From a completely blank face, to sheer terror at the thought of contributing to Google’s billion-pound empire, I can expect a selection of reactions when I mention Google AdWords.
As a digital marketer who can remember the days before Google even offered advertising, I get more satisfaction seeing the results we achieve through natural SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).
However, I am also very aware that it can take a long time to achieve top natural rankings. Even then, how do you know that the keywords you’ve spent months optimising your site for are going to convert into business?
That’s where paid search comes into its own. Google AdWords, as we are focusing on for this article, are the ‘Ads’ Google displays at the top and bottom of its search results. When someone enters a search query, Google will select relevant adverts to display. Each time someone clicks on an advert, the advertiser pays Google. This is PPC or Pay Per Click.
With Google handling more than three billion searches per day (Search Engine Land), here is my business case for using AdWords:
Agility With Google AdWords, you can quite literally turn internet traffic on and off.
Quick Results Working on natural ranking is like a marathon, it takes skill, experience and above-all, time, whereas Google AdWords is a sprint, generating immediate web traffic overnight.
Searcher Intent People searching on Google have a high searcher intent and are further down the buying funnel. With Google AdWords, the day when people habitually scrolled past the ads are coming to an end - the top three paid spots now get around 41% of the clicks on the page.
Deeper Insight There are various tools that we can use to glean data, however, the Google AdWords dashboard provides us with far deeper insight - in particular, which keywords actually convert. This information helps us to form the longer-term natural search strategy as we can focus efforts on the keywords we know generate business.
Testing Maybe you don’t know if there is a market for your business online, you want to test a new service or product, or your site just doesn’t rank naturally yet. We often recommend using AdWords to provide data to inform business decisions before investing in a longer-term natural strategy.
Remarketing Remarketing uses the Google Display Network to show your advert to people who visited your site but didn’t convert, and is ideal if your offering is not an impulse buy. The more a potential customer is exposed to your brand – the higher the conversion rate.
Continual Learning A good PPC Consultant will be continually learning and monitoring your AdWords account, checking budget allocation to different campaigns and relative performance, and moving budget to the campaigns that are producing the best results.
Whether you love it or hate it, with 86% of consumers using the internet to find a local business (WebVisible Survey), using Google AdWords is a quick, agile and effective way to achieve your goals.
Beth is a Chartered Marketer and ‘Head Honcho & Chief of Client Happiness’ at digital marketing agency, Smart Monkey. Since 2006, Smart Monkey has been helping small and medium sized businesses in Sussex, Surrey and Kent generate revenue through effective and measurable digital marketing campaigns.
beth@smartmonkey.co.uk
@Bethanie_Nash
