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Google Ads For Martial Arts School – Best PPC Guide 2024

April 19, 2024

Google Ads for martial arts schools will increase your business revenue and help bring in more students.

In 2019, Google dominated the search engine market by owning 92.96% of it. Other search engines like Yahoo and Bing weren’t even close to Google. So what does this mean? It means that the majority of searchers went to Google.

With the help of Google Ads, your martial arts business can be in front of these searchers.

Table of Contents

Why Google Ads for Martial Arts School?

Before signing up, new potential students will most of the time go to Google and look up the best martial arts school near them.

With the help of Google Ads and this guide, your martial arts school will be able to be at the top of the search results page.

Google Ads runs on a pay-per-click (PPC) structure, meaning that you will only pay when someone clicks on your ad. Even if you are not getting traffic from your ad but are still running it, you won’t have to pay.

The power behind Google Ads is the buyer’s intent when a new student comes across your ad. Buyer’s intent is the process in which a consumer is about to make a purchase.

Google Ads helps you target these consumers by matching the keywords you choose to the searcher’s keyword.

Ad services like Facebook don’t do this. What Facebook does is show your ad to everybody around your location, not people who are specifically searching to join a martial arts school. So Facebook Ads usually get more leads but of less quality.

Conversions are when a visitor on your page makes an action that includes calling your business or signing up.

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Google Ads Campaign Structure

Google already has an easy structure to follow to set up your ads.

At the top, you will have your Google Ads account.

The campaigns will be the goal of your ads. This includes if you want your ads to show on the search results page, have them displayed on Google, and more.

For the sake of this guide, we will choose to search.

The Ad groups are the themes of your keywords. For example, a theme for a group can be the location of your martial arts school.

The keywords that you could target are “Martial Arts School Los, Angeles” or “Martial Arts School near me”

Keywords are going to be words or phrases that you select for your ad to show up for. It’s gonna be important to choose keywords that are relevant to your business.

Quality Score

Your ads will be assessed by a ranking called Quality score. The scale is on a 1-10 ranking, 10 is the highest and best score you can achieve.

Having a higher quality score means that your ad is meeting what searchers are looking for. Google will also have your ad rank higher than others and your cost-per-click will be lower.

The factors that influence your quality score are:

The first factor is your ad relevant to what searchers are looking for. So if you are selecting keywords not relevant to your business, your ad will be showing for other searches.

Then your ad will be given a lower quality score.

The second factor is searchers are able to find the information they need on your landing page based on their search query.

The third factor is your click-through rate. How many people are actually clicking on your ad compared to the number of impressions it’s getting?

It’s important to try to focus on all three factors since they equally impact your ads.

Setting Up Your Campaign

All it takes to start setting up your campaigns and ads will be a Gmail account.

Head over to Google Ads and click Get Started.

Once you have done that, on the first page you will be given three different options for your advertising goal.

Ignore the three different goal options, look at the bottom of the page, and click on the switch to expert mode.

Switching to expert mode will allow you to have more control over how you would like your ads to be run.

The following page will be Google giving you more options for them to guide you through the ad process.

Ignore it and click on “Create a goal without guidance.”

Next, you will be asked about the campaign type you want for your ad.

Select the Search type.

Search will give you the highest return on investment and conversion rate.

The next page will be the campaign settings. This lets you name your campaign, an example could be a martial arts location.

Make sure to name your campaigns specific to their focus as it will help you stay organized if you are running multiple campaigns at once.

Right under the campaign name, you have two options that are selected, search network and display network.

Keep the search network selected as it will have your ad show on Google search partners like New York Times or The Guardian.

This will help you dominate other search pages.

You want to deselect the display network, choosing this network drives up the cost of your ad without really bringing any conversions.

Location, Language, And Audience

The targeting and audience section will allow you to choose the audience you want to have your ads shown to.

For a local martial arts school, you should go click on enter another location and put in the area your school is located in.

This will help bring in new students within your area.

In this section, you can add in languages if you or your teachers speak other languages.

For the audience, this will have your campaign target specific audiences that you add-in. If you perhaps teach classes to kids, you can add in people under 18.

Budgeting and Bidding

Of course, the budget you set right now can always be changed later on.

The budget you enter will be the average amount you will be spending per day on Google Ads.

Some days your ads will spend under this budget but other days a little over. This will average out over the course of the month.

To start off your ads, a solid daily budget would be between $40-$60, this cost can vary from location. Setting your budget too low will make it hard for your ad to get data.

With data, you will be able to determine if you need to make any changes to your ad.

To figure out if your daily budget is within that range, just take the monthly budget you are willing to spend divided by 30 days.

Under Bidding, you will want to select a bid strategy directly, then click on the drop-down and choose Manual CPC (Cost-Per-Click)

Google will prefer you to choose their automated bidding strategies but with Manual CPC you will have more control in your bidding.

