Should Your Suit Business Be Running Google Ads? A Complete Decision Framework

As a distinguished business owner in the suit industry, you've likely considered Google Ads as a way to attract more clients. Perhaps you've even tried it already. But here's the reality: Google Ads isn't right for every suit business, and when done incorrectly, it can drain your budget faster than a poorly fitted jacket loses its shape.

After working exclusively with suit businesses for years-from bespoke tailors to ready-to-wear retailers, I've developed a framework to help you determine whether Google Ads makes sense for your particular situation. Let's walk through the essential criteria together.

The Foundation: Your Digital Storefront

Before you spend a single dollar on Google Ads, you need somewhere worthwhile to send your traffic. Think of your website as your digital showroom-it needs to be as impressive and functional as your physical space.

Your webpage must be built specifically for conversion. Unlike social media, where you can do extensive selling through your content, Google Ads simply get you in front of potential clients. Your website has to do the heavy lifting from there.

Here's what your digital storefront requires:

Technical Excellence: Your site must be mobile-friendly, fast-loading, and current. In today's world, a slow or outdated website is like having a shabby storefront-it immediately undermines your credibility. Slow or incorrectly loading websites are one of the primary reasons for low conversion rates.

First impression: Since we are in an industry where visual appearance is key, it's crucial to sell on an emotional level first. No UX/UI improvements will boost your conversions if your page is not pleasing to the eye of the viewer, and does not create the "want".

High-resolution images of garments, interior, and process. Well-picked fonts, colors, and spacing between elements.

If your website looks like it was made 20 years ago, or it looks like e-commerce for buying used car parts or insurance, you should avoid Google Ads. While those pages have their places, we are not selling a suit through logic, but emotions first.

Conversion Elements: Multiple clear call-to-actions, convenient ways for visitors to become customers, testimonials, case studies, transparency, process explanations, and everything else that a visitor has to see to decide in your favour. Social proof isn't optional-it's essential.

SEO Optimization: The text on your webpage directly influences your cost per click. Google rewards well-optimized pages with lower costs and better ad positions. Without proper keyword optimization and fast loading speeds, you'll pay premium prices for inferior results.

The Capacity Question: Time and Resources

Here's a question that might surprise you: Are you unable to be the face of your brand or appear on camera due to being completely occupied with servicing clients and administrative work?

This is one of the legitimate reasons to consider Google Ads over social media advertising. Social media typically yields better results regarding cost per sale, and there's a good reason for this. Through social platforms, you're not just generating traffic; you're building brand awareness, engaging directly with prospects, and doing substantial selling through your content before they even visit your website.

Social media allows you to showcase your craftsmanship, share your story, engage with comments, and build a following that generates referrals and word-of-mouth marketing. The return on investment often exceeds Google Ads because you're getting multiple benefits from the same budget.

However, effective social media requires you to be comfortable on camera and have the capacity to create content consistently. If you're completely maxed out servicing clients, handling fittings, managing orders, and dealing with administrative tasks, and simply cannot dedicate time to being the face of your brand, then Google Ads becomes a viable alternative.

Just understand that you're choosing the more expensive and slower route with typically higher costs per acquisition.

The Signal Requirements: Google's Need for Data

Google Ads now relies heavily on what we call "signals"-data points that help the platform understand who your ideal customers are and how they behave. These signals include website events, customer lists, phone numbers, and conversion data.

The size of your existing customer list matters tremendously here. If you've been in business for years but haven't maintained a proper database of your clientele, you're starting at a significant disadvantage. The larger and more comprehensive your customer list, the faster Google can identify similar prospects and optimize your campaigns effectively.

Without sufficient signals, Google's artificial intelligence cannot optimize your campaigns effectively. You'll find yourself in lengthy optimization loops that can take months or even years to resolve, burning through budget without meaningful results.

If you're starting from zero, it's better to implement proper tracking and generate signals for some time (events happening on your webpage) before launching ads. This gives Google's system the information it needs to find your ideal clients at reasonable costs.

Technical Tracking: The Foundation of Success

Can you get access to someone who can properly install the necessary tracking on your website? This isn't optional-it's critical.

You need a clear connection between Google Analytics, your Google Ads account, and your website. This tracking allows you to see exactly what people who click on your ads are doing on your site. More importantly, it enables Google's AI to understand what type of people take what specific actions, so it can optimize to find more clients like your best customers at better costs.

Without a proper tracking setup, you're essentially flying blind, and Google's optimization algorithms can't function effectively. This technical foundation must be in place before you spend your first advertising dollar. If your page is custom-built instead of using the most popular page builders like WordPress, Squarespace, Wix, etc, this task becomes even more challenging.

Industry Expertise: Why Generalists Waste Your Money

Do you have access to someone who understands both Google Ads and the suit industry specifically? This is where most suit businesses hemorrhage money without realizing it.

