Google Ads for Food Businesses: How To Setup An Effective Campaign

Launching Google Ads for food businesses is the most effective way to target people that are searching and looking online. It’s effective because these audiences are highly targeted and they are usually in the later stages of the purchase funnel.

First, you’ll need to create a Google Ads account at ads.google.com if you don’t already have one. And then you can start doing some keyword research into your market and I’ve included details below on how to do that.

Then you’ll create your Google Ads campaign and start targeting people that are searching.

Follow the instructions below as you setup your campaign and target your markets.

 

Campaign objective

Google Ads has a number of campaign objectives for food businesses. This includes Sales, Leads and Website Traffic and you can pick the one most relevant for your business.

If you want people to purchase online, then the Sales objective is the one you should pick. And if you want to get enquiries or leads, then the Leads objective is for you. Each of these will guide you in setting up the campaign features to promote your business, products or services.

 

Campaign type

Next you’ll pick the right Google Ads campaign. For food businesses looking to get sales, leads or clicks, the Search campaign is the best one to setup. It targets people who are actively searching on Google and means the conversion rate is usually good.

And you can also test other campaign types like Display if you want to see how many sales or leads you can get. But it’s important to know that you are not targeting people that are searching when you advertise on Display. Instead, you are mainly aiming to raise awareness and hopefully people should convert later.

 

Budget

The budget you set determines how many clicks, sales or leads you get. A large budget is usually better than a small budget. But that may not always be the case when you’re just starting out.

When you first launch your campaign, it’s a good idea to start with a smaller budget and test the keywords and ads and see what search queries and conversions you get.

And you can increase it each month as performance improves.

For food businesses, a good starter budget is $500 or £300 per month and then you can increase it each month as you manage your campaign.

 

Bidding

You can simplify your keyword bidding by using an automated bid strategy. This is more efficient because bids are set automatically at auction time when your ads are eligible to appear. So, instead of setting bids manually, the machine learning bid system sets them based on the search context and the likelihood that they will convert.

The automated bid strategy you start with is important. Maximise Clicks is the best to start with because it sets bids automatically and places ads in the positions that will get you the most quality clicks.

Later, you can change to a Smart bidding strategy like target Cost Per Acquisition (tCPA) when you want to control the amount you are paying for each conversion.

 

Keywords

Like many other tools available in Google Ads, food businesses can use the Keyword Planner tool to setup their campaigns effectively. This tool is used to carry out keyword research and forecasting and helps you to add these into your campaign and set your budget.

The keywords you find will help you to structure your campaign into tightly-themed ad groups.

 

Text ads

Now you can create targeted text ads that will help you to achieve high click through rates (CTR). The most relevant ad type to create is the Responsive search ad because it provides you with 15 headlines and four description lines to promote your food products, business or food services.

 

Locations

If specific locations like cities or towns are important to your business, then you should target those only. However, many Google Ads campaigns for food businesses target the whole country and that’s ok especially if you have customers nationwide or can serve clients across the country.

 

Ad schedule

The default Ad schedule setting is that your ads are eligible to run 24/7. You can change that to whatever your requirements are.

For food businesses selling online or offering a service, running ads on all days and hours is usually the best setting. That’s because people search at all times and it’s important to reach them when they are doing so.

Later you can change the ad schedule settings to the best days and hours for your campaign. And the Time reports on the Campaigns page will show how your ads are performing for different days and hours.

 

Where your ads appear

One of the benefits of advertising in Google Ads for food businesses is that you’re only targeting people who have a strong interest. So, you’re only focused on people that are actively looking to purchase your food products or services.

So, your ads will appear on Google in one of the top or bottom positions depending on the bid and search context.

Your ads can also appear on partner websites if you opt into Google search partners and the Google Display Network. You can test these to see how they perform for your business and you can check these in your campaigns.

 

Get in Touch

I’m a Google Ads PPC specialist and I work with many food businesses, setting up and managing effective campaigns. Use the form below to contact me so we can discuss the way forward.