What Is Google Adwords?
Google Adwords (also known as Adwords) is Google’s advertising platform and the largest online advertising platform in the world. With Adwords, companies of all sizes can advertise on Google and the Google Ad Network.
So what does this mean? What do ads on Google look like and what is the Google Advertising Network?
Let’s get started with the 3 ways your company can advertise using Adwords:
Search ads
The most common way to advertise with Google Adwords are search ads. Search ads appear on Google’s search engine when people look for the services you offer.
Advertisers target keywords or phrases so when someone searches these terms, their ads appear.
With search advertising, you only pay when someone clicks your ad or phones your business from the search engine result page. This means you don’t pay unless someone interacts with your advertisement.
With search ads, you’re advertising to people who are actively looking for your services at a given moment in time.
Unlike more traditional advertisements like flyers or newsletters, search ads help you communicate with your target audience when they are looking for you.
Display Ads
Google also works with more than two million websites so you can show ads to potential customers as they are browsing the internet.
These ads can be simple text ads, or you can add a bit of personality by creating an image ad.
Like search ads, you can choose to pay per click, or if you’d prefer you can pay when people see your ads.
When you pay based on people seeing your ads, you pay based on 1000 ad impressions which is commonly referred to as CPM.
You can advertise on certain types of websites or to target audiences based on their interests and preferences.
Video ads
Lastly, you can advertise on YouTube through Google Adwords. You’re likely familiar with video ads that appear before your favorite videos on YouTube, but you can also advertise on YouTube with text and image display ads.
Like the other methods of advertising on Adwords, you only pay when someone interacts with your ad.
Depending on the way you advertise on YouTube, you can pay when someone clicks your ad or if someone watches at least 30 seconds of your video.
Like display ads, your ads can appear on certain categories of videos or you can target audiences based on interests and preferences.
So why Google Adwords?
Google Adwords is a popular advertising platform for businesses of all sizes for a few key reasons.
First of all, Google Adwords is an inexpensive way to get into the advertising game. You don’t need a big creative budget to get started and you can set your daily budget with what you’re comfortable with. There is no minimum spend to get started.
A second reason that Google Adwords can be a good option is that the ads are very targeted. You can set up ads to be shown only in certain cities and locations, making this advertising option useful for field service companies that cover a certain area.
Lastly, since you only pay when someone interacts with your ad, you can get a better sense of where your advertising dollar is going.
With the right Adwords setup, you can track when someone phones you or fills out a contact form on your website because of an advertisement.
This type of measurement offered by Adwords allows you to make better decisions and be more strategic with your advertising spend.
Is Adwords right for me?
Advertising with Google Adwords can be great advertising tool, but this doesn’t necessarily mean it’s right for your business.
If you’re not looking to grow your customer base or if you have enough business to keep you busy, you don’t need to advertise just for the sake of advertising.
That said, if you like the sound of advertising with Google, Adwords is a fairly easy platform to use and there are a number of free resources online that can help you get started.
If you don’t want to set up your Adwords account yourself, make sure that any consultant or agency you work with is Google Certified.
Whether you setup your Adwords account yourself, or work with a Google Certified partner, keep these 3 rules in mind:
- Know that results aren’t guaranteed. While Adwords is a cost effective way to deliver highly targeted ads, there are no guarantees in advertising.
- Start with a budget you feel comfortable with. You can always start small and if you see results with Adwords you can increase your budget.
- Make sure you have tracking in place so you know exactly how your ads are performing.