AdWords is Google’s advertising service also known as Search Engine Marketing. Advertisers bid for certain key words so that they appear first in the search results when prospects search for those key words. It is a pay per click service, meaning that you only pay when someone clicks on the ad. This can either work for you or against you. We shall discuss that further down. Businesses can gain a lot from AdWords if used correctly. Take time to understand how it works before spending money. If possible get an experienced consultant to advise you. AdWords is a very effective form of advertising when used correctly.
It pays to get someone who has more experience with AdWords. A little money spent on consultancy can save you a lot more money in trial and error. Experience is an expensive teacher so you might want to learn from someone else’s experience.
REACHING THE RIGHT PEOPLE
The first and most obvious thing about Adwords marketing is that it enables you to reach people who already interested in what you have to offer. If someone googles ‘New York Apartment’ there is a good chance that the person needs an apartment in New York. Or they might need one in future. If someone googles ‘New York Apartment Rental’ there is a good chance that they are looking for a rental apartment. If they Google ‘Manhattan Rental Apartment’ then we know that they are looking for a rental apartment specifically in the district of Manhattan. Choose your keywords well so that you reach the right people and avoid wasting money. The more specific you are the less money you waste. Keywords affect the relevance of the ad and search engines like Google reward you for relevance. So the likelihood that your ad will appear at the top of the results depends just as much on the relevance of the key word as it does on the value of your bid.
Google offers a tool called the Google Search Console which you can use to access the analytics report for your website. It will show the search words that led traffic to your website and the number of clicks you got. Your mobile usability report will tell you how well you are doing with mobile.
KEYWORDS AND RELEVANCE
A lot depends on choosing the right keywords to bid on. Your choices will be determined by the products you want to sell, your budget and your competition. A big name brand like L’Oreal will not use the same strategy as a smaller local brand, even if they do sell the same products.
Before launching an AdWords campaign, remember that the primary objective of a search engine is to direct people to content that is most relevant to what they are looking for. This means that the landing page of the advertiser needs to be relevant. It’s website content also needs to be relevant to the keyword.
Higher bids do not always win over lower bids. A website that is found to be more relevant (as evidenced by a higher click through rate) will beat a website with a higher bid but less relevance.
TRACK YOUR DOLLARS
With AdWords more than any other advertising tool, it is possible to know exactly what one’s investment has done. Google tracks how many clicks you get, conversions, impressions, the click through rate, cost per click, conversion rate, and cost per acquisition. This means that you have all the information you need to know how well spent your advertising dollars are. An accurate measure of your ROI is easy to get.
PAY PER CLICK
With Search Engine Marketing, you only pay when prospects click on your link and you decide what your daily budget limit should be. As your skill in AdWords increases, you should be able to reduce the cost per click in the course of time. In other words, you should be able to get higher Returns on Investment over time. This is the best possible reason to hire a professional to help you.
Some entrepreneurs have found the pay per click system unfavourable to smaller businesses. They say that large corporations can bid very high amounts on the keywords, and bid as many keywords as they can think of, just to frustrate smaller companies that do not have the same budgets. Smaller businesses run the risk of making losses when they try to compete with a bigwig who is using such a strategy.
TARGETING
AdWords offers advertisers the option to target specific audiences. By enabling advertisers to target people in certain locations, it has made it easier for local businesses to advertise affordably. You can target a town, city or country. It is also good for international brands that want to penetrate different countries. You can target mobile users and you can also target people by language, or time of the day. It is also possible to retarget people based on past web activity.
In short, AdWords marketing can work for small businesses as well as large, multinational companies. It all depends on strategy.
