What is Adwords

 

Adwords is an advertising service offered by Google. It offers a multitude of ways to advertise—directly through google’s search engine, across a network of websites with visuals, videos on youtube, or even with an app. Beyond that, it will also provide analyses of your advertisements, like how well they are doing, and which kinds of people they are most successful with, allowing you to more efficiently advertise your business. Overall, not only is Adwords an all-around incredibly well-made advertising service, but since Google’s user base is the largest in the world, in regards to search engines, Adwords is extremely useful to reach the largest number of potential customers.  

 

To help you better understand the ins and outs of Adwords, and all that it offers for advertising, I will outline each service it provides, how they work, how to effectively use each one, and why it should be one of your main advertising tools.

 

Search Ads

 

With Adwords, one of its main services is its search engine advertising feature. It all centers around keywords. When it comes to search engine advertising, keywords represent specific words and phrases that produce results relevant to those keywords.

 

Since this type of advertising is based all around keywords, it is crucial to figure out which keywords will be most relevant to your business. This is especially important because some keywords can be more expensive than others, mostly depending on which field you work in.

 

When this type of ad appears in the results page, there are a couple of ways you can drive traffic to your business: you can simply advertise your business website, or provide a direct link with a phone number for people to call your business. Both ways provide an excellent opportunity to convert a lead into an actual customer, and you will only be charged a fee when your ad is actually clicked on.

 

Bidding for Keywords

 

Essentially, keywords have a “cost-per-click,” or CPC, which is the maximum amount an advertiser is willing to pay for each click on their ad. Advertisers place bids on these keywords in the hopes their advertisement will appear on the search results page. Once the ad is on the results page, advertisers will be charged the CPC price every time their ad is clicked on, this is also known as “pay-per-click,” or PCP, advertising, as well as “Paid Search.”

As far as the bidding war for specific keywords goes, Google doesn’t just prioritize which businesses have the most amount of money available to bid, they focus on which ads are of higher quality, and which ads will be more relevant to the user’s experience. Therefore, if you want to pay less for each ad, you need to focus on creating an ad, and user experience, that is of high quality.

 

Display Ads

 

If you want to use a more indirect and open-ended advertising strategy, Google Adwords also offers visual advertising with their display option. With Google displaying these ads across more than two million websites and over 650,000 apps, using this option to advertise is an amazing way to reach a very large audience of potential customers. There are four different options with their display ads:

 

• Text – this is a lot like their search ads, with a headline, url, and a couple lines of text as a short description
• Banner – these are visual display ads that appear across websites, and are good if you want an artsier, more visually appealing advertisement
• Gmail – this option allows you to display your advertisements in Gmail, and provides the opportunity for people to share your advertisement directly with other people over email
• Apps – using this option you can display your advertisement across a range of apps

 

Using Adword’s display advertising option, and the demographics of your customer base, you have the chance to directly target potential customers based on the type of websites that they would most likely be using. This is their specialization feature, and it allows you to target specific interests and websites that relate to the type of people that are likely to become customers.

 

Video Ads

 

With this option, you create a video ad that will appear before other videos on Youtube, next to related videos, or in the search results. Much like the display option, you get to customize the type of audience that you want to target with your ads. Making a video is often more challenging than the other simpler advertisements, so it’s smart to only use this option if you have a plan for how to make an appealing and enjoyable video.

 

Also, a good thing about this option is that if the viewer skips the video before thirty seconds, you don’t have to pay for that view. Thus, you will only be paying for advertising to people who are actually interested in your business.

 

App ads

 

If you run a business that could benefit from the creation of an app, Google Adwords also offers that as a form of advertising as well. It does not have to be an overly complicated app, however, you should have clear goals in mind for how the app will be used to advertise your business. Based on what your app does, whether your goal is simply for downloads, or there are actual actions you wish users to take within your app, Google provides a host of services to help promote your app to an audience most likely to find it appealing.

 

Adwords Performance Analysis

 

One of the great things about using any of the advertising features offered by Google Adwords is their performance analysis system, which provides feedback for how well each of your advertising campaigns are doing. This allows you to tweak and change things about your advertisements to produce more efficient results, and a better return on investment.

 

Beyond that, they provide info on the types of people that seem most interested in your ads.  This makes it possible to gather better data regarding the demographics of people likely to become customers, which can be especially helpful if your business caters to a specific type of person.

 

Pricing

 

Google Adwords is free to sign up for and start using. You get complete discretion to decide on your budget and can change it anytime. Also, with Adwords, the only time you pay a fee is when your advertisement is clicked on.

 

Google Adwords

 

Overall, with Google being the largest search engine anywhere in the world, the use of Adwords for your digital advertising campaign will likely prove extremely productive and efficient. It provides a wide range of services and options for you to cater your advertising campaign to the needs and wants of your target audience. However, even though Google does offer a lot of features for measuring the performance of your ad campaign, it is still important to take the time needed to understand which ads are working well, and which ones need to be removed or tweaked.

 

By working hard to really know who your target audience should be, and providing high quality ads and landing pages that remain relevant to the keywords you bid for, you will be able to get the most success out of Adwords. With this success, your business will hopefully achieve greater awareness, better returns on investments, and ultimately a larger customer base.