Ever wondered what those little ads on the right hand side of Google search results are? And, wondered how to advertise in the same place? These ads are paid advertising served via Google’s main money making machine, Adwords – adwords.google.co.nz.
For businesses looking to promote their websites and drive online sales, Google Adwords is the most cost-effective option. A web-based system, it enables users to serve ads using Pay Per Click (PPC) and site-targeted advertising.
With the PPC method, advertisers bid for keywords that ads will be served against. If advertising a T-shirt for example, appropriate keywords could include ‘T-shirt’ or ‘buy a T-shirt’ and various others. This means that for someone searching the Google search engine using one of those words, the ad would appear on their screen. Site-targeted advertising however is a more traditional method where advertisers pay to place ads on specific sites that use the Google ‘Adsense’ programme.
Google Adwords is very effective and very easy to use, says Mark Shaw, product manager at Breathe’s sister company Sonic Mobile. “I spend a few hours each week managing our Adwords accounts, but we use it as our primary marketing tool for two of our businesses. It’s been a very effective way for us to promote our services for only a portion of the cost of traditional media. I’ve also provided advice to several customers who are finding it very effective and easy to use.”
Mark says Adwords only requires a few hours to manage each week, and it’s free to sign up. However, there are some critical factors businesses need to be aware of before going ahead with a campaign:
“ Don’t try to get overly complex when you start as this could quickly become costly and ineffective. So, start simple.
“Also use lots and lots of ad variations – you can include as many different ads as you like in each campaign because the Adwords software is smart and will work out which ads are the most effective and will serve these.”
He also encourages New Zealand-owned-and-operated companies to capitalise on the fact and include it in their ads. Because Kiwis love nothing more than supporting New Zealand companies, they will favour a ‘co.nz’ domain name over others.
For businesses looking to sell or promote internationally, it’s advisable to start with the New Zealand market. This allows for time to develop a sense of how to use Adwords and discover what is most effective for the business concerned. Branching out globally without this knowledge can be disastrous.
“Including international markets straight away can be down-heartening and extremely expensive,” says Mark.
Another vital factor, which is often overlooked, is website maintenance. Whether a website is down or not working, the advertiser still pays for the clicks that are directing people to it. Making website maintenance a priority is obviously essential, he says.
“And, you need to look at what page you’re sending people to,” says Mark. “It’s not always necessary to send everyone to your home page, send them to pages that are relevant to your ads. So, if you are targeting specific products in ads then direct the clicks to the part of your website that is relevant to the ad.”
As with television and radio advertising, Adwords also enables scheduling of ads to day and time frequency. This allows businesses to choose the most effective slots for their product which can have a major impact on cost-effectiveness. A company selling corporate solutions for example is probably not going to benefit from running ads at night or at weekends.
So, while Adwords is simple to use and effective, Mark warns that it’s easy to get carried away.
“It can become addictive and very costly if you let the stats take over your budgetary constraints. So, it’s really important to set your budget and stick to it.
”And, definitely don’t get into bidding wars. If your opposition is increasing bids don’t be sucked into matching them!”
Google also enables advertisers to serve different ad types via the Adwords system targeting different audiences:
• Text ads – these are the most popular ads and are more likely to be served on the Google search results
• Image Ads – These are like the banner ads which appear on news sites such as www.stuff.co.nz but are more likely to served on sites that are using the Google Adsense programme to run their online advertising
• Video Ads – Like the image ads these are likely to be served on websites that are participating in the Adsense programme
• Mobile Ads – These ads are served on mobile websites, when they are clicked they usually point to a company’s mobile website.
Target audiences can be refined even further with the new ‘geo-targeting’ of ads which Google has recently introduced via its Google Maps software, allowing advertisers to target audiences down to a very specific area.
“This is useful if you only offer service or product to an audience in a specific area,” says Mark. “For example if you were selling Chelsea football shirts in London you wouldn’t want to target people who live in the Arsenal area of London. So with this tool you could select areas of London where Chelsea supporters live.”
Finally, advertisers can track the success of their campaigns using Adwords track conversion – which simply involves adding a piece of code to the website. Track conversion is a useful tool for assessing the cost of converting each click through to a sale or to directing the user to make contact.
For businesses looking to increase their ranking in Google’s actual search results, website optimization is required. But that’s a completely different subject.