Are Google Ads a viable marketing strategy for portrait photographers?

If you’re looking into marketing your photography studio you’ll probably run into a few strategies including paid and organic. In this blog we’re going to explore a paid strategy, more specifically Google Ads and whether it’s a viable strategy for your studio.

What are Google Ads?

Google Ads is an online platform that allows you to research, plan and schedule Ads across the Google Ad network. The chances are you’ve seen Google Ads in their different forms such as when you search for something, browse websites and watch YouTube videos. Further down the page we’ll go through the different types of campaigns.

What makes Google Ads different to Facebook Ads?

The biggest difference between Facebook and Google Ads is the way they charge for their services.

Facebook charges for impressions. Every time your Ad appears you get charged a small amount. It often takes multiple impressions before someone acknowledges your Ad and therefore impressions are cheap, however, if your Ad creatives and offer aren’t powerful enough you’ll be wasting these impressions. We’ve talked about the importance of Ad Creatives and having a good offer before.

Instead of charging for impressions, Google charges per click. Every time someone sees your Ad and clicks on it, you’ll be charged. This means you’ll only be charged when someone makes a conscious choice to view your offering. This can result in higher quality leads but you’ll often be paying a little more for them.

Will Google Ads work for family portrait photography?

This is probably what you’re here for. Will Google Ads work for your photography studio?

Unfortunately, it’s a mixed answer. No, Google Ads won’t work if you have a limited marketing budget. If you’re looking for lead generation then Facebook Ads is the way to go.

Yes, Google Ads can work for you as a part of a broader marketing strategy and in combination with Facebook Ads. In short, send people to your website with Facebook and then retarget them with Google so that they’re seeing your Ads everywhere.

How to use Google Ads as a wider strategy to market your photography studio

Google Ads alone probably won’t provide you with enough leads to keep your studio open and we would always recommend finding multiple streams of leads just in case one method fails. Right now Facebook Ads are the best for lead generation but if you have the budget, Google Ads can be used as a wider strategy for your marketing.

Google Ad Campaign Objectives

When setting up a new campaign in Google Ads you’ll need to choose an objective. Choose the option that best suits what you’re looking to do, this would likely be leads but here are the descriptions Google provides.

Sales

“Drive sales online, in app, by phone or in store.”

Leads

“Get leads and other conversions by encouraging customers to take action.”

Website traffic – don’t jump to this

“Get the right people to visit your website.”

App promotion

“Get more installs, engagement and pre-registration for your app.”

Awareness & consideration

“Reach a broad audience and build interest in your products or brand.”

Local shop visits and promotions

“Drive visits to local shops, including restaurants and dealerships.”

Create a campaign without a goal’s guidance

“Choose a campaign type first, without a recommendation based on your objective.”

Tip: A lot of new marketers assume website traffic is a good option however, this will just send people who are likely to click and view a website but haven’t necessarily shown the behaviours of becoming a lead before. A lead campaign will still send traffic to your website but the target audience is more likely to become a lead based on how they’ve used websites in the past – yes Google knows!

Types of Google Ad campaigns

Once you’ve chosen an objective you’ll need to select a campaign type. These will vary depending on your objective. There are few different types of campaigns and we won’t cover them all but here are the descriptions provided by Google that fall under the Lead objective.

Search

“Get in front of high-intent customers at the right time on Google Search”

Performance Max

“Reach audiences across all of Google with a single campaign.”

Display

“Reach customers across three million sites and apps with engaging creative”

Shopping

“Showcase your products to shoppers as they explore what to buy”

Video

“Reach viewers on YouTube and get conversions”

Demand Gen

“Drive demand and conversions on YouTube, Discover and Gmail with image and video ads”

Which Google Ad campaign types should I use?

Newbies to Google Ads could start with a Search campaign as this is simplest to set up, however, a search campaign requires people to be searching for your service. Sadly in the UK, search traffic is reasonably low for portrait photography services, however, you’ll only be charged when someone clicks so it can’t hurt to have this setup for when someone does go looking.

Another campaign to try is Display. Your industry is visual which makes display Ads perfect. In this type of campaign, your Ads will be images that appear across Google’s network including thousands, maybe even millions, of websites, GMAIL accounts and YouTube consumers.

For this to be effective you might want to start with a warm audience. Start by creating an audience of website visitors and place your Ads in front of them. This means your Ads will follow your web traffic across the internet – the more touchpoints the better. The tricky thing about doing this is that your audience will need to be bigger than 1000. Try using Facebook to increase your website traffic rather than relying on SEO to improve your organic web traffic.

How much should I spend with Google Ads?

This is another big question. In order to understand how much Ads will cost you, you’ll need to do some keyword research. Using the tool within Google Ads you’ll be able to enter keywords and see how many times a month it’s searched as well as how much a click could cost you. Also when doing research you’ll be able to see whether the competition is high or low, usually high competition means a higher cost-per-click.

So, will Google Ads work for your portrait photography studio?

Unfortunately you’ll have to fnd out. Results could vary on location, for example newborn photography will naturally be searched a lot more in London due to the number of people in the area.

It will be difficult to rely heavily on Google Ads for your lead generation, certainly for now. Our hope is that the UK population will wake up to the benefits of portrait photography over the next decade and actively start looking for the services.

Google Ads could be effective for a remarketing strategy so long as you have the website traffic to start using Display Ads. Remarketing is a great way to warm an audience and warm leads are much easier to convert. Remember that using Google Ads will be another marketing stream you’ll have to pay for so keep a close eye on your spending and tell Google how much you’d like to spend per day.