After auditing dozens of accounts from suit businesses, the biggest inefficiency we've noticed is that generalist marketers waste at minimum 20% of budgets showing ads to completely wrong audiences.

For example, if you're selling bespoke suits, we've seen accounts spending thousands showing up for searches like "warehouse suits," "H&M suits," or "tuxedo rentals"-completely different customer intents and price points.

We've audited one account where a client spent over $20,000 in a year showing their ads for search terms like "swimsuit," "bathing suit," "catwoman suit," "tracksuit," "zoot suit," and "wrestling suit." None of these searchers were looking for what this business offered.

Only someone with deep experience in the suit industry knows these nuances-the difference between off-the-rack, made-to-measure, and bespoke customers, their different search behaviors, and which keywords are simply money drains.

So you must have someone on your team who can take care of that and oversee the marketing service provider efforts and constantly guide them in the right direction

The Budget Reality: Mathematics You Can't Ignore

Here's where many suit business owners get a harsh wake-up call. Google Ads requires substantial budgets to work effectively, and there's solid mathematics behind this requirement.

Google's platform relies heavily on signals and feedback. Their guidelines recommend generating at least 50 conversions per month to give their optimization algorithms enough data to work with. Let's do some reverse mathematics on what this means for your business.

On average, it takes about 10% of your item price to generate a sale through Google Ads. So if your suits cost $3,000, expect to pay around $300 per conversion. To reach that 50-conversion threshold, you're looking at $15,000 per month in ad spend.

If you're spending significantly less, you're not generating enough data for campaigns to optimize properly. You might get stuck in optimization loops that can take years to resolve, if they ever do. (but sometimes small budgets still perform well, just be aware that having a larger budget stacks the odds in your favour way more)

Unless you're willing to invest a substantial budget for at least several months to test whether your local market, pricing, and competition allow for reasonable lead costs, Google Ads becomes a risky proposition.

This is particularly challenging in highly competitive areas. In markets like New York, Los Angeles, or London, the competition is so fierce that smaller budgets simply get overwhelmed by larger players with deeper pockets.

If you have a relatively modest budget in a very competitive area, social media advertising often provides a better starting point. You can begin with smaller budgets and scale as your revenue grows, rather than needing significant upfront investment just to test viability. Social media ads- slow, predictable and controllable. Google ads- Higher upfront costs for potentially good results. A bit more of a gamble, but if it works, it works without requiring your time.

The Competition Challenge: Battling Well-Funded Giants

Even with adequate budgets and proper setup, you need to understand who you're competing against in the Google Ads auction.

You're not just competing with other local tailors or suit shops. You're bidding against large retail chains, well-funded online suit companies, and established brands with marketing budgets that dwarf most independent businesses. These competitors can afford to bid aggressively and sustain higher costs per click because of their volume and economies of scale.

This creates a challenging environment where your cost per click can be driven up by competitors who have fundamentally different business models and profit margins than yours. A large retailer might be willing to pay $50 for a click because they're selling volume at lower margins, while that same $50 might represent a significant portion of your profit on a suit.

The businesses that tend to succeed with Google Ads are typically those in less saturated markets, areas where the cost of living (and consequently, cost per click) is lower, or regions where there aren't massive competitors with substantially larger budgets.

The Long-Term Reality: Increasing Costs and Diminishing Returns

Even if you manage to set up profitable Google Ads campaigns, you need to understand that this isn't a "set it and forget it" solution. The platform becomes more expensive and less effective over time.

Recent industry research indicates that the average cost per click in our industry has increased by 27% year over year. Additionally, the average cost per lead has grown by at least 24% annually. This publicly available data from WordStream correlates with what we're seeing across all of our clients year-over-year (but to a substantially lower extent).

Every year, you'll face what's called "ad inflation"-due to more restrictive regulations, reduced targeting opportunities, and increased competition, you'll get diminishing results over time. What works profitably today will likely require higher investment for the same results next year.

There's also seasonality to consider. Even well-performing campaigns will have periods where costs spike and results decline. You need the financial cushion to weather these fluctuations without panicking and making poor optimization decisions.

The Patience Factor: Here's something crucial that many business owners overlook-Google Ads requires significant stress tolerance and patience. The platform doesn't respond well to frequent changes in short periods, which are usually caused by business owners getting anxious about not seeing immediate results.

It's counterintuitive, but the more you try to "fix" things on Google Ads, the worse your results often become. Google's algorithms need time to learn and optimize. When you constantly adjust keywords, budgets, targeting, or ad copy because you're not seeing quick results, you're essentially resetting the learning process.

The way one builds profitable Google Ad campaigns is to make a few changes with a high level of confidence in every iteration, get a bit better results, and stack the gained efficiencies until the point where profitability is reached.

If you're naturally impatient or impulsive with business decisions, Google Ads probably isn't the best platform for you. Your frequent involvement and changes will actually be detrimental to achieving better results. The platform rewards consistency and patience, not constant tinkering.

The smart approach is to view Google Ads not as a source of immediate profit, but as a channel where you work for some time to acquire customers at break-even costs, expecting to generate profitability through lifetime value-repeat purchases, referrals, and additional services.

If You're Already Running Google Ads: Room for Improvement

Perhaps you're reading this and thinking, "But I'm already running Google Ads, and they're not working well." Here's something important to understand: there's a high probability that your current campaigns are simply set up incorrectly, and there's substantial room for improvement.

Most suit businesses we audit are making fundamental mistakes-poor keyword selection, inadequate negative keyword lists, improper audience targeting, weak ad copy that doesn't speak to suit buyers specifically, or landing pages that don't convert. These issues are fixable with the right expertise.

The most common errors we see include:

Targeting Issues: Showing ads for irrelevant search terms (like those swimsuit and tracksuit examples mentioned earlier), or failing to distinguish between different customer segments-bespoke buyers versus off-the-rack shoppers have completely different search behaviors and price sensitivities.

Budget Allocation Problems: Spreading limited budgets too thin across too many campaigns, or allocating spend to low-converting keywords while underfunding high-potential opportunities.

Technical Setup Failures: Improper conversion tracking, missing audience signals, or poorly structured campaigns that prevent Google's optimization from working effectively.

If your current Google Ads aren't profitable, it doesn't necessarily mean the platform won't work for your business. It might mean you need someone who understands both Google Ads optimization and the unique dynamics of the suit industry to restructure your approach.

The Risk Factor: Cash Flow Dependency

There's one more critical consideration: the risk of becoming dependent on ad spend for cash flow. When you turn on Google Ads and start generating clients, you can quickly become accustomed to that steady stream of business. However, if you need to pause or reduce spending for any reason, that client flow stops almost immediately.

Social media advertising, by contrast, has a much longer "grace period." The content you create, the followers you build, and the brand awareness you generate continue working for you even after you stop spending. This creates what we call a "halo effect"-you'll continue getting some results for a longer period, providing better cash flow certainty and reduced risk.

Summary: Is Google Ads Right for Your Suit Business?

Let's distill everything we've discussed into a clear decision framework. From our perspective, while Google Ads might seem like the best option under the sun to promote your business, since they show up when people are looking specifically for what you're offering. In reality, it's a bit of a gamble. There's no way for you to know if Google Ads will work for your business, and to what extent, unless you try.

This article wasn't meant to discourage people from using Google Ads, but rather to make you aware of the risks that come with it and to set realistic expectations for any sartorial business that decides to explore this platform.

Google Ads might be right for your suit business if you can answer "yes" to MOST of these criteria:

✓ Foundation Requirements:

-You have a professionally built, mobile-friendly, fast-loading website optimized for conversions

-Your site includes testimonials, case studies, clear pricing, process explanations, and multiple call-to-actions, and shows a good conversion rate

-You have proper SEO optimization and technical tracking in place

-Your webpage looks visually pleasing to the eye

-You are already acquiring customers via other paid media channels profitably, reached maximum volume there, and want to expand.

✓ Resource Requirements:

-You're too busy servicing clients to be the face of your brand on social media, or you do not want to do so

-You have access to someone who can properly install and manage tracking systems

-You have a substantial existing customer database to provide Google with necessary signals

✓ Budget Requirements:

-You can comfortably invest "larger than comfortable" budgets for several months to test viability and be ok with learning that it's not a viable option for your area

-You're in a less saturated market without massive competitors outspending you significantly

-You have the financial cushion to weather seasonal fluctuations and optimization periods

✓ Mindset Requirements:

-You have high stress tolerance and patience for the optimization process

-You won't make frequent changes when you don't see immediate results

-You view this as potentially a break-even customer acquisition channel, not immediate profit

✓ Market Position:

-You're located in an area with reasonable competition and cost-of-living

-You understand costs per lead will increase annually due to "adflation"

-You're prepared for a long-term commitment, not a quick fix

If you answered "no" to most of these points, your advertising budget would likely generate better returns through social media marketing. Social platforms typically offer lower costs per acquisition, allow you to build brand awareness simultaneously, and provide more flexibility for businesses with smaller budgets or those just starting with digital marketing.

Remember, this isn't about choosing the "better" platform-it's about choosing the right platform for your specific situation, resources, and goals.

Ready to Explore Your Options?

If you're ready to explore which form of paid advertising is the best fit for your sartorial business, or you want more certainty about your digital marketing direction, or you're looking for someone to handle this entirely for you, I invite you to book a FREE strategy session with us here:

https://calendly.com/sartorialdigital/45min

During this call, we'll analyze your current situation, identify your biggest opportunities, and create a clear roadmap for profitable customer acquisition-whether that's through Google Ads, social media advertising, or a combination of both.

To your success

Andris