Google AdWords - a Beginner's Guide
No visitors = no sales. It's the basic equation behind most websites' lack of success. You've probably heard that 'getting to the top of the search engine listings takes several months' - possibly to the point of boredom. Well scrap that. You can be top of the search engine listings for whatever you want in the next day or two.
What's the catch?
Like most catches: money.
Google, Yahoo and MSN all sell advertising on their search engine rankings. If you look down the right hand side of their search results (and sometimes along the top) you will see a series of 'sponsored links'. These are advertisements placed by companies like yours that are set to display every time someone searches for a particular word.
And every time someone clicks one of these ads, the advertiser has agreed to pay Google a particular fee.
Further Resources
Why would someone want to pay to advertise?
Advertising with the search engines is instantaneous. You can be up and running within hours. If you're waiting for your site to appear near the top of the normal search engine listings for free, then you will be waiting for months - and possibly forever. If you've invested a lot of cash in a website then it's going to waste without real people visiting it and buying or enquiring. Search engine advertising is a way to buy visitors.
Why is it effective?
Unlike traditional advertising routes, your ads are only ever seen by people who are looking for your product or service. If you sell shoes, and someone types in the word 'shoes' on Google and your ad comes up then the likelihood of them buying from you is far, far better than if you'd just dropped a leaflet through their door.
How do they decide whose ads are at the top?
Put simply: the person who's prepared to pay the most. The ads run on a auction basis. You might decide you're prepared to pay 50p every time someone searches for 'shoes' and clicks on your ad. If your hated rival Company X decides they're prepared to pay 60p per click, they'll appear above you. Rather cleverly, you only every pay 1p more than the person below you. In this case, 'Company X' would pay 51p - even though they've set a maximum bid of 60p.
Sounds like it could be expensive?
Well yes it does - but it's very much a state of mind. If your website is in good shape and your products attractive then this expense should translate into profitable sales. Some of our clients discover that every £1 they spend on pay-per-click generates £7 in sales. In other words, it becomes an easy decision to spend more or less unlimited amounts.
Best of all, you set a daily limit that can be as high or as low as you're prepared to spend so you remain in total control. Once you've reached your daily budget, your ads stop showing and you are charged nothing more for that day.
Can I set this up myself?
Knock yourself out! The services are freely available to anyone on Google, Yahoo and MSN.
We'd strongly recommend, however, that you employ someone to run them on your behalf. We've made it sound fairly straightforward on here - and this page is already too long! In fact, the management of this kind of exercise is very tricky unless you've had lots of experience, and you don't want to waste money learning as you go. The actual systems can be complicated to use and knowing how to to get value for money out of your campaign requires experience, a thorough understanding of the systems and the kind of insight you can only get if you've been doing this kind of thing for years.
