Figure 1: AdWords seen in a search result

Google AdWords is an advertising network that extends to nearly every corner of the digital world.  AdWords advertisements are usually encountered on the top of search results, whether someone runs a Google, AOL, or Ask.com search (Figure 1).

Technology is changing the way marketing works.  Previously, we could only place our ads and hope that people would randomly notice them at the right time.  Today with a system such as AdWords, your ad is placed automatically where potential customers are actually searching for what your business offers.  You can specify geographic location, age, gender, income and other factors as well as the key words they used in their search.  With a properly built campaign, your ads will be seen only by the people you target.

AdWords is a no-commitment program, and the budget is fully customizable to meet your needs.  You can either manually add funds to the account, where it would simply stop running the ads when funding runs out, or after determining an effective budget, connect it to a credit card for automatic payment.  When you set up a campaign, you specify how much the campaign may use per day and per click.  If you set the budget to $25/day and the average cost per click happens to be $2.50* to be on the first page of a particular search, your website will receive up to 10 clicks per day from the people you are targeting.  If you limit the cost per click, your ad will show only when the “bid” for the search is low enough for your limit, so with a reduced cost per click limit, it will likely show only on the second and third pages of a search.  For more information on the Google’s ad auction, click here.

Figure 2: AdWords seen on a blog

You may have noticed that Google ads also appear on thousands of other popular websites–usually on the side column.  Sites that use Google Ads simply create a placeholder box for Google to automatically fill with ads that are relevant to the content of the web page that they are shown on.  For example, the web page in Figure 2 talks about “energy tax credits” and “green energy”.  These are some of the keywords that Google AdWords advertisers specified for their ads campaigns, and Google automatically displayed them on this page because of the apparent relevance of the ads (and other factors of course).

The Three Key Benefits of AdWords:

• Reach
  Over 272 million adults in North America (78% of the adult population*) use the internet and are increasingly looking for local services online– The Google network reaches over 84% of them.
• Relevance
  Google AdWords shows ads to prospects who are actively searching for what business have to offer.
• Return on Investment (ROI)
  Pay per click model ensures that businesses only pay for qualified leads.

* InternetWorldStats.com

As partners with Google AdWords, we’ve been given dozens of $100 coupons such as the one shown to the left.  We are giving them away to all new customers from the Buffalo NY area in the month of September.  You may create an AdWords account and apply this coupon to receive $100 in credit and experiment with its effectiveness on your own.  If you are serious about producing results and prefer a professionally optimized campaign, or if you aren’t confident in your computer skills, we’d love to create an AdWords campaign for your business.

When we compose an AdWords campaign for your business, we analyze your objectives and your current website.  Next, we research what key words people might use when looking for your product–usually about 200 phrases.  We then write several ads with different wording associated with the different key words.  Turnover time to complete an effective campaign is 5 business days.

To achieve an accurate analysis of the effectiveness of AdWords for your business, you would ordinarily need to run the campaign for about 3 weeks.  Contact us for pricing and details, or if you have any questions whatsoever about our services.

* This was the average cost per click of a first-page ad for an elderly home care company in Buffalo NY at the time of this writing.  Rates vary based upon market variables.  Click here for more info on the auction.