Businesses these days know the importance of being online, but for many they think that by the good graces of Google their website will appear at the top of search results overnight.
Search Engine Optimisation is hard work. You need to have good content, good on-page optimisation, good link authority and be shared socially (As Oscar Wilde said “It is better to be talked about, than not talked about”, and this is so true when it comes to SEO). These activities take time to achieve success.
You are also competing against everyone else in the market who is competing for the same phrases. It is not like it was 5 or 10 years ago when only a few people in your industry had websites.
So this is where Google Adwords comes in.
Back on October 23, 2000 Google changed online marketing forever when it launched its ‘Self-Service Advertising Program.’ Today, we know this as Google AdWords. And, it’s become a vital part of many successful online businesses.
If you’re unfamiliar with AdWords, it’s simply a pay-per-click service which allows you to create and run ads for your business. These clickable ads are then displayed in Google’s search results. By using the right keywords for your target audience, you’re already ahead because you’re reaching people you have an interest in your product or service.
Here are the five main reasons why your business should use Google Ads.
1. AdWords is Measurable and Flexible
One main advantage of online marketing over traditional marketing channels, like TV or print, is that it’s extremely easy to measure. However, it can be a challenge to effectively measure your SEO campaign since you can’t always get a precise measurement on what increased or decreased your rankings. Enter AdWords PPC. This is probably one of the best resources you have to measure what’s working and what is not because it comes equipped with plenty of PPC metrics that do that task for you.
AdWords is also flexible because it has customizable options for your campaign to suit your particular needs. For example, AdWords can be used to:
Specific keyword match types – This allows you to display your ad for exact keyword searches. So, you could set it up to “New York pizza,” as opposed to general searches for “New York” or “pizza.”
Ad extensions – This give you the ability to display everything from product images, contact information, to a pack of links to your site.
Narrows your audience – You can have it set up so that you can discover your audience by their location, the time of day, their language, and even their browser or device they’re using.
Access to non-search sites – Gmail, YouTube and lots of other of partner sites are at your fingertips.
Leverage the display network – This can help you establish brand awareness.
2. Faster Than SEO
A huge drawback with SEO is that it can take months before you notice any results thanks to competition and the time it take to “prove itself”. This is not the case with AdWords. Once your AdWords campaign goes live, ads will appear and you’ll get instant results, like visitor data.
Not only will this bring in a little bit of money right away, but because of its speed, you have the time to discover how effective your keywords are, which can then be used to construct an effective SEO campaign based on your AdWords data.
I personally love SEO and think having an SEO plan is a key to part of your online success. That being said, PPC will get you to the top of the search results in minutes.
3. More Engaging
Google is constantly improving AdWords because it’s one of its primary sources of income. Along the way Google noticed that product listing ads and in-video ads on YouTube get more more clicks from users. These engaging ads mean more revenue for Google, and advertisers as well because of new ad formats and extensions.
Also consider this. YouTube has over 1 billion uniques a month as well as several billion views a day. If you were to compare that to search engines, it would rank second and it’s also 2X bigger than Bing and Yahoo search combined. So, why wouldn’t you want your ads to be seen where the people are?
4. Can Control Your Advertising Costs
Here’s something that’s really awesome about AdWords. You can set a maximum cost per day for your campaign. And, it’s help to you on how much that amount is set at. How does this help your business? It allows you to budget your campaign accordingly without worrying if you’re going to go over budget. The worst case scenario is that the amount of ads will begin to decrease as your budget gets lower. However, you can increase your budget accordingly. This scalability is a nice option if you want a lot of leads in a short amount of time.
Since you may have multiple campaigns running on a daily basis, Larry Kim suggests that you break up the campaign into three different target areas:
- Mobile search
- Display network (go for Remarketing)
- Google search
5. Helps Beat Your Competitors
Because of the speed of AdWords, when compared to SEO, you have a major advantage of your competitors. Because you’ll already be appearing in search engines, your site will be receiving more clicks from search results than all of the other companies in your industry.
But, what if you’re competitors are also using AdWords? That’s not an excuse.
According to Moz, 80% of search results now contain AdWords ad placements. Furthermore, those ad placements are covering as much as 85% of the space above the fold on the results page. This doesn’t just mean that Google is making a hefty profit, it illustrates that AdWords are being used by more and more advertisers. So, the only way to beat them is to join them.
