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When a grower searches for a new pump, a part for a header or someone to install a stock water system, you want your business to appear.
To reach suitable buyers, your ads need to match what they’re searching for and cover the areas you can serve. With limited demand for some agricultural products, it’s also important to make each click count.
This article covers Google Search campaigns specifically: the text ads that can appear when someone searches. We’ll explain how to find relevant searches, reduce wasted clicks, choose location settings and measure qualified enquiries. To see how we help agricultural suppliers more broadly, explore our agricultural and rural marketing services.
Key Takeaways
- Search ads reach people actively looking for what you sell, in the areas you choose.
- Location targeting finds places, not farmers. Keywords, ad copy and landing pages do the qualifying.
- Rural search demand is small, so plan budgets around how many searches exist.
- Judge results on calls and qualified enquiries, not clicks.
What are Google Search Ads?
Google Search ads are paid text ads that can appear in Google’s search results. You choose keywords related to your products or services. When someone searches for something relevant, your ad can show, and you generally pay when someone clicks.
An illustrative example: a grazier west of Charters Towers searches “solar bore pump”. A supplier bidding on bore pump keywords, and targeting that part of Queensland, could appear at the top of the results with an ad for their pump range and a phone number.
Google Ads also offers other formats, such as Display, YouTube and Performance Max. They work differently, so this article sticks to Search. For where Search fits alongside other rural channels, see how to market a business to farmers and rural customers.
How can Google Ads help you reach rural buyers?
Search ads reach rural buyers by combining two things: what someone is searching for, and where they are. Each does a different job, and it helps to understand the limits of both.
Search intent: what someone is looking for. A search for “poly pipe fittings” or “cattle crush for sale” tells you exactly what the person wants. That’s what makes Search different from a lot of advertising. You’re not interrupting anyone. You’re answering a question they’ve just asked.
Location targeting: the areas you want to reach. You can tell Google which states, regions, towns or postcodes to show ads in. Depending on your settings, this can also include people elsewhere who’ve shown interest in those areas. Google describes its location targeting as “best effort”, so it’s a filter rather than a precise fence. We cover the settings in more detail below.
The limitation: location alone doesn’t identify a farmer. Targeting the Western Downs reaches people in the Western Downs. That includes farmers, but also teachers, retirees and tradies. Location settings can’t tell a farmer from anyone else in the same area. The qualifying work is done by your keywords, your ad copy and your landing page.
Our take: It’s tempting to treat location settings as the main lever for rural campaigns. We’d argue the bigger gains tend to come from choosing searches that only a buyer would make, then letting location narrow the field.
How do you find the searches your buyers make?
Start with what you already know about how customers ask for your products, then check it against Google’s data. Your own sales team and phone enquiries are often a better starting point than any tool.
Start with your products and customers’ questions
Write down what you sell in the words your customers use, not your catalogue headings. Then add the questions your team hears on the phone. Useful starting points include:
- Brands and models: “Honda WB30 pump”, “Kubota tractor parts”.
- Parts and consumables: “sprinkler nozzles”, “tyre for 100hp tractor”.
- Problems: “bore pump not priming”, “solar pump not starting”.
- Services: “irrigation installer”, “fence contractor”.
Problem searches can be valuable. Someone searching for a fault often needs a fix quickly.
Use Keyword Planner and your campaign’s search terms
Google’s Keyword Planner suggests related keywords and estimates their search volumes and costs. You’ll need a Google Ads account with billing details set up to use it. Treat its estimates as a guide to which terms are worth testing, not a forecast of results.
Once a campaign is running, the search terms report shows the actual searches that triggered your ads. Use it to identify relevant searches to add as keywords and irrelevant searches to exclude.
Google leaves some low-volume searches out of the report for privacy reasons. With small search numbers, a noticeable share of your traffic may not appear individually, so judge the report on patterns rather than single terms.
Plan for limited search demand
Expect small numbers. Google marks keywords with very little search history as “Low search volume”, and they don’t trigger ads until searches pick up.
