You’re new to marketing, but you’ve heard that AdWords campaigns are an excellent way to promote your products or services, drive qualified traffic to your website, and scale your business. The only problem is that you aren’t quite sure how AdWords works.
Should you integrate it in your campaigns? If so, what do you need to know to use it to its full potential and stand out on local markets?
If you’re still not sure how to answer these questions despite repeatedly trying to understand the system behind the Google display network, let’s take a look at how you can use AdWords to reach more customers.
What Is Google AdWords?
If you want to learn how to run ads on Google, then you first need to understand the concept behind pay per click advertising (PPC). The idea is rather simple. Just like its name implies, PPC is a type of advertising where you only pay when your ad is clicked on and not when it’s displayed in Google search.
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Well, Google AdWords is an advertising platform that enables you to create ads that will appear in search results whenever prospects are using a keyword you are targeting. Every time someone clicks on your ad, you have to pay a small fee based on your Ad Rank, Quality Score, and maximum cost per click you’ve mentioned in your bid.
One of the great things about Google AdWords is that it can help grow your business faster than any other digital marketing strategy. While SEO, for instance, is extremely effective at increasing your ranking in Google result page, this process can take several months to show results. If you want to drive traffic and convert visitors now, then AdWords is your best option.
How Does It Work?
Paid advertising can often sound like a foreign language – PPC, CPC, CPM, and other abbreviations make it difficult for first-time users to get their heads around it. However, if there’s one vital concept that you need to understand, then that’s the Quality Score.
Here’s the thing: Google uses a complex formula to calculate how relevant your landing page, ad, ad group and keywords are to someone’s search, and how likely they are to click on your ad, based on this relevancy.
Every time someone searches for something on Google, the search engine giant launches an auction, and each advertiser that has a keyword matching the search query takes part in it. Google will look at the advertisers’ Quality score and maximum cost per click to determine the Ad Rank. The logic is simple: if you have the highest Ad Rank, then you will get the most favorable position in Google’s display network.
Should You Use It?
Or rather, the real question is “Will it work for your business and should you make the effort of implementing it in your marketing strategy?”
Google AdWords is extremely effective for most businesses, whether small, medium or large, as long as they know how to use it. However, you’ve probably heard many people complain about it using several arguments.
- “It’s Too Expensive!”
If you’re new to Google AdWords, then you could very well be spending too much money without seeing any results. So, how can you make it less expensive and more profitable?
The first and most obvious advice is to learn how to use it properly – take the time to study, test different strategies, and get familiarized with the platform.
Secondly, set a realistic budget for each day and stick to it. Don’t forget to think about a bidding strategy so that you can have more control over your campaigns.
Last but not least, track everything you spend. That will require daily effort to review and adjust, so consider this factor too when getting started with AdWords.
- “We Rarely See Any Significant Results”
If you’re using this argument to justify the lack of results, then you’re probably doing a few things wrong.
For starters, you may have a poorly-structured account. In other words, you may be targeting keywords that are too broad, irrelevant or have an awful quality score. More probably, you’re not blocking irrelevant searches through negative keywords, and your ad groups are stuffed with unrelated terms. There’s no surprise that your ads rarely appear in local searches.
Another mistake you may be making is that you’re abusing dynamic keyword insertion. This option allows you to insert a searched-for query in your ad to make it look relevant.
While we’re at it, ad relevance may be another problem that could lead to disastrous results. Targeting a set of keywords that’s too broad and not specific enough will only drain your budget on unqualified clicks from confused searchers.
That brings us to our next mistake – your landing page is awful. The design is bad, the copy is poor, and prospects have no idea how to find what they’re looking for and what action they should take.
- “I Don’t Have the Time to Do it.”
Indeed, paid search is not something that just works on its own. If you want your campaign on Google to stand out, then you have to dedicate time to manage it, evaluate it, track it and constantly readjust your ads.
It might take some time before you get the hang of how everything works and get comfortable navigating the platform. But once you do, you’ll find that Google AdWords can be a powerful marketing tool that brings you impressive results and fast.
Now, if you don’t want to add yet another task on your growing to-do list, then you can hire someone to do it for you. At Australian Internet Advertising, we can take some of the pressure off your shoulders and take care of your AdWords needs for you. Get in touch today to learn what we can do for you.
