4 Google Ads Tips for Florists
Focused on daily deliveries? Wondering how to increase your sales volume?
Google Ads is the secret to increasing your orders and getting customers to your flower business.
Google Ads changed the game for our flower business. It’s how we got the volume required to turn over more products, grow our team and make more money.
GOOGLE ADS FOR FLORISTS – THE BASICS
If you’ve ever set up a Google Ads campaign, you know it’s super easy to waste money. A lot of money – it’s easy to spend hundreds and thousands of dollars with no return.
Yes, Google tries to make it easy to set up a campaign. After all, it makes good business sense for them to encourage you to spend money. But if you’re not seeing the return on investment, you’ll quickly wonder why you’re spending this money in the first place. Is Google Ads worth it? Absolutely yes. But you’ve got to learn how to approach Google Ads for your flower business, otherwise, you’ll end up wasting a lot of money very quickly.
We’ve gotcha covered. Here are four Google Ads tips for florists you can use to get your advertising campaigns pointed in the right direction.
GOOGLE ADS TIP #1 – USE EXPERT MODE
When you first set up a campaign in Google Ads, you’ll be inclined to follow the obvious path and go with what Google suggests: a Smart Campaign.
Don’t do it. Look for the little line of type that says “Switch to Expert Mode”.
If we take the 10,000-foot view, for most small businesses, a Smart Campaign is the right answer.
Except flower businesses aren’t most small businesses. Our customers shop differently. There are some nuances and subtleties to our customer sales process that require us to set up more sophisticated Google Ads campaigns. Therefore, a smart campaign falls on its face with flower businesses.
A mart campaign works if your business fits into one of two traditional categories:
- Your business only caters to local customers. You don’t care about advertising internationally. This works for electricians, catering businesses, restaurants, massage therapists, etc.
- Your business caters to customers around the world and can deliver around the world. This captures most clothing stores, giftware providers and product-based businesses.
But what about florists? You’ll notice we don’t fall into either of these categories.
Our business model is different to either one of these categories. We will take orders from customers internationally, but we only deliver locally.
This means we don’t fall into the traditional categories of Google Ads campaigns. For this very reason, you need to set up a more sophisticated approach to our campaigns. That requires the use of Expert Mode.
HOT TIP: If you’ve already got a campaign up and running and it’s set up as a Smart Campaign, you will need to start over again. I know it’s a pain, but it’s worth the short term irritation. It really is!
GOOGLE ADS TIP#2 – SET UP CONVERSIONS
Conversion is how Google knows there has been a successful purchase. The ultimate goal is to get Google to be able to serve up your ad to users that will actually turn into paying customers.
The best way to make that happen is to set up conversions.
Now, I ain’t gunna tell you it’s a super simple tech thing to sort out. In fact, it’s probably something you need to outsource. But that’s super easy to do these days.
My go-to suggestion is to jump on Fiverr.com. Search “Google Ads Conversion + Your Website Platform” and connect with a freelancer who can help. For as little as $10 they can get the job done within 48 hours. It’s so amazing!
Once you have conversions set up, you can adjust your Google Ads campaign to optimise for conversions. That means Google will make sure it’s showing your ads to customers who are more likely to buy – it will shift the emphasis to customers who are likely to deliver a conversion.
What does this mean in plain English? You stop wasting money on junk leads.
GOOGLE ADS TIP #3 – INCLUDE YOUR DELIVERY AREA IN YOUR KEYWORDS
One of the greatest marketing advantages we have as floral designers is that our services are location-specific. Your business only caters to deliveries within a certain footprint. Because of this, we can focus on a super targeted set of keywords
When it comes to setting up your Google Ads campaign, this is a really important detail. Like REALLY important.
You need to teach Google to hone in on your footprint – you don’t want to attract any old “flower delivery” customer. You only want customers who need flower delivery to a specific area (the area you deliver to).
So, when you’re setting up your keywords, be sure to include the names of the suburbs, neighbourhoods, cities, counties you deliver to. For example, if you are a florist who delivers across Perth,, then your keywords should be “Flower delivery Perth” not just “flower delivery”.
Other keyword options include:
- “your location florist”
- “flowers your location”
- “flower shop your location”
This one adjustment can save you hundreds of thousands of dollars over time.
GOOGLE ADS TIP #4 – KEEP AN EYE ON NEGATIVE KEYWORDS
A Google Ads campaign is the exact opposite of “Set it and forget it”. It can take anywhere from 6 weeks to 6 months to get it humming. It needs babysitting. You’ll have to keep refining it. It’ll need tweaking.
One of the specific areas to keep checking in on is Negative Keywords. This is where you show Google the keywords you don’t want to pay for.
Identifying negative keywords tells Google to ignore any searches that include specific not-relevant keywords. The specifics will depend on your business and what you offer, but a few examples might include “artificial flowers,” “hampers,” “dried arrangements,” as well as towns, cities and countries you don’t deliver to.
A good rule of thumb to follow is checking in on your ads and keywords every 7 to 14 days.