Google Ads and Google Analytics for Yogis: Part II

Some technical stuff for the marketer in you!

So far, you have created your Marketing Personas, your Vision and Mission Statements.

You looked inside yourself and identified what makes your Yoga and your brand unique, and you chose all the elements of your Brand Identity.

Everything has come together to form your website and reach your following.  We also covered Social Media, which can help you make further and deeper connections, so it’s now time to take your marketing one step further.

Time to talk about

• Google Ads, a way to advertise your offerings and spread your message
• Google Analytics, a way to gather data, understand what is happening and make informed decisions.

Before discussing Google Ads further, I would like to point out that paying for ads is a precise act that targets and actually reaches the people that need you most. Nothing like the times when the mailbox was flooded with irrelevant flyers, or even when the algorithms weren’t as sophisticated and our screens were full of unwanted messages. Targeted ads that convey your genuine vision can help you stand out in a sea of Yoga teachers.

Google Ads

Google Ads is a popular advertising platform that can help you reach a lot more people and actively increase your following. They function as a pay-per-click system, which means that you only pay for your ads when people click on them.

Google Ads drive consistent round-the-clock traffic to your website and are one of the best ways to advertise your unique Yoga practice, your programs, and your retreats.

Furthermore, they promote your offerings to the people that matter most. The ads appear as users enter specific keywords in Google Search – which means that they are already looking for something relevant.

A successful Google Ads campaign can increase:

• Your following
• The visitors to your website or your studio
• Online bookings for your retreats
• The number of calls to your studio
• The number of leads (potential students)
• The reach of your brand

Google, as a leading Search Engine, guarantees access to a very broad audience.

In order to create your Google Ads campaign, once again, you need to refer to your vision and your purpose.

You need to outline your goals and your objectives and identify the right keywords for your ads. The structure and the keywords of your account will determine how the ads are triggered and when and where they will appear. Basically, what you have to figure out is which words – keywords – will activate your ads when the user types those words in Google Search.

A well-thought-out structure enables better results – and better quality scores that determine the preference Google shows to your ads. Note that Google Ads are displayed based on an auction system as you bid for the top spot against other ads with the same keywords.

The following outline will clarify the procedure and highlight the basic steps for achieving maximum results.

Defining success for your business

The first step is to decide on a specific goal for your ad campaigns. It can be:

• increased traffic to your website
• more visits to your studio
• more bookings for your retreat, etc.

Setting clear goals is an essential aspect of crafting a tailor-made campaign that will achieve your targets. Furthermore, if you get this right, the Google Ads platform will be able to provide the best setting options for your campaign to succeed.

For example, if you have two different marketing goals, you need to set up two different campaigns. You should create a campaign with a Leads goal for getting leads and a campaign with a Subscription goal for getting more subscriptions. Other goals could be increased Website traffic or increased Calls from new students.

Make sure that your Google Ads are consistent with the structure of your website so that visitors find what they expect. Your structure needs to take under consideration all your offerings, and feature those that are the most valuable.

Another important aspect of Google Ads is locality. You can limit the reach of your ads to specific geographical areas when you target new students for your studio. And then again you can enable a global reach for ads that promote a retreat in an exotic location.

Setting the budget and the bid strategy

You can set a budget and control the overall cost of the campaign. Google Ads offer the option of automated bidding that uses data in the system to optimize bidding for each campaign. This is recommended for new users as it is most effective. The campaign’s average daily budget controls the overall expenditure.

Time to create the actual ads

When it is time to build your actual ad campaign, you start by creating specific ad groups, each with a unique set of keywords and a minimum of three ads. Ad groups need to get organized around the search terms that you believe should trigger your ad. Each ad group should have keywords that are closely related to the same idea.

Make sure to use text that is unique to your calling and reflects what your follower intends to find. For appealing ads, it is necessary to have clarity of purpose and include at least one keyword in the ad headline.

Other things to consider when writing your ads are:

• Character limit
• Relevance
• Landing Page. The page that the visitors land on when they click on your ad must be a perfect match. Ensure that the advertised program is clearly visible so that people find what they expect.
• Google Ads approval guidelines. Ads need to get approved, so ensure they match high-quality standards in terms of writing and editing. Text ad requirements include no extra spaces, no unclear URLs, no peculiar capitalization or exclamation marks.

Google Analytics – Continuously improving performance

Setting up your Google Ads is not the end of the advertising process. You must continuously monitor their performance and make changes as things evolve. As a Yogi, you already know that it is crucial to embrace change, and this is also true for your marketing.

Google Ads offer conversion tracking, which informs you about what happens after people engage with your ad. Checking performance will help you make informed decisions and timely adjustments that will improve the effectiveness of your actions. Google Analytics serves that purpose.

Google Analytics, GA

Technology, nowadays, provides the tools to do a lot more than create content and publish it for the world to see. Technology today also enables us to measure data and obtain real hard facts about how our website is performing.

You can find out if people visited your website, what they read, and what they didn’t, where those people are coming from and so much more. The truth is that for your business and your website to work over time, it is crucial to

• Track the actions of the visitors
• Evaluate the quality of the website and the content
• Optimize your website and content continuously. Later, when we discuss Google Ads, tracking those will also be added to the fun!

Google Analytics (GA) is a valuable tool that enables you to collect all that information and make informed decisions.

The schematics of the process are: Data → Information → Knowledge

The data in the GA Reports gives you the information you need to improve your knowledge of those facts and ultimately make better decisions about the business side of your Yoga teaching.

With Google Analytics you can:

• Understand what is working and what isn’t
• Generate ideas and improve results

A few things about the technology behind Google Analytics

Google Analytics became a reality due to the development of the JavaScript tracking code. No need to get into coding, but it is interesting to know that JavaScript is a programming language that resides in the visitor’s browser and tracks actions. The information is collected and sent to Google via the tracking code. The process is like this:

Collection → Configuration → Processing → Reporting

The tracking code on your web pages collects data

• GA Admin platform enables you to configure that data
• Google processes that information
• You get reportsthat let you know what is really going on with your website.

We are not going to go into detail about GA in this article, but I would like to mention one more aspect for you to consider. An aspect that is linked to your calling and your vision.

The fundamental question behind the use of GA is:

What is your purpose?

Before moving on to the tracking elements of GA, all marketers ask this question:

What is the purpose of the business, and what is the purpose of the website?

Once again, your marketing journey poses to you some fundamental questions, and you need to look inside for answers. As a Yogi, what you need to do is clarify your visualization, identify what makes your calling unique, and design a career path that reflects your values.

This theoretical question will help you set some really practical goals for your practice and your business. GA is available to track those goals and measure the performance of all the online tools you are using.

Google Analytics enables you to measure your goals using the following options

• Destination, which tracks page views (e.g., Home Page, Thank You page) – Destination is used for tracking goals 75% of the time
• Duration, which tracks the time followers spent on a page
• Pages/Screens per visit, which tracks the number of pages each follower visits
• Event, which tracks activity within a page (useful when you plan retreats)

The full functionality of Google Analytics can be addressed at a later stage after your website is up and running.

Wrapping Up

In this section, we examined a powerful means of spreading your message and reaching a wider audience that you couldn’t reach otherwise. Google Ads – especially enhanced through the use of Google Analytics – can make everyone looking for Yoga content a potential follower, such as, a student who found what he or she was looking for in your message and wants to come to you.

Join the discussion. Share your thoughts in the comments.