How to Leverage Google Ads for Your Dance Studio

Are you excited and you are ready to learn more about Google Ads, best practices, SEO, and all that stuff that can get more eyes on your studio? Well, I brought my friend, Jennifer Randall on The Erin Burd Live Show and we talked about all these things. You can catch the entire episode here. 

Google is completely different from Facebook and Instagram. Google has a formula that they share with us. You tell Google exactly who you want to put the ad in front of and they put it there. Simple? Yes and No. Let’s dive deeper.

You can tell Google to put ads in front of people who are already searching for a dance studio in your area. You can do that on Facebook with “who the person likes” but not as specific as “if they Google dance studios in your area, show them my ad.” Another great thing about Google is we’re going to make a generic ad and let it run for a long period of time because we don't need to tweak the audience as much as we do with Facebook and Instagram because we're not educating parents on who we are, what we do, where, where we are, and what makes us different. They’re coming to Google for a specific thing and here we are!

The first place to start is to determine what type of ad you really want to run. When a parent is going to Google to do the search, they have already decided that dance is their thing, so we don’t have to educate them. They're at the bottom of the funnel and they're really just choosing which dance studio they want to try out. That's what your Google ads should really be focused on. 

We want to make sure that when we are running a Google Ad, we're running a search network ad. Those are the ads that do not have photos in them. The display network ads are the ones that have photos and those usually will appear on the side. Don’t start with those. Start with a search network ad. Video ads are also not great ads to run on Google.

Google Ads Nugget: Make sure you're picking target qualified leads. Choose your keywords to be people and what you think people are going to be searching for. That's how you're going to get in front.

One of the things I love about Google is you can see where your money is going and who clicks. You see the direct correlation from the cost to the click. 

If you don't know what keywords to use, there are two resources that I like to use. One is called Ubersuggest. It's totally free and it will tell you how popular your word is that you think you're going to use. Popular means that it's going to cost you more when somebody clicks on it. The other resource I like to use is Google’s built-in keyword planner. It lets you choose up to 20-25 keywords for each ad. I would recommend that if you are running a general ad that you're using all of those keywords, all of the names of your classes or genres that you use, because if somebody types one of those into the search then your ad will show up.

Website SEO Nugget: Make sure your website has those same keywords optimized. It will help you with your Google rankings. Google's looking at all the words and it's pulling from there when people search. You should be leveraging your website by using the keywords on every page people might go to. k you. Cuz I was like, Ooh, we're gonna have a different conversation if there's a no, cause I see y'all. So, can't help myself. Okay. All right. Let's talk about how to get to the top.

How do we get to the top of Google? There are three things that matter: quality score, ad ranking, and cost per click. Quality score is how relevant your ad is, basically how many people have clicked, how many ads have you run, and the user experience when they click on your ad. Quality scores range from 1-10.

Ad rank of your cost per click is determined on the ad ranking of the ad below yours divided by your quality score, plus a penny. Google has a very specific formula. FYI average cost per click for our industry is $3. If you're lower than $3, chances are your Google ad isn't going to perform well, no matter what. So just keep that in mind. 

Remember, Google Ads are a long play in the market. The longer you run an ad and keep it running, the higher your ranking will go, and the more people that will see it. You just need a good strategy and to get started!

If you’re at Dance Teacher Web this week in Las Vegas, stop by our booths and say hello!!

Erin Burd and Jennifer Randall