If you are a small or relatively new business then you may feel that getting to the top of Google is a long way out of your reach, this isn’t always the case.
If you are a small or relatively new business then you may feel that getting to the top of Google is a long way out of your reach, this isn’t always the case.
Raising above the giants
It’s true that building your relevance and authority in organic listings will take time and skill but with proper use of Google Adwords, your business could be reaching thousands of potential customers in a matter of hours.
The global reach of the internet is often a daunting thought for many small and localized companies but Google have created very accurate location and language targeting which give you complete control over where you advertise, when you advertise and who you advertise to.
Did you know that you can automate your ads to only show to people of a specific age or gender in a specific location?
You can even set the times which you want your ads to show and bid more at specific times or on specific devices such as mobile phones.
For example:
If you run a pizza delivery service and you only operate for 30km around Asoke, then you can set your location targeting to only show your ads in this area. After studying your website analytics, you discover that the people most likely to order a pizza are 10km away from your shop, ordering on a mobile phone between 9pm and 11pm.
Armed with this data, you can then decide to either bid more when all the above conditions are met, reduce your location targeting to within 10km or start creating mobile specific ads to increase your mobile enquiries. You may decide to combine all of the methods mentioned previously or test just one at a time.
How to do it right
Carefully researched keywords combined with cleverly constructed ads shown to the right people at the right time can generate a high return on investment in a very short period of time.
With over 3 billion Google searches per day and 25% of these coming from mobile devices, you are losing out if your website is not visible. Creating great quality content to climb to the top of Google organically, should always be your long term goal but you still need revenue in the short term. Adwords can act as a great intermediary providing you with high quality web traffic on demand.
Many new and small businesses have a limited marketing budget, and the thought of an online marketing campaign which costs you money every time that someone clicks on your ad can be a very daunting prospect.
Google Adwords allows you to set a daily budget, which fits your own marketing needs. In a similar way to an ebay auction, you can set a maximum bid for each keyword ensuring that you never pay more for a click than you deem to be a profitable amount.
As a small business it may be worthwhile to have an expert assess your website, particularly if you haven’t updated it for a while as just a few small tweaks can make a world of difference to your conversion rates.
For instance, did you know that visitors view your landing pages starting in the top right hand corner, head over to the left and then down the left hand side, sometimes they come back and swipe across the middle from left to right making their viewing path very similar to a large F shape.
The landing page is where is at
Some of the critical elements to a successful landing page include neatly laid out content with short paragraphs, relevant images, a clear call to action and a contact form or button.
When planning your adwords campaign the first place you start to carry out research is on your own website. The navigation structure will help you to create campaign and ad group ideas and the actual text on your web pages should form the basis of your keyword research.
It’s important that each ad group has a relevant landing page, if your keywords and ads relate to multi purpose smart phone pouches then your landing page should be dedicated to multi purpose smart phone pouches, never direct ads to a generic landing page. Specific landing pages help to increase your quality score and therefore your ad rank meaning it will cost you less for a higher ad position.
Here’s an example of good keywords usage in an adwords. Notice how key words help deliver a clear message while there are clear indications which options the user has to follow. They can contact us or choose to look at our other courses.
Keeping it on target
Many small businesses sell very specific products and this enables them to create highly targeted ad groups, these in turn help to keep costs low. For example, if your product is smartphone pouches then you can create separate ad groups for each product such as: pink smartphone pouches, cartoon smartphone pouches and professional smartphone pouches.
Here is where small business will have some kind of advantage over large companies, as these bigger players have with many different products they are unable to target their marketing so intensely, unless they have a whole department dedicated to running their ppc campaigns.
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Time for some useful tips
Always try to remember this rule of thumb:
Wherever possible match your ad headline to your keyword.
An ad which mirrors the keyword which visitors have queried will almost always receive a higher CTR.
One of the ways in which to do this is to make use of the dynamic keyword insertion technique,{keyword:default text}. This means that providing your keyword isn’t too long it will automatically be inserted into the headline of your ad, you will need to provide an alternative heading just in case your keyword can’t be used.
The display network is a great choice for new businesses as it allows you to reach users as they browse content across the web. Google uses contextual targeting to match your ads to text on web pages, so for example people reading a blog about latest photography techniques could be shown your ad about cameras for sale in the sidebar next to the article. These type of ads typically have a lower CTR as users are not actively searching for your product, but they are an excellent medium for branding and awareness and often contribute indirectly to conversions and sales.
Some more words on Display ads
Display ads can be either text ads, image ads or interactive ads which are image ads with animation. You can either make image ads yourself with a program such as Photoshop or make use of the Display Ad builder in the Adwords interface. Google display ads must follow certain specific guidelines listed here
When using the Google display network you can choose from either cost per click (CPC) or cost per thousand impressions (CPM). In the latter format you pay a set amount for each thousand times that your ad is shown, personally I prefer to use CPC and I will explain why in the next paragraph.
As I mentioned earlier, CTR on the display network is usually considerably lower than on the search network. That doesn’t mean those impressions which don’t receive clicks have gone unnoticed, they often contribute to a click or conversion at another part of the sales funnel. So, every impression which doesn’t result in a click is effectively free marketing which brings us to a fairly new adwords attribute called View Through Conversions.
When a web user sees an impression of one of your display ads and then later visits your website through another medium such as a direct visit, clicking on your website in search results or through a social media link this is classed as a view through conversion, as the display add ‘assisted’ in the conversion in a similar way to ice hockey goals have a goal scorer and an assistant.
Become a Certified Expert
Learning to set up and manage adwords campaigns is a very useful skill for any small business owner or internet marketer. If you are interested in learning more check out our comprehensive adwords course and learn adwords from a Google Certified Professional.