These are the different automated bidding strategies:

Target ROAS
Target CPA (Cost-Per-Action)
Target Impression Share
Maximize Conversion Value
Maximize Clicks

These strategies often only benefit Google as it helps them generate more revenue, with Manual CPC you will have more control over your spending. This will give you a higher return on investment.

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Ad Assets (Previously Ad Extensions)

Ad assets are additional space on your ad that allows you to include more information about your business. These are free to add and they help make your ad stand out by making it bigger.

By having more relevant information on your ad, it will improve your click-through rate and conversion as new potential students can find information faster.

These are the 6 ad assets that you can include:

Sitelink assets: This will have a specific link on your ad that links to what the searcher is looking for. For example, you can add sitelink assets to the page about martial arts for kids.
Call assets: This has the business phone number on the ad.
Callout assets: This shows what kind of services you offer
Structured Snippet: Like callout assets, this highlights unique features of your services that make you different from other martial arts schools
Location assets: The address of the martial arts school will be on the ad so they know exactly where you are located.
Promotion assets: Let new clients know if you have a promotion going on like “sign up this week and get 15% off for the next three months.”

Creating Your Ad Group

Now that you got your campaign settings done, the next page will be for you to create your ad groups.

As we talked about in the campaign structure, ad groups will be the themes of your keywords. Having the keywords relevant to each other and to your business will be key.

So, if you want to target the area you are located in, that can be a group. Another group could be the different types of programs you have.

Having multiple ad groups will help your ads target different search results that new students may be entering in the search query.

Creating Your Ad

Once you have your ad groups and keywords set up, the next step is to create your ad.

Here is an example of an ad created.

This is where you will be able to enter information that is displayed on your ad.

Including the number of years you’ve been teaching, any awards, or any unique information will make your ad appealing and attract new students.

The URL you enter in the final URL section will send people that click on your ad to the landing page.

Use as many headlines as possible and characters to help your ad be larger on the search engine results page.

Keyword Research And The Types of Keywords

Keywords are how new students will find your business.

If all you put in your keywords is “martial arts”, then your ad may pop up for martial arts history. A better keyword to use would be “martial arts school near me.” These keywords will bring you in more students.

This is why it’s important to take the time and do research to figure out what keywords students are using when looking for a martial arts school.

There are tons of tools out there for pay-per-click keyword research like Semrush, SpyFu, and Google Keyword Planner.

To keep it simple, we are going to demonstrate with Google Keyword Planner. The other tools are a little more advanced and come at a cost but are worth exploring later on.

Here is an example of Google Keyword Planner.

In the image, you can see that Google Keyword Planner gives you similar variations of your keyword that searchers use.

They also tell you the search volume, competition of the keyword, and a range of how much you would be bidding for the keyword. Typically these numbers are all estimates, so take it with a grain of salt.

Make sure to choose a keyword that doesn’t have a lot of volumes as it can be more competitive. On the other hand, low volume will have little traffic to your ad.

At the top of the page, you will also want to change the location from the United States to your area, keyword bidding cost can vary from one area to another.

A good tip to keep in mind when doing keyword research is to put yourself in the perspective of a new student and see what keywords they would use.

Keyword Types

When entering keywords, it is important to know the different keyword types. These keyword types will determine what triggers your ads to show on the search results page based on the way keywords are used in the search query.

Broad Match

When using broad keyword match, your ad will target search queries that use either the keywords chosen by you or similar variations of it.

An example of a broad match is if your keywords are martial arts. Then your ad may show up for martial arts history or martial arts movies.

Using broad matches often leads to fewer conversions due to how broad of an audience it targets.

Phrase Match

With phrase match, it can have any extra word that can come before or after the phrase.

An example of phrase match, keywords are “Best Martial Arts.” Some searchers will see your ad for “Best Martial Arts Near Me” or “Best Martial Arts Los, Angeles”

Exact Match

How exact match works is by having brackets [] around the keywords or phrases. This type of match usually comes at a high cost per click but your conversion rates will be higher too.

This is because your ad will only be triggered if a searcher’s query exactly matches the one you use.

An example of exact match keywords is [Martial Arts School in Los, Angeles] then your ad will be triggered if someone types in those exact keywords.

Optimizing Ad (Negative Keywords)

To stay on top of your competitors and get consistent results, you will have to optimize your ads. This means making any changes or adjustments to your ads. One of the simplest ways to do this is by search term report.

The report gives you data about what keywords your ad is showing up for and also the number of clicks you are getting with the keywords.

With this information, you can add keywords that aren’t performing well or that are irrelevant to the negative keywords list.

Negative keywords are keywords you don’t want your ad to show for.

If keywords like kickboxing are triggering your ad but you don’t offer that service at your school, you can add this to your negative keywords. This is a great way to improve your quality score and click-through rate.

Here is a link on how to add keywords to the negative keyword list.

Landing Page

When a searcher clicks on your ad, the first page they will go to is the Final URL you entered early on. This is also called the landing page.

The landing page is an opportunity for you to convert a searcher into an actual customer. The best way to do this is by making sure the information on your and landing page is relevant.

Here are also some key features you should include in your landing page