There is little doubt that most businesses, big and small require the support of marketing to grow. Most small businesses do not have the capacity to afford traditional forms of advertising because of restrictive costs and hence either grow slowly or remain stagnant and perish. In most cases, those businesses that did undertake the traditional forms of advertising either wonder how much they worked or did not work.
With the birth of the internet and, more so because of Google, advertising has become easier, and even affordable. When Google, launched Google AdWords, the advertising media had a new challenger, one which would stay unchallenged for years. Data quickly for analysis, control over ads, budgets, measurement metrics combined with excellent tracking tools make Google AdWords a perfect marketing medium for businesses.
Google AdWords ads are shown on the right hand side of a Google search engine results page under the heading “ads”. At times you may find highly relevant ads right on top of the page too. The ads are shown when a potential customer is searching for terms related to those selected by the advertisers for displaying such ads. AdWords follows a unique pay per click model and thus you are charged only when someone clicks on your ad and not when your ad is viewed.
Thousands of businesses have managed to expand and continue to grow with the help of the Google AdWords advertising program which is also popularly known as SEM or Search Engine Marketing or Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns. This is a great way for many businesses to drive prospects to their business converting them into loyal customers. This is an excellent low cost medium for wide reach and customer acquisitions.
No matter the stage at which your business is, AdWords can help you get more.
While it’s not very simple but its not too complex either. Getting started with an AdWords campaign can be done as detailed below:
• Create an account at http://www.google.com/AdWords. You can use your Gmail id to simply login and create an account.
• Add your billing details like company name, address etc
• Add funds to your newly created AdWords account using credit card/net banking etc (the payment rules and policies may differ from region to region). Remember Google AdWords is a prepay model. You can get an invoice from the AdWords account itself at the end if each month for the amount spent.
• Create a basic keyword list (these are words or phrases which you expect the search engine user to search for when he is in need of a product or service you provide)
• Write keyword relevant ads which will appeal to the prospect
• Now you need a destination page URL where the prospect will be taken when he / she clicks on the ad. This could be a website or a web page specifically created for the campaign. This page is also called a Landing Page.
• Now you need to add the keywords, text ads with URL’s to the AdWords account
• While doing this you can select keyword match types “Broad”, “Phrase”, or “Exact”. (Define each in as few words as possible)
• Now you select the target regions (country, state and city)
• Finally you specify the daily spend and the maximum bid amounts for the keywords you have decided to target.
Now you are all set to get started
The above mentioned points are the mere basics and can help you run a small AdWords campaign. A lot more managing and optimizing a Google AdWords account is needed if you intend so invest large amounts in customer acquisition. Given that most businessmen are busy managing their business, one of the options would be to outsource AdWords campaign management to an efficient Internet Marketing agency.
Why should you outsource Google AdWords campaign management?
Setting up, monitoring, and analyzing an AdWords campaign requires a lot of effort. This, calls for expertise and experience to make sure that the error ratios are low and decision are implemented asap. Outsourcing allows the businessman to concentrate on other business and management issues. An Internet Marketing agency is well equipped with experts and technology and is always up to date on the latest developments which allow them to provide better value for the marketing money spent.
