6 Things to Think About Before Advertising with Google AdWords

When people want a product or service, they turn to Google.
Google AdWords is the fastest and easiest way of getting your business found by people who are searching for what you’ve got to sell.
These days, Google is the default place to find anything and everything you’re looking for. It’s everyone’s “go to”. Just Google it.
So if people can’t easily find your business on Google, you’re likely to be missing out on LOTS of potential customers.
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That’s where AdWords comes in. It’s the fastest, easiest, and most reliable way of making sure that when your prospects are searching for your service or product, they find you. It works like this…
When your prospects search for your product or service online, you don’t have to rely on them finding you by chance.
Get AdWords working for your business and you can jump from zero to hero, from ‘nowhere to be found’ to ‘top of page one’.
Use AdWords to get your business featured in a prominent position in the Google results, and when someone searches for anything related to your product or service, your business could be the first one they see.
The best thing is, you only have to pay when someone actually clicks on your advert (that’s why it’s called “Pay-Per-Click” advertising). In short, PPC is the easiest way to ensure that prospects who are actively interested in your product or services find their way to your website.
Not only is PPC an incredibly effective method of making sales, but it’s also the most trackable way of marketing your business.
You’re in control
The beauty of PPC advertising is it puts you in the driver’s seat. You set your budgets and never spend any more than you need to. You can also choose which pages of your website customers land on first, helping you guide them to the all-important purchase. What’s more; if something isn’t working, you can just switch it off and try something new
It’s totally trackable
PPC is one of the easiest ways to track where your customers come from. You can see what people have searched in Google to find your site, what ads they clicked on and whether or not they bought from your website.
It’s scalable
As your business grows, your PPC marketing will grow with you! Say you add a new product or service to your repertoire; a few updates to your AdWords account and you can quickly attract traffic to your new website pages and start making sales from the off!
In your marketing arsenal, Google AdWords is a cross between a machine gun and a sniper rifle. It’s capable of firing dozens of marketing messages a minute, just like a machine gun, but with EXTREME precision, only showing them to people who you’ve identified as suitable prospects, whether that’s because they’re searching Google for exactly what you’ve got to sell, or they’re looking for something similar.

1. Is your website ready for you to pay to send people to it?

You may have a great looking website, but when you are paying to get people to it, there are a whole heap of things to consider to check that your site is ready.
What do you want people to do once they are on your site? Is it phone you up? If so, is the phone number visible, and in a big enough font above the fold (visible on the screen without scrolling)? Is it to download something? If so, have you tested the process? Can you download the desired article? Is the process smooth and easy? What happens after the article has been downloaded? Do you have a process in place to be able to follow up with this prospective customer?
There are technical aspects you need to consider too. Has your site got an up-to-date Privacy Policy? (if you are not sure what one is, look at the bottom of most websites, there will be a link to one in the footer.) Is your page named, and does the headline reference what the potential customer might be searching for? How easy is it to navigate around your website? Do the pages load quickly? What do your pages look like on mobile devices?

2. Where do you want Ads to land? 

The beauty of AdWords is that you can direct people to the page that has the exact product or service that they are looking for is on. You may really love your website and want your potential customers to have a good look around, however, you shouldn’t be relying on them to be able to navigate your site to the page they want.
Therefore, you need to consider what pages on your site contain content that your potential customers will be looking for. Have you got pages suitable for all the products/services you want to target? Or are you hoping that the customer will guess that you provide the service and will pick up the phone on the off-chance that you do?
You need to know the right things to put into your landing page to make sure that your adwords are performing well.
You need to know the anatomy of a landing page. Which is why I’ve written you a FREE guide on it: The Anatomy of a Landing Page.
3. What Geographic area is being targeted?
With AdWords, you can be specific about the geographic area that you want your ads to appear for. AdWords uses various methods of determining where the searcher is geographically. Their IP address for example. Or the mobile phone location. Or the settings of the computer being used.
This means that you can tell AdWords exactly what location you want your ads to be shown for. Not everyone will see the same search, where they are in the country makes a difference to the ads that get shown.
So where are your potential customers? Are they within a radius of your location? Do they live/work within particular postcodes? You can even exclude postcodes of areas that are less desirable.

4. What time of day and day of the week are you advertising?

Do you want to be paying for people to get to your website 24 hours a day-7 days a week? It’s not always practical to do this. For example, if you want the potential customer to phone you up, but you only have people in the office answering the phones from 9-5 on weekdays? How about if you know your potential customers typically browse for things at the weekend but buy on weekdays? No problem. You can set a schedule in AdWords that accommodates this and you only pay for people within the times you ask for.

5. What keywords would you not want to appear for?

AdWords is very good at spending money for you if you aren’t careful. When you add keywords that you want to appear for, you also need to consider terms that you do not want to appear for.
For example, think of alternative meanings to your keywords. A day care nursery would want to add ‘plant’, ‘garden’, ‘decorating’, ‘furniture’ and ‘rhymes’ onto their negative list.
Words like ‘free’ and ‘cheap’ should be on your negative list if you sell a high-end product or service. Or if you sell expensive furniture, words like ‘ikea’ and ‘m&S’ should be on your negative list.
Unless you are specifically recruiting, you should put ‘job’ and ‘jobs’ onto the negative list too – you don’t want to pay for someone to find your website who is only looking for a job, not wanting to buy your product.

6. How will you measure the results?

AdWords, when set up correctly allows you to measure which keywords and adverts bring in the result for you. If you are offering a downloadable product or sell products directly online, does the customer end up on a ‘Thank you for buying’ type page that can’t be navigated to from anywhere else on your site unless they have bought? If so, you can set up what AdWords calls ‘Conversion Tracking’ and measure how people get to that page.
If you are trying to get people to phone you, how will you measure how many calls you receive. Maybe think about using a trackable phone number?
If you’ve found this useful, click on the image below and get hold of a free download on The Anatomy of a Landing Page.