What is Google Adwords?
Adwords is Googles
version of the pay-per-click advertising model. It allows you to display ads
which link directly to your website when searches are done for your chosen
keywords or key phrases. These ads are located to the right of the results
which Google gives you for a search and they're also displayed on Googles many
partner sites which include AOL, Earthlink, HowStuffWorks and blogger. Recently
with the launch of Googles Adsense program your ads could also be displayed on
websites related to your keywords.
When you create an
Adwords ad, you choose keywords for which your ad will appear and specify the
maximum amount you're willing to pay for each click. Remember Googles Adwords
program uses a PPC model so you only pay when someone actually clicks on your
ad and hence visits your website. Adwords enables you to save money as its
program Discounter automatically reduces the actual cost per click you pay to
the lowest cost needed ($0.01 above competition) to maintain your ads position
on the results page.
Google is competing well
in this arena, in fact they now dominate the market, pulling more advertisers
and revenue than former industry leader Overture.com does. I don't know how
long this will last though as Yahoo INC! has just bought Overture. What has
Yahoo got up its sleeve?
Advantages of the Adwords program
Just as the popularity
of Googles search engine is derived from its strong technologically advanced
features and results so too is its advertising program Adwords. Adwords has
many advantages over similar programs such as Overture.com and Findwhat.com.
One of these has been
mentioned already, it's the Adwords Discounter feature which will lower your
cost per click price to one cent above your nearest competitor to allow to stay
ahead of his or her ad. This means that you don't have to be constantly
checking if your competitors have lowered their bids in order for you to
minimize your price, Google does this for you.
The way Adwords
positions your ads is also another great advantage of the program. In Adwords
the position of a certain ad is determined by multiplying your CPC (cost per
click) by your CTR (click through rate) and not simply by CPC alone as this
would allow the big fish to win all the time.
Googles stipulation that
your ads must have a CTR of at least .05% means that a company with deep
pockets simply can't outbid the competition. They also have to outwit them by
using good ad copy and appropriate keywords. Even if your competition is
willing to pay sky high prices for clicks this still won't save them, as if
they can't write good pulling ads they will be dropped from the program,
leaving you to move up a position.
Other advantages which
Googles program has over similar ones include setup time and specific country /
language targeting. With Adwords your ads can be live on Google within five
minutes of creating them so you can potentially begin to see results immediately
ads on Overture usually go live after a three to five day waiting period.
Adwords allows you to choose who should see your ads from among 250+ countries
and 14 languages, this means you have more control over your ads so you can be
sure they're only shown to a highly targeted audience which means you’re more
likely to be successful.
How to profit with Google Adwords?
Now you know why Adwords
is such a good thing, let's move onto how to actually use it in order for your
business to make profit. First things first, you should determine how much you
can afford to pay for a click. Doing this is important as it enables you to
better understand the amount of money you can bid on keywords in Adwords while
still remaining profitable. To do this your conversion ratio is needed,
calculate your conversion ratio by dividing your monthly unique visitors by
your monthly sales, then convert your answer into a percentage by multiplying
by 100.
Imagine in a month you
get 20000 visitors and sell 500 products each with a gross profit for you of
$50. Your conversion ratio simply put is (500/20000)*100 = 2.5%. This means
that for every 100 people who visit your site 2.5 buy your product.
Your gross profit per
100 visitors is calculated by multiply the gross profit on your product by your
conversion ratio, to continue with the previous example - $50 x 2.5 = $125.
Divide your gross profit per 100 visitors figure by 100 to determine how much
you can bid in Adwords.
In this case you could
afford to pay up to $1.25 for a visitor and still break even. Rarely will you
have to pay this much for a click, remember that the minimum CPC on Google
Adwords is only 5 cent so play your cards right and you can have high profits.
Choosing your Google Adwords keywords
One of the most important
tips I can give you regarding Adwords is regarding your keyword selection, so
pay particular attention to the tips in the next paragraph or so. These are the
words which when searched for will trigger the appearance of your ad next to
the search results. Choosing the right keywords is imperative to the success of
your campaign. A good approach to choosing the right words is to imagine what
you'd search for if you were looking to buy a product similar to your own.
Remember as with
Overture, the more popular a word or phrase is the higher CPC you'll have to
pay and generally clicks from general words convert to sales far less often
than clicks from specific terms so it's always better to have a few highly
focused key phrases that get clicks than to be number one for the most general
word or phrase in your industry. In Googles own words:
"General or broad
keywords will generate many impressions with few results."
Do you want "few
results"? You certainly don't so avoid the expensive popular words and
stick with the less popular but more profitable keywords. Finding such specific
key phrases can be time consuming, but it's worth it as research has shown that
although much cheaper using specific phrases helps get more highly targeted
people to your site and hence helps you get more sales.
On Googles Adwords
website they recommend using spelling variations and plural versions of your
keywords to reach everyone in your target audience. I think this is a good
approach as not everyone of your potential customers will search a keyword in
the same way, some will use plural versions and others will use singular
versions. Similarly some may use American English rather than traditional
English, this of course only applies to certain words whereby Americans use
different spelling than British, Irish and other English speaking people would.
Adwords keyword matching
options allow you to refine further when your ads are shown by allowing you to
choose whether your ads are shown for certain types of searches on your
keywords. There are four types of keyword matching options available, these are
broad, exact, phrase and negative. Assume your key phrase is 'marketing
course'.
With broad matching your
ad shows when users search on the keywords 'marketing' and 'course', regardless
of other search terms used or of the order in which they are entered. Broad
matching is the default; you don't have to do anything extra to use it.
Exact matching requires
you to place square brackets around your keywords, like the following: “marketing
course”
Your ad will show when
users search only on the phrase 'marketing course' and will not show if other
words are included or the words are entered in a different order.
The third matching
option is the phrase option, this is similar to exact search in the sense that
the keywords must all be present and in the right order however your ad will
still show even if other words are present in the search. To use phrase matching
you must include your keywords in quotes, for example "marketing
course".
Negative matching is the
fourth option available. It allows you to block your ad being shown if a
certain word is present in the search query. If your keyword is 'marketing
course' but your marketing course is to do with offline marketing and not
internet marketing then by using negative matching you can choose not to have
your ad shown for 'internet marketing course' as people searching for this are
looking for something different than what you offer. In this case 'internet' is
your negative keyword. You simply place a dash before your negative keyword to
use this option (ie '-internet marketing course'). Now if a user searches for
'marketing course' on Google your ad will be shown, it will not however be
shown when the term 'internet marketing course' is entered as the query.
Using exact, phrase or
negative keyword matching gives you more control over who sees your ads so you
won't pay for clicks that are unlikely to produce well-targeted results so
always try and use these options, doing so could result in lower CPC, higher
CTR and higher ROI. To demonstrate this fact I conducted a dummy ad to find the
prices using broad, exact and phrase keyword matching options for the term 'internet
marketing'. The currency I used was the Euro, I left the maximum CPC at the
default of €5. The results are as follows:
internet marketing 11.0
€2.65 - Default broad search cost €2.65 a click and expected clicks is only 11.
"internet
marketing" 30.0 €0.74 - With phrase matching expected clicks per day was
30 and cost €.74.
“internet marketing” 37.0
€2.41 - Exact matching cost €2.41 a click and expected clicks was 37 a day.
You can see from above
that using both exact and phrase matching options resulted in a lower cost per
click rate than simply using the default broad match option. I highly recommend
using keyword matching options.
As mentioned earlier
Google Adwords allows you to block your ads showing for searches conducted by
people from certain countries and people who speak a certain language. There's
no point in letting your ad be seen by people who won't understand it. Likewise
if your product is only sold to a specific country than that country's
residents should be the only people who get to see your ad, as if your company
only sells products within America then any other nationals clicking on your ad
are simply costing you money for nothing.
· Who is Global Advertising Media?
We are a sponsored
search results management company. We have hundreds of clients and work
directly with Google, Yahoo, MSN and all of their affiliates. We are located in
Mumbai (India) and have been in business since November of 2004. We are an
approved client manager with Google, a Gold level Ambassador with Yahoo and are
approved by MSN to manage multiple accounts. All other search engines are
affiliated to these three, in regards to Sponsored Links, Sponsor Results or
Sponsored Sites. Google, Yahoo and MSN are the leading search engines with
sponsored results programs. Ask.com and AOL are affiliated with Google, as well
as Netscape, Earthlink and dozens more. CNN.com, Netzero and dozens of others
are affiliated with Yahoo, and MSN is partnered with Amazon.com. Your Web site
will appear on these core search engines plus dozens of affiliated search
engines like Lycos and Alta Vista. 95% of all searches are done on Google,
Yahoo, MSN, Ask.com and AOL. These five search engines make up the core of the
search engines your listings will appear on, as well as the dozens of others.
· What is Google AdWords?
Google AdWords is a
quick and simple way to purchase highly targeted cost-per-click (CPC) or
cost-per-impression (CPM) advertising, regardless of your budget. AdWords ads
are displayed along with search results on Google, as well as on search and
content sites in the growing Google Network, including AOL, Earth Link, How Stuff
Works, & Blogger. With searches on Google and page views on the Google
Network each day, your Google AdWords ads reach a vast audience. With Google