A simple question I received from my brother in law. Yet, simple questions seldom have simple answers. Instead of saying the (obvious?) “Yes” and let him find out himself, I gave him eight steps to consider so that he could answer the question himself.
After all, Google Adwords is the most cost-efficient method of advertizing today, but you need to be aware of what you are doing.
- Determine your goals; what do you want to achieve with Adwords? Customers? Visibility?
- Decide your budget: clicks may cost a bit, so a daily/weekly/monthly budget needs to be in accordance with your goals – how much am I ready to pay to get one new customer?
- Get to know your keywords and choose 10-20 for the first round: what will your target audience be looking for and with which keyword phrases? Recheck that your website’s content goes along with your keywords; you don’t want to pay for visitors who can’t find anything of interest on your website.
- Get to know your tools: study the Adwords platform – especially budgeting, the meanings of cost-per-click, conversion rates etc. Also use the Adwords Keyword Tool to research your chosen keywords’ local search rates (updated once a year) and what alternatives there are.
- Create your ads and launch your campaign. Be sure to link your ads to a landing page where the visitor will find exactly what they were looking for when they clicked your ad. Your front page isn’t usually the place you want your visitors to land from ads.
- Prepare your analytics for the campaign. Configure Cuutio and Google Analytics so that you can monitor how those ads are performing; which ads draw relevant traffic and convert visitors to potential customers.
- Be active in monitoring and analyzing. Use Cuutio to find out which keywords need more advertizing and with which your organic results are good enough to draw potential customers.
- Have fun :)
These are 8 quick steps to get started. Adwords is all about targeting and knowing the purchase paths of your target group. What they are looking for – who else is advertizing – what do the potential customer prefers to click – what kind of landing pages work for your visitors – how can you make them to convert to potential customers.
