Everyone is trying to drive more traffic and leads to their website. One of the biggest and easiest ways to get some extra traffic is to utilize Google AdWords. AdWords has grown into a $21 billion per year market and is the leader in Pay Per Click advertising.
For those of you who are not familiar with AdWords: it is a way for a business to buy their way to the top of the search result. The image below highlights the most common place for your advertisement to show up.
Any company, or individual for that matter, can sign up for AdWords. However, it can be fairly time consuming and wasteful to try and run a campaign on your own unless you have a lot of practice. Google AdWords is a fast-paced tool where you can adjust your advertisements, keywords and budget on a daily basis. This is great for quickly evaluating what works and what doesn’t work, but it makes it far from being a “set it and forget it” marketing campaign.
First Step: Discovery
The first step to running an AdWords campaign is to figure out who comprises your market and how to reach them. To do this you should determine what keywords your target users will be searching for. The number of keywords and phrases depends on your market.
Second Step: Website Updates
Once you have a list of your keywords you need to make sure those keywords are incorporated into your website. Google will not send traffic to your website if your website’s content is not related to the keywords you are purchasing.
Third Step: Budget
After your keywords are chosen and incorporated into your website you must then establish a budget you are willing to pay. Budgets are done many different ways:
- Monthly Budgets – The maximum amount you are willing to pay per month
- Daily Budgets – The maximum amount you are willing to pay per day
- Per Click Budgets – The maximum amount you are willing to pay per click
Most company’s budgets are a combination of all three; however the most important one to look at is the Per Click budget. Every keyword you choose can have a budget of its own. For instance Microsoft may be only willing to pay $0.50 for someone searching for the keyword “software” but may be willing to pay $12.00 for someone searching for “Microsoft Office”.
Depending on what demographics you are trying to reach your budgets will vary. With AdWords you can choose to advertise nationwide or choose a smaller area like the Kansas City Metro region. If you choose a smaller area it doesn’t mean your costs will go down, it just means you will reach your primary target with less wasted clicks.
Fourth Step: Ad Creation
Once all your keyword budgets are in place you then create the advertisements themselves. Each ad is comprised of a title and a two line description. The idea is to make it contain your keywords and basic information to entice a user to click on your advertisement.
There are other types of advertisements that are available if you choose to also allow your advertisements to run on Google’s network of sites. This can be a good option if you are less concerned about targeting local customers and more interested in reaching a certain audience that a website caters to. If you choose to do this you can upload video, photos and animated advertisements.
Fifth Step: Rinse and Repeat
After your ads are up and running and you should analyze your click through rates, costs, successes and failures. Then add and remove keywords as needed, adjust your budgets, and modify other settings accordingly. If you don’t consistently adjust your campaigns you will be spending more than you should on your advertisements.
Tekniq can help you get started with your AdWords account today! Let Tekniq do the hard work while you concentrate on the incoming leads AdWords will generate.
