How to Advertise Your Restaurant with Google Ads – Part 1

Need to boost your business fast?

Not sure if social media will do it quickly enough? Or, if we’re being honest, maybe you don’t simply want another “like” — you want actual customers coming through your restaurant's doors.

Seems like Google Ads is just what you need.

Instead of waiting months for steady traffic, you can get in front of real customers within hours.

When someone searches for a product or service you offer, your ad can appear right at the top of Google's search results—before they scroll, before they click anything else.

For good reason, millions of businesses use Google Ads every day. Google claims that for every $1 spent, advertisers make an average of $8. For something that can start generating clicks almost instantly, that's a solid return.

You run a restaurant or catering business, or are a home-based food service. You see yourself as a restaurant owner or cook, not as a technical person. Certainly not an expert on Google Ads.

We understand.

This article will guide you through the fundamentals, including how it works for small businesses, and the potential costs. We’re not going to use technical jargon.

Read this article once or twice or as many times as you wish. This is an article that we at Cocina Digital wrote for you, our food service professionals, who wish to know how to make use of Google Ads for their business.

We’ve intentionally written it in such a way that you can see benefits and understand Google Ads without being bombarded with technical terms.

All you need is a desire to quickly get your business in front of the right people. No prior knowledge of marketing nor technical background is necessary.

With that, let’s begin.

What is Google Ads? (top)

Google's advertising platform is called Google Ads.

Prior to 2018, Google Ads was known as Google AdWords and many articles on the Internet may still use the old name. So, if you see Google AdWords, it is simply the old way or referring to what is now known as Google Ads. Same platform.

Regardless of how you refer to it, Google Ads is a platform that allows companies to place their ads directly on Google's search results page, where people are already searching.

Google frequently displays advertisements with a tiny 'Sponsored' label in the first few results when you type in keywords like "local bakery" or "auto repair near me." Google Ads was used to create those sponsored advertisements.

These advertisements are made to correspond with the search terms that people are using. They appear either above or below the standard, free search results. This implies that companies can rank at the top of the page even if their website doesn't organically rank there.

However, Google Ads isn't just for search results; ads may also appear on other Google-owned platforms, such as YouTube, Gmail, and Google Maps, and on websites or apps that collaborate with Google.

Still, appearing in search results is the most common place for many businesses to start.

People who are actively looking for something right now may visit, call, buy, or take other actions as a result of this visibility.

“I’m Worried About Costs…” (top)

If you’ve never used Google Ads or don’t have much familiarity in general with online advertising, then a service like Google Ads might seem a bit scary… after all, how can such a great service be affordable?

If that describes your concern, you’ll be pleasantly surprised to learn that even a few hundred dollars is enough to get you started.

Let’s first look at how Google Ads work before talking about costs.

How do Google Ads work? (top)

Google Ads works like a digital version of placing an ad in front of the right person at the right time. It's based on a few simple steps:

• 1. Bidding

  When businesses want their ad to show up for a certain keyword (like "coffee shop near me"), they set a bid—basically, how much they're willing to pay if someone clicks on their ad. Higher bids can help an ad appear in better positions, but it's not only about the money.

• 2. Placement

  Google doesn't just show the highest bidder's ad. It uses a score called Ad Rank, which is based on the bid, the quality of the ad, and how relevant it is to what the user searched. That way, even a smaller business can show up if their ad is useful and well-written.

• 3. Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

  The pay-per-click (PPC) model means you are only charged when a user clicks on your ad. The benefit is that your ad still gets shown, but you are not charged until a user clicks on the ad. This model helps control costs, especially for small businesses trying to make every dollar count.

• 4. Targeting

  You may select who sees your advertisement with Google Ads. You can target by location, age, interests, and even the type of device someone is using. That means your ad can be shown only to people most likely to be interested in what you offer.

Understanding Costs – A More Detailed Look (top)

As described in the section How do Google Ads Work, a real-time auction system is used to determine the price for ads on Google Ads.

“What? Auction system? This sounds crazy complicated!”

Advertisers such as yourself will bid on keywords and if your bid wins, your ad will appear in Google search results.

Google lists the factors that influence the price of a keyword that you’d be advertising on:

• 1. competitiveness for the ad work that interests you

• 2. targeting options – trying to match your ads to specific demographics, locations, and devices (e.g. smart phones, tables, desktop computers, etc.)