So what does that mean in practice? Group related keywords into fewer, broader ad groups, so each gathers enough data. And accept that a niche product might attract a handful of searches a month. If those searches come from real buyers, that can still be worth a lot.
If you’d like help setting this up, explore our Google Ads support for agricultural businesses.
How do you reduce irrelevant clicks and enquiries?
Decide who you don’t want, as well as who you do. Then use keywords, ad copy and landing pages to steer the wrong people away before they cost you money.
Remember, a suitable buyer isn’t necessarily a farmer. Contractors, farm managers, procurement staff and dealers can all be valuable customers.
Exclude irrelevant searches with negative keywords
Think about the searches that look relevant but aren’t. Common examples include “jobs”, “salary”, “course”, “manual pdf”, “DIY” and “second hand”, depending on what you sell. If you don’t sell to hobby farms or lifestyle blocks, those terms may belong on the list too.
Google’s guide to negative keywords notes they don’t match close variants. Excluding “job” won’t automatically exclude “jobs”, so add plurals and synonyms yourself.
Make your ad copy clear about who you serve
Your ad is a chance to qualify the reader before they click. Spell out who you serve and where. Phrases like “for commercial growers”, “delivered across Central QLD” or “from $X” help the right people click and the wrong people move on.
Clear wording helps reduce clicks from people you can’t serve.
Send buyers to a relevant landing page
Sending ads to your home page makes buyers hunt for what they searched for. A relevant landing page should confirm a few things quickly:
- Product fit: the right product, model or service, with key specs.
- Delivery area: where you deliver or service.
- Installation and support: who installs it, and who fixes it.
- An easy way to enquire: a visible phone number and a short form.
If a buyer can answer “can they help me, out here?” in a few seconds, they’re far more likely to get in touch.
How should you set up location targeting?
The key decision is whether to reach only people in your area, or also people elsewhere who are interested in it. The right answer depends on how your buyers purchase.
Choose between “Presence” and “Presence or interest”
Google offers two location options. At the time of writing, “Presence or interest” is the default and the option Google recommends.
- Presence shows ads to people Google thinks are in, or regularly in, your target areas.
- Presence or interest also includes people elsewhere who’ve shown interest in those areas, for example through their searches.
Our recommendation: for a local service, such as on-farm repairs, Presence is often the better fit, because you can only help people in your area. For equipment you freight anywhere, Presence or interest can make sense. A farm manager in Brisbane may be buying for a property out west.
Exclusions work differently. They use Presence only, and Google notes that people outside excluded areas may still see your ads. Excluding a capital city won’t stop someone there seeing an ad if they search about your region.
Build your service area using customer and delivery data
A radius around your business address is easy to set up but often doesn’t match your real market. A more accurate map usually comes from your own records:
- Pull the postcodes from recent invoices, quotes and delivery runs.
- Add the areas you deliver to but haven’t sold into yet.
- Exclude anywhere you can’t serve.
A list of postcodes isn’t much extra work to set up. Google lets you add up to 1,000 locations at a time in bulk.
Separate regions when they need different budgets or messages
If one region is your core market and another is a stretch, they may deserve separate campaigns. That lets you control spend in each and tailor the ads. For example, one region might need “free delivery” in the copy while another doesn’t.
Splitting too finely can starve campaigns of data, though. Separate regions only when the budget or message genuinely differs.
How should seasonal demand affect your advertising budget?
Spend when your buyers are searching, and only as much as the available searches can usefully absorb. Farm buying follows the farming calendar, which varies by region and commodity, so a flat monthly budget rarely fits. To map this properly, start with how seasonal farming cycles shape your agribusiness marketing calendar.
When customers research versus when they buy
For some products, buyers research well before they need them, especially where equipment has to be ordered ahead of a season. Other purchases are urgent, like a breakdown at harvest. Your campaigns should be live during both windows, with the message adjusted to suit.
