For small Houston businesses that find themselves competing in a congested marketplace, selecting the type of digital marketing service often comes down to a matter of choosing one over the other. However, the best Small Business SEO Agency strategies understand that each of these services (i.e. Google My Business Services and PPC) is not actually competing systems, but rather complementary systems that enhance one another for even greater results when used together.

The Combined Power

A professional Houston PPC Agency knows how important Google My Business Services are to the success of PPC marketing. An established Google My Business profile creates a level of credibility for the PPC advertising that runs on a business's behalf. Many times, a person who clicks on a business's PPC ad will go to that business's GMB profile before deciding to contact that company. If the GMB profile is lacking information, pictures, or reviews, it can undermine the business's PPC ad campaign, regardless of how good the advertisement is.

PPC marketing provides immediate traffic results, while the business builds organic visibility through a GMB listing. Therefore, when both of these tactics are utilised, it creates what is known to marketers as "SERP domination" (meaning a business showing in both paid advertising ads and in the local map pack). Because of this increased visibility, Houston area consumers tend to hold companies that have double visibility as more reputable and trustworthy, resulting in greater click-through and conversion rates.

Optimising Budgets for Small Business - A Guide to Integrated PPC & GMB Marketing

Integrated strategies extend the reach of limited marketing budgets for small business owners, many of whom rely on both Google My Business (GMB) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.

While it takes time to influence your rankings through optimising GMB services, it is a low-cost method to improve visibility. PPC offers instant visibility with ongoing costs associated with running ads. Together, GMB & PPC create a balanced strategy by generating immediate leads through PPC advertising while building up sustainable and free traffic from GMB services in time.

To note: GMB optimisation can also improve your Quality Score within the Google PPC ad system. Google favours advertisers with landing pages and business information that matches the text of their ads; therefore, having a complete and optimised GMB page can lower your cost per click by 20-30%.

Advantages of Sharing Data

The best small business PPC agency uses the advantages of two channels to create strategies. First, the PPC campaigns will tell you which keywords get the most conversions, and you can leverage this information to create postings in your GMB account as well as for improving the Q&A portion of your Google listing. Second, GMB analytics will tell you what queries people were doing when they discovered your business profile—this will help refine your approach to targeting keywords in your PPC campaigns.

The Advantage in Houston

Because of the highly competitive nature of Houston's marketplace, small businesses have no room to have independent strategies. Partnering with a Houston PPC agency that also offers Google My Business Services will allow for coordinated efforts, messaging consistency and maximised return on investment. By employing this integrated approach, you will not only improve your advertising results, but you will transform the way Houston customers find and choose to do business with you.