In a few short years, Google AdWords has become the largest online advertising network in the world. It offers an incredibly powerful tool for small businesses to get noticed online, with a friendly learning curve and palatable initial investment. When a prospective customer is searching for a product, service or promotion, they’re likely to search for it using Google. Therefore, using AdWords puts your business at the forefront of searches, promotes higher traffic, gives higher return on marketing, and ultimately increases your sales.
This advertising model, known as “pay per click”, enables you to bid on the right keywords for your target market, instantly connecting you to an audience with an interest in your product or service. Below, we outline five ways Google AdWords can help your small business.
Getting You Noticed
When starting a website, it’s not enough to populate it with content and sit back, waiting for he views roll in. Bringing consistent, organic traffic to your website is a delicate, expensive, and long-term process. You must invest your time into developing this traffic or you will have to pay someone else to do it for you. Advertising with Google AdWords can be set up immediately, and will deliver results instantly. Search Engine Optimization is still incredibly valuable, but if you solely rely on it, you’re competing with career SEO specialists.
Target Your Audience Reliably
One of the handiest features of Google AdWords is the ability to target your ads to specific locations and demographics. Whether you’re a neighborhood grocery store, a Provincial credit union, or even a national e-commerce platform, you can geo-target your ads to only be seen by consumers in places you specify. For start-up entrepreneurs, the ability to radius target your ads gives yet another useful layer of customization. Let’s take the example of a recently opened luxury goods store. Google AdWords lets you pinpoint your ad to people within a certain distance of your business. Conversely, you can even exclude locations from your campaign, lowering your costs and growing your potential return on investment. As a luxury goods store, you can even specify targeting of demographics like income level, so it’s possible to only serve ads to the top 20% of income earners in a specific neighborhood.
Tailor Your Ads
An essential move in Setting up successful online ads to sign up for a Google My Business account. If you have a brick and mortar outlet, this free listing places you on Google Maps ongside other businesses in your area. It also gives you more flexibility on how your ad looks, allowing you to show a map of where you’re located alongside your ad. The above is known as an “Ad Extension” and it’s just one of a variety of ways you can tailor your ad. You can also enhance your advertisements with phone numbers, addresses, site landing page links, and even app download buttons. Remember, the more contact information you place in an ad, the easier it is for your audience to reach you.
Retargeting
We’re all familiar with visiting a site, leaving, then seeing ads for the company or products you browsed on later internet sessions. This is called retargeting, and is one of the most effective ways Google AdWords can boost sales. In a traditional sales funnel, potential customers who have previously visited your online store are already primed to make a purchase, and the increased visibility of your product in their subsequent online browsing has been proven to increase sales. It’s worth noting that retargeting does bring about a cost increase on your initial outlay, but with the increased odds f success, it’s a practice that’s proved worth it for countless businesses.
Mobile Friendly
As more of our internet use skews toward mobile, Google AdWords has tailored their platform to cater to this new reality. Mobile optimization options abound for small businesses, allowing you to target customers on the go with both text and image-based ads. Setting your ad perimeters to only target devices within a certain radius of your store will pick up any mobile customers who happen to be passing by at the time. You can even tailor your ads to show up more frequently on mobile devices. Let’s use another example, this time a coffee shop. Think of how often you’ve been in a new city and you do a quick search for where the nearest coffee store is? As the business owner, if you’ve set your Google AdWords up to target these consumers, you’ve instantly gained a customer for your business as your coffee shop will return top of the search.
Want to Learn More?
Vanessa Pintea is a digital marketing consultant based in Vancouver. Attend her upcoming seminar, Reach More Customers With Google AdWords, and learn how you can leverage the power of Google Adwords to attract potential customers to your business.