• 3. bidding strategies – whether your campaign has the goal of maximizing clicks versus conversions

Although it’s worth your time to understand what is happening behind the scenes, it’s entirely possible to benefit from Google Ads without having to understand that there is an auction system going on.

What Should You Focus On? (top)

Like anything, set yourself a budget. If you only can afford $300 per month for your Google Ads campaign, then set that as your monthly budget.

If there are 30 days in a month and if you have a $300 per month budget, then you can quickly figure out that your daily budget is $10.

If you want to get more precise, there are 30.4 days in a month, so a $300 monthly budget is actually a $9.87 daily budget. For the sake of simplicity, we’ll use $10 for our daily budget for the remainder of this article.

Here’s something to make note of: having a $300 per month budget does not mean that Google will only spend up to $10 per day (your daily budget). Google will spend up to double on any given day, but will not go past the month’s budget.

Think about what you just read to make sure you understand what was just said:

• 1. Google will honor your monthly spending limit of $300.

• 2. Google, however, may spend up to twice your daily limit on any given day. So, what you estimated to be a $10 daily spending limit is actually $20.

The consequence of this is that you could, in theory, burn through your $300 in only 15 days instead of 30.

This is an unexpected surprise to new users to the Google Ads platform.

They may perceive this behavior as being the effect of using an expensive advertising medium

Explaining the Google Ads algorithm for their auctioning system is going deeper than we want to do get into in this article and frankly speaking, it’s more than you’ll need to know to run a campaign for your restaurant.

To summarize, here the main things to know:

• 1. You have the ability to set a monthly spend limit for your campaign

• 2. Your monthly budget is divided by 30.4 to come up with your daily budget.

• 3. Google Ads may spend up to double your daily budget if the ad has potential of hitting your desired campaign goals.

• 4. Don’t freak out if your entire monthly budget ends up lasting only half a month.

If you find yourself wanting to learn more about costs and payments on the Google Ads platform, the following link is a treasure trove of information:

https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/9846714

Is Google Ads Right for My Business? (top)

Generally, such a question comes from a place of concern due to Google Ads being a platform that charges for its services.

When we consider starting up a Facebook page or an Instagram page, it may seem that it doesn’t make sense to pay for advertising when either Facebook or Instagram allows us to reach an audience for free.

We have articles that describe how to use Facebook and Instagram for digital marketing. We believe that you should make use of Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, X (formerly known as Twitter), and so on.

Keep in mind, though, that registering for an account and setting up a business page / business profile is free, but that’s where free ends. If you want Facebook users to actually find your posts on Facebook, good luck on having Facebook help you do that out of the kindness of their heart.

Using Facebook as an example, you’ll either have to invest your time in trying to convince anyone to follow you on Facebook and then actually engage with your content. If you need results sooner, then you can… guess? Yep, buy Facebook Ads or pay to boost your Facebook posts.

Again, our Digital Marketing with Facebook for Restaurants series covers the above in greater details, so we won’t repeat all of that here.

If what you want is to attract customers to your restaurant and the “free ways” of doing it aren’t bringing in customers at a fast enough clip, then Google Ads is a worthwhile way to do so at the cost of what you decide will be your monthly Google Ads budget.

Conclusion (top)

Google Ads is big business — not just for Google, but for advertisers such as yourself. Yes, you can call yourself an advertiser if you’re using Google Ads to advertise your restaurant.

Because it is such a hot topic, the Internet is filled with articles on how to use Google Ads from digital marketing agencies who hope you’ll find their article useful and lead you to deciding that using Google Ads on your own is too difficult for a mere mortal to manage.

It’s not.

Like anything, start small and get familiar with the platform. Think about it: when you first started watching videos on YouTube or your first time posting on Facebook, did you need the help of a professional agency to help you figure it out? No, of course not.

You clicked the paly button or you clicked the upload button and that was as complicated as it got.

Granted, you’ll want to get familiar with Google Ads before going live, but it is designed to for users of all technical backgrounds so it is only difficult if you believe it is.

Create your account like we mentioned above and go from there.

This wraps up our introduction to Google Ads, but this doesn’t wrap up our series on “How to Advertise Your Restaurant with Google Ads.” In fact, part 2 will show you some more specifics to launch your first campaign.

We’ll see you there!

Part 1 of “How to Advertise Your Restaurant with Google Ads” was just the beginning. See you in Part 2!