Demystifying Google AdWords and PPC

Google Adwords Intro

Google Adwords is a pay-per-click (PPC) mechanism whereby an advertiser pays for each time someone clicks on their advert and is taken to their website. Adwords is the digital equivalent of the brochure of the old days. It’s an immediate way to get your products and brand noticed, providing your website is impressive and your products packaged effectively by your marketing department.

AdWords is used to generate targeted traffic to your website by creating adds an choosing keywords related to your business. You only pay if someone clicks on your add. Millions of businesses around the world use AdWords.

Our add campaign runs for as long as our budget lasts for and suspends the campaign the following day when the budget runs out.

We set not only a campaign amount, but also how much we are wiling to pay for each keyword. The amount we pay per click, determines the position at which our ads are displayed in Google search page. You might have an “Aha” moment about now.

You can see the maximum bid and preview your relative search placement. When people use the keywords or keyword phrases we have specified, our adds will show up there. Hopefully matching the right person (a high quality prospect) to our business. 

You can also choose where in the world you want your ads to appear in and you can create campaigns in different languages of course. Google has a good “Keywords Tool, which will show you the most popular keywords used for your products or services and how often they were used in the last month.

Digital Era of Advertising

Some businesses and companies have abandoned print advertising and PPC has become their number one marketing channel. It really depends on your industry and the stage of growth of your company and the consumer appeal of your products and services that you offer.

Strategy of PPC

The idea is PPC gives you a fast and flexible way to reach potential customers. Tweaking your PPC campaigns is an on-going and surprisingly skilled endeavour. Google Adwords are basically a real-time auction in which you bid on searches with the keywords you want your ad to appear for. Sounds sketchy right? Well maybe, maybe not.

What can it bring to your Business and Brand?

1 – Visibility: Be seen and let your brand be exposed to a larger and more diverse audience.

2 – Generate Leads: Delivery almost instant traffic to your website.

3 – Qualified Leads: Since your adds only appear in front of searchers using relevant keywords that you have chosen, one assumes some of these leads will be of high quality.

4 – Boost Sales: Hopefully some of those qualified leads turn into conversions and ROI. In all depends, how in-demand are your products and services relative to your competition?

5 – Return on Investment – PPC is reputed to have a higher ROI than many traditional advertising methods, will it work for you?

6 – Complete Control – You can limit your daily budget, and test the profitability of different keywords.

 Let’s Do this Right

 1 –Start with Google AdWords, create your account. 

2 – Set your budget’s daily limit.

3 – Use Wordtracker to carefully choose the keywords you bid on.

4 – Segment your keywords into different Ad Groups

5 – Write different adverts and test them against each other.

6 – What your Unique Selling Point (USP)? Use it in your adverts.

7 – Research Google’s different match bids and use exact match and broad match.

8 – Make sure your ad copy and landing pages all use keywords they serve.

9 – Geo-target your ads and make sure your ads only appear appear for searchers in regions that you can sell to.

10 – Limit your ads to display only during times of the day releveant to your company and products.

11 – Measure your results using Google Analytics or Yahoo’s Index Tools.

Hints

Plan this out and do your research, auctions are like gambling, you have to know he odds of the game to win. You can never stop testing in the pursuit of better performing adds and increasing your ROI. Use negative keywords where your add will not show for any searches containing those negative keywords you bid on.

For Whom is Ad Words Appropriate

Some of the literature suggests that if you are a small company and you can’t afford even $100 day you may not see the required ROI on this, to be worth your effort. But again, it all depends. Considering the PPC mechanism, it isn’t for cheapskates. It’s not for companies with poor or out of date landing pages. It’s not for companies with marginal marketing departments and a sales department that isn’t able to convert. It’s for growing brands where search is directly implicated in the customer journey of their business who aren’t afraid to task risks and have their bases covered.

Check out more infographics out on PPC  & Adwords.

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