How Google Ads For Cafes Work

Google is the big brother of the internet. It knows all about you and your customers. It knows all about you because it has been capturing digital behaviour signals from interactions across Google search, Gmail, location and other Google Services. Billions of searches go through Google each day, each signalling to Google different types of intent and behaviour. Google captures all this information to build digital behaviour profiles.

Google makes those profiles available to us in Google Ads by way of Audiences and Keyword targetting. We then get to say to Google: "put my cafe in front of people who are most likely to visit my cafe and make a purchase". Because Google has collected all this data about people, it knows who is most likely to fit that persona and so it will serve ads to those people.

This is what allows your cafe to show up at the top of Google Search and Google Maps. People searching for cafes on Google Maps have a higher buy intent so Google will ideally put your ad in front of people who are searching for Cafes on Google Maps.

🤔 The Big Question

You may now be thinking: "if Google is so smart, why doesn't it just serve my ads to people I want it to all the time?". That is a valid question and point of frustration for anyone who has tried Google Ads for themselves and been unable to get the results that they are looking for.

A lot of the times, Google needs help in understanding your ideal customer and how to get in front of them. Just like Google picks up signals from individuals, it also picks up signals from business profiles and ad settings, so incorrectly configured business profiles and ad campaigns can lead to frustrating performance results in your campaign.

🎯 The Levers You Can Pull

The levers that you can pull to help Google understand your ideal customer include keywords, negative keywords and ad copy.

🔑 Keywords

Keywords are the search terms that you think your customers will be entering into Google. Keyword selecting is both a science and an art. It's about looking at search volume data but also about trying to put yourself in your customer shoes to understand what they might be searching for.

To make matters complicated, 15% of searches on Google are completely new, meaning there is no historical data on the volume of search terms of over 2 billion searches every day. This is why Google Ads campaign management is a full time job; the language being used by people to represent their intent changes. It's like a fascinating language game! 📊

🚫 Negative Keywords

Negative keywords help to protect your ad spend by not showing for irrelevant keywords. So for example as a cafe, you may add "supplies" as a negative keyword so that you don't show up for searches related to cafe equipment. This is important as irrelevant clicks can drain your ads budget.

Sounds straightforward? Let me complicate it for you. We've managed campaign where we've seen customers convert on completely irrelevant search terms and even when looking for competitors. This is why it is important to review the search data and also use some pragmatism when managing keyword strategies. 💡

✍️ Ad Copy

Ad copy is what your customers read when they view your ads. They should be relevant and related to the keywords that have been selected, but above all, they need to be emotive. They need to motivate your customer to take action.

This is where clear and concise communication comes in. People on the internet are time poor and attention poor. They need to be clearly guided to what you want them to do. The ad copy should clearly convey that.

Now remember, there are 2 billion new google searches every day. This shows us that the intent behind language is fluid and continues to change - what one search term meant yesterday, may have a completely different meaning today. This means that like the keywords, ad copy also needs consistent monitoring to ensure it is encouraging people to click through on your ads. That is why it is best practice to continue to rotate and add new ad copy throughout the campaign. 🔄

💪 Let Us Handle the Heavy Lifting

Reading all this may sound exhausting and a lot of work, but that's why it helps to have a passionate Google ads team drive these results for you, while you focus on the day-to-day fun stuff at your cafe.

For us, managing Google Ads campaigns is fun and exciting, we love what we do, which is why we've helped cafes generate over $22k per week in revenue on lean ad budgets for just $15 a day. ☕️

If you need help with your campaign, reach out.