No matter how robust and targeted your marketing campaign is, it’s just not complete until you can be found through search engines online. Google AdWords is one of the most popular pay-per-click, or PPC, advertising services available.
PRO TIP: When you combine text-based search ads in AdWords with programmatic advertising -- graphic display ads, YouTube video ads, or in-app mobile ads -- you have plenty of ways to reach your target customer online.
How Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Works
- Set a budget for how much you want to spend by day or month.
- Our elite Google Premier Partner team will work with your business to select keywords that, when searched for, will result in your ad being displayed in the “Sponsored Links” section to the right of the search results page.
- Together, we’ll create targeted ads that will attract readers based on specific keywords or phrases.
- Google determines the relevance of a company’s ad to the keywords in play (the “quality score”), since more than one company will be bidding on the same keywords.
- You only pay when a user clicks on your targeted ads.
The Google AdWords matrix can get fairly complicated, but those are the main points. While most campaigns generate thousands of impressions, meaning the ad is served in a search result, you only pay when someone actually clicks on your ad.
Now, that person may not necessarily make a purchase and your budget could be spent solely driving web traffic with no increased revenue. Therefore, you’ll want to make sure that you’re bidding on the correct keywords, creating the right ads, and that your website can close the deal.
When evaluating keywords for our team’s research, put yourself in the buyer’s place and anticipate all the different keywords that may be entered when someone is searching for the products or services you offer. Then try to narrow it down to those keywords that align with your specific business goals. It’s easy to change your keywords, so continually analyze and review which keywords are getting you the most clicks and change or delete the ones that aren’t serving you.
We’ll be advising you every step of the way in this process.
Your ad should include at least one of your keywords so that the user can easily see the relevance. But your ad also has to show what makes you unique, so have a strong call to action and include your prices or discounts (if it’s a sales pitch). An ad doesn’t necessarily need to link to your home page. Be creative. If you blog or have an “advice” section of your website, you may want your online ad to link there, but be sure to include a call-to-action item on that page. Most campaigns prefer a stronger tactic, directly linking to an online form to drive whatever action is desired, whether that’s an information capture, appointment request on online order.
If using Google AdWords sounds like it can be a lot, it is. But it’s also one of the most effective ways to grow your business and reach customers directly in your purchase funnel. In addition to Google search, our elite Premier Partner team also works with every other major search engine, including Bing.
Genie is here to help. Our team of search engine marketing experts can get the most out of your budget, deliver measurable results and boost your existing marketing efforts.