While Google AdWords is a tool many people have heard of, few understand the true value this incredible platform adds to modern businesses.
If you’ve been running a successful small business with a loyal local customer base, but want to enhance your online presence, Google AdWords is the perfect addition to your marketing arsenal. Essentially, it’s a simple and effective way to boost your online sales. Google itself promotes AdWords as an easy-to-use platform, and for the most part, it is relatively simple to operate. To ensure that you are getting the most out of your AdWords ad spend, however, you will either need to invest in some AdWords training, perhaps via the Google Digital Garage, or engage with Marketing or AdWords involved businesses – we can help you here.
Before using Google Adwords, consider these…
If you do think this is a good option for your business, make sure to ask yourself the following five questions before you start using Google AdWords:
- What are you trying to achieve with your AdWords campaign? Brand Awareness, sales, or enquiries? – the clearer your objectives are, the easier it will be to achieve great results and to measure them.
- What part of your business are you going to highlight in your ads? Unless you have a massive budget, you won’t be able to highlight every single part of your business and offers, so start small and pick one or two.
- Do you have a landing page on your website that communicates this part of your business effectively, and is it easy to use? This is where people who click your ads will be directed to, and it needs to capture their interest and deliver what they are after within seconds, or they will bounce straight off your website.
- What do you want people to do when they arrive on your landing page? Is it to contact you, download an e-book or voucher, to place an order or to simply subscribe to your newsletter? Whatever your goal, make sure it is easy and straight-forward to achieve.
- Is your website set up to track exactly who is clicking on your ads, so that you can determine your campaign’s effectiveness? There is no point in spending heaps of money on anything if you can’t measure your success. AdWords allows you to capture very rich and specific information about your campaign and you should be using it to understand how users are responding to it and to make continuous improvements.
Building Your Online Presence with Google Adwords
AdWords is a fantastic means of building your brand’s online presence, as it is highly-measurable, cost-effective, and designed to hone in on specific target markets. If you are after a quick spike in sales, want to get the word out about an event or have a special offer at the moment, this is an effective way to reach your audience.
The only downside to this tool is that once you pause a campaign, you also pause the flow of enquiries, much like a tap. We usually recommend it as a short-term investment which is then paired with other tactics, like SEO, which are not as effective immediately but have a longer lasting effect.
