Why Google Ads Is King – and Why Your Beauty School Needs It

“Just Google it” has become a common household phrase we are all accustomed to in our day-to-day lives. Users are actively seeking information from this top search engine, to the tune of over 5.6 billion searches daily on Google.

The Dominance of Google

As a business and advertiser, your job is to successfully get in front of your audience (your students) when they are seeking information about beauty schools. Google is still the uncontested king when it comes to ubiquity and market share of people searching on the internet: in the U.S., Google retains nearly 90% of the search market.

There are multiple ways to get a piece of the Google action, including improving your school’s website to show up for relevant search terms in the organic, or unpaid, search results or maintaining a robust Google My Business profile. However, the fastest way to show up for students looking for beauty schools in your area is to purchase paid advertising on Google in the form of Google Ads.

Google Ads can be a tremendous benefit to a beauty school seeking to expand their current student base. In the journey of beginning an educational program of any kind, students are likely to turn to the internet to learn more about the opportunities available to them. This includes initial research on programs and schools, comparison shopping, seeking cost information, etc. Schools can effectively capture many prospective students performing these searches through paid Google Ads.

Google Ads: The Basics

What are Google Ads? These are ad blocks and listings that show up on search result pages after a user has entered a search query. They are displayed with an “Ad” indicator. Over the years, Google has changed the design and display location of these paid ads so that now they blend in with the organic unpaid results, no doubt to gain more clicks.

Here is an example where the website mpix.com is promoting an ad associated with the search keyword “print photos.” This is above the first organic listing, which is shutterfly.com

The order of how ads are displayed is determined based on an auction of all advertisers targeting the same keyword. The more you are willing to pay per click on your ad, the more likely it is that you will have a favorable Google Ads position for your ad.

Optimizing Google Ad Targeting

Google Ads has a business dashboard that allows businesses to directly target keywords and keyword phrases related to your business, showing your advertisement to individuals who are performing a relevant search. If the user is interested, they will click on your ad and be directed to a website or webpage experience of your choosing—ideally a landing page that is specifically designed for this high-conversion audience.

In addition to keyword targeting, Google Adwords also supports the ability for the advertiser to target specific locations. This helps to ensure that you as a business or advertiser have the ability to only advertise in areas where you want to attract new students or customers. Within certain business categories, Google will allow you to target users based on their demographic, gender, household income, parental status, and more. This capability helps refine your campaigns so that you are not wasting ad budget on clicks that won’t convert.

Benefits of Google Ads

Why are Google Ads so beneficial at spreading the reach of your school? One key is simply that Google Ads are prominently placed in multiple places in the search results. Paid ads are shown both above and below the organic results. While organic ranking is extremely powerful, it can be very difficult to rank organically among competitors, and doing so takes investment over a long time horizon. With paid ads, you have the ability to tap into the user searches that are most important to you and show up there based on your bids.

If your goal is business growth, expanding to Google Ads to capture a supplemental target audience for your product can be a great solution.