Running an online business is no joke, especially when you have to compete with giants like Amazon that have an endless marketing budget fuelling their advertising. The race to reach the first page of Google search results is highly competitive categories . Trying to reach the first page, even with excellent SEO may easily take months or even a year.
This is where paid ads (PPC) come in. Google AdWords is Google’s advertising service that allows businesses to display their ads on Google’s search result pages. The ads usually appear at the top or bottom of a Google SERPs (search engine result pages).
Advantages of Using Google AdWords
Google AdWords is a powerful tool when it comes to advertising a business online. What makes it so great? Below are few of the advantages that businesses enjoy on Google’s paid marketing platform:
Precise Targeting
With Google’s many targeting options, business owners are able to ensure their ad is only displayed to potential customers. Business owners can filter their audience on the basis of geographical location, age, keywords and more. Additionally, they can also choose the time of day when their ads will be displayed to their targeted audience. A common example that a lot of businesses use is running ads only from Monday – Friday from 8 AM to 5 PM. This is due typically due to the fact that businesses are closed or are slower on the weekends. This can help maximize ad spend.
Target Specific Devices
After a 2013 update, Google AdWords allows businesses choose the kind of devices their ads will be displayed on. For the search network, you can choose between desktops, tablets, and mobile devices. On the display network businesses can even drill down even further and target specific devices like iPhones or Windows. Bid adjustments allow automatically bidding higher or lower on devices that are more likely to convert on your site. Tip: Looking at conversion and ecommerce data in Analytics.
Pay Only For Results
This is arguably the most popular advantage of advertising on Google AdWords. With AdWords, businesses only pay for the clicks on their ads, instead of impressions. This is called a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising model. This way, businesses save money by only paying when a user has taken action to view their website.
Performance Tracking
Google AdWords allows businesses to track the performance of their ads. This means you can track the number of users that view and click your ad. Adwords also allows you to track the number of users that take the desired action after viewing your website.
According to Google’s Economic Impact report, businesses make an average of $2 for every dollar spend on AdWords. At a time like this, using Google AdWords as part of your online marketing strategy is bound to bring about positive results. However, that isn’t always true of every industry. The best way to discover if AdWords will be profitable for your business it to give it a try.
Preparing for PPC
Pay Per Click advertising is a powerful tool, but only when it is used smartly. Before you can jump into the process of making your AdWords account, you must figure out your objectives. While “more sales” might sound like a great objective, online advertising will require you to be more specific.
It is highly unlikely that someone visiting your website for the first time will make a purchase. Online sales are more dependent on making and nurturing a relationship of trust with your consumer. For this reason, there can be a number of objectives for a business to use AdWords. Such as:
- Generating sales
- Registrations
- Email sign-ups
- Lead Generation
- Enhancing brand awareness and recall value
While it is perfectly fine to have more than one objective, keep in mind that you will have to run different campaigns to achieve different objectives (More on this later). Apart from identifying your objective, there is another very important prerequisite for advertising on AdWords, having a landing page.
Landing Page
A landing page is a URL or a webpage on which, a user “lands” when they click on your advertisement. A landing page is a standalone page, distinct from your main website, designed to focus on a specific objective. A great landing page is crucial to the success of your AdWords campaign. A well designed and optimized landing page will help convert visitors into leads, or even customers.
Google AdWords is an extremely powerful tool when it comes to acquiring new customers for small businesses. However, if not used smartly, the platform can cost you real advertising money, without bringing in a respectable ROI.
Apart from using the intelligence you have gained through this blog post, the key to success lies in constantly testing your ads and optimizing them for better performance.
