What is Google Adwords?
In simple words, Google Adwords is an advertising network setup by Google which allows companies to reach out to their customers by bidding for keywords to show in the search results as ads. Google Adwords was unveiled in the year 2000 when Google was handling more than twenty million searches in each day.
Now the company handles billions of searches each day with millions of advertisers using Adwords to reach out to new customers. When a person performs a search on Google, such as a term-specific search like ‘travel packages,’ the Google’s search engine will throw in a list of searches based on the term.
However, when you look at the search results page closely, you will see that the top and the bottom results on the page are usually ads. Here, the main aim of Google Adwords is to let you reach out to new customers and sell your products/services via such ads based on the search query entered by them.
Here is what the ads look like for a given search:
How do you know if Adwords is right for you?
Despite Google Adwords offering several benefits over other advertising mediums, it does not fit in the bill for all businesses. Some of the scenarios in which Adwords might prove to be less productive include when:
- You are advertising a product/service which your target audience is not aware of, which is possibly one of the main reasons why they are not searching for it online.
- You are advertising a product or service only to a very targeted market where you will not be able to this market target entirely based upon keywords. Here, you will be simply blowing up a huge sum of money on clicks from prospects who are not the target customer.
- Your target market is way too competitive, which in turn means that it is expensive. If you pay around $10 each time some person clicks on your ads, you will have to be selling a high margin and high-value product/service and also be sure enough about the conversion rate. In certain industries such as website design, AdWords turns out to be too expensive to be cost-effective.
- You do not have a good website. Although you hold a well-managed AdWords account, if the visitors go onto a website which has not been designed well as per your business objective and goals then your advertising will turn out to be a non-profitable one.
Hence, everything needs to be right if you want Adwords to work effectively. Only then will you be able to achieve a great return on investment (ROI) using Adwords. Before understanding how Google Adwords works, let’s first know the type of advertising in Google Adwords.
Type of Ads in Google Adwords
Google AdWords offers some different types of ads for the companies to let them be found by a given searcher. Hence, you can choose among the below mentioned types of ads on AdWords:
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Search Network Ads:
Search network ads are the most popular kind of Adwords which appear as a text ad above the organic listing for a given Google search. For instance, if a person requires plumbing help and enters a search by writing the term ‘plumbing,’ then you can appear as an ad in the search results on the search network.
The search networks ads operate by targeting the particular keywords which you want to appear for. You will have to bid on them in order to show higher in the search results page and hence get a better chance of grabbing the attention of the visitors and boosting paid traffic.
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Display Ads:
While viewing a video on some website, have you ever noticed ads located on different places on the page? Well, those are nothing but display ads. In this case, a person is not particularly looking for what the ad is offering but instead, Google shows such ads to them based on a few factors such as keywords, managed placements, audience interest and others. Such ads show up on advertising-supported sites.
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Video Ads:
The video ads let the advertisers to create and run video ads on YouTube or any other Google Display network. The major benefits the advertisers get from video ads is that these offer better targeting have a better reach and are measurable.
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Shopping Ads:
This ad type will make more sense to you if you are a retailer. Shopping ads are the best way to boost traffic to your site, help generate quality leads as well as boost your conversion rates. Moreover, you can also use Google shopping if you are running an eCommerce website as it allows you to advertise your products and services on Google search results page directly via your online store.
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Universal App Campaign:
Such a campaign is helpful for the companies having a mobile app. In this case, the advertiser can promote and advertise the mobile app through usual search, PlayStore, Display as well as YouTube. The Google Adwords utilizes ad text ideas as well as other assets from your mobile app store listings. Here, all you have to do is offer some text, starting bid and a budget.
Additionally, you must make sure that you have set the locations as well as the languages for the advertisement. Based on all these details, the Adwords designs several ads in different formats, and Google later on automatically tests the different ad combination and shows the one on search results which performs the best.
How does Google Adwords work?
To start with, the very basic thing you as an advertiser have to do is to pick out certain keywords which you think the searcher will use on Google and then create an ad which will show on the search engine results page (SERP) based upon these keywords. The toy can choose from the ad mentioned above type, as per your requirement and goal.
Of course, there will be other companies out there who also want to serve ads to the people using keywords which are similar to yours. Your rival company can bid for a search term and make its ad appear at the top of the Google search results page. Therefore, if you wish to get your advertisement to show in the search result, you will also have to make a bid against the competitors on how much you are ready to pay to Google Adwords each time your ad gets clicked by a searcher.
It is pretty obvious that the more the pay-per-click (PPC) you receive, the more chances you have to have your ad show up in the Google search results. In fact, as per Google, if everything is done in the right way, advertisers make average revenue of $2 for each $1 they spend on Google Adwords.
Quality Score
Google does not just consider the highest bid; it combines the money factor as well as a quality factor to deliver the best of experience to its users. Therefore, it looks at the relevance as well as the usefulness of your ad to the searcher and the searched terms which they have entered. Moreover, Google also looks into how many clicks does your advertisement has got previously, which is also known as click and also the relevance of your landing page.
For instance, if a searcher enters the search term ‘Nike Air Max’ and your ad shows up saying ‘get Nike Air Max here,’ the searcher must get to the page which features Nike Air Max trainers upon clicking the advert. However, instead of this, if the searcher is directed to your generic homepage, then it will not be considered good enough. The more your quality score is, the better it will. Even if the maximum bid you do is less than your rival bidder, then you still might hold a chance to have your ad show above them if you have a high-quality score.
Bidding
The price which you are ready to pay Google Adwords for each click is known as cost-per-click (CPC). You can yourself choose the bidding amount, or you can opt for the automatic option and let Google choose the bid amount for you, as per your budget, which will bring you the most number of clicks that are possible within that budget.
On the other hand, you can also opt for a less common option known as cost-per-impression (CPM) where you will have to pay Google for every 1000 times that you advert shows in the SERP. Here, the user does not have to click-through. Hence, you can choose an option which suits you the best.
The time that Google Adwords actually takes to look into the bidding of the relevant advertisers for a specific search term, take a decision to hold an auction, work through to know which ad really offers the highest maximum bid as well as quality score and then finally take a decision to put up that ad on the search results page is the overall time for a person to actually enter a search term on Google and get the results. This is just around 0.26 seconds.
It is important to note that Adwords is not any kind of joke which will allow you to drive in fast, easy and cheap sales without any research and hard work. You have higher chances of making money through Adwords, but at the same time, you could also lose money quickly if not done in the right way. Hence, have a thorough knowledge of it before getting started and expand your business by reach out to your customers online.
