re posting, you’re actually reaching your audience right away with a PPC ad.
It’s not about what’s trendy or what the algorithm decides to push. It directly funnels people to your business when they’re looking for something you can provide. The first step, getting someone’s interest, is already accomplished, because they wouldn’t be searching for it if they weren’t interested in it.
Want to grab a coffee + talk about your Google ads strategy? Get in touch.