Your own records are the best guide here. Look at when enquiries arrive compared with when orders are placed and delivered. That gap tells you how early to start advertising in each region.
How much search demand is available
You can’t buy searches that don’t exist. If only a few hundred relevant searches happen in your area each month, a bigger budget won’t create more. Keyword Planner’s estimates help you gauge demand before setting a budget.
What a qualified enquiry is worth
Work backwards from your sales. Start with what an average sale is worth to you after costs. Then estimate how many qualified enquiries it takes to win one. That tells you roughly what you can afford to pay for each enquiry and still make money.
For example, if you typically win one in four quoted jobs, a qualified enquiry is worth up to a quarter of the profit on a sale.
Whether extra spend is producing useful enquiries
When you increase the budget, watch whether qualified enquiries rise too, not just clicks. If clicks climb but enquiries stay flat, the extra spend is likely reaching less relevant searches. That’s a sign to hold the budget and refine the keywords.
How do you know your campaigns are working?
Look for calls and qualified enquiries from the areas you serve. Clicks and impressions show activity, but with a small audience and high-value sales, one good lead can matter more than a month of traffic.
Check the Matched locations report
Google’s locations report shows where your ads actually ran. In Google Ads, go to Campaigns, then Insights & reports, then When and where your ads showed, and open the Matched locations tab.
Keep in mind that a matched location can be where someone was, or a place they showed interest in. Clicks from capital cities on a campaign meant for the Riverina are worth investigating, and may point back to your location option.
Track calls and quote requests
Set up conversions for the actions that matter: calls from ads, calls from your website, quote requests and enquiry forms. Without this, Google can only optimise for clicks, and you can only guess which keywords produce buyers.
Import sales from your CRM
Where possible, import sales data back into Google Ads. That shows which enquiries became customers. It also helps automated bidding learn what a valuable enquiry looks like, not just any enquiry.
Diagnosing common problems
If your situation looks like one of these, here’s where we’d investigate first:
| If your situation is… | We’d investigate… |
|---|---|
| Lots of clicks, few enquiries | The search terms report, negative keywords and landing page |
| Ads barely showing | Low search volume keywords and over-split ad groups |
| Enquiries from areas you don’t serve | Location option, exclusions and ad copy |
| Spend rising, enquiries flat | Available search demand and the value of each enquiry |
| Calls coming in but not showing in reports | Call conversion tracking |
From our work: For a water tank manufacturer’s large-acreage campaigns, we excluded searches for smaller tank sizes, such as 100L tanks, because they were more relevant to residential customers than the audience we wanted to reach.
Ready to reach more growers?
If you sell to farmers and want Google Ads built around how your customers actually search and buy, we’d be glad to help. Talk to us about agricultural marketing
Frequently asked questions
Do Google Ads help our organic rankings?
No. Google states that Search doesn’t give ranking boosts based on advertising relationships. Organic rankings come down to SEO: your website’s content, structure and reputation. If you’d like to look at SEO for your business, get in touch.
Is there a minimum budget for Google Ads?
No. Google says there’s no minimum spending commitment, and you set your own budget. In practice, your budget needs to buy enough clicks to learn which keywords produce enquiries. That depends on search demand in your area and your typical cost per click.
We sell through dealers. Can Google Ads still work for us?
Yes. You can send buyers to product pages that list your nearest dealers, or to a dealer locator. It’s worth agreeing with dealers on keywords and areas, so you’re not competing for the same searches. Tracking enquiries passed to dealers helps show what the ads are producing.
Can we show ads only when someone can answer the phone?
Yes. Campaigns run all day by default, but an ad schedule limits ads to the days and hours you choose. Google’s call campaigns can also be set to show your number only when your business can take calls.
How long before we see results?
Clicks can start within days, but useful results take longer. If you use automated bidding, Google says its learning period can take a few conversion cycles (typically one to two), though it can be quicker with more conversion data. With small rural volumes, that can take a while, so judge early results with patience.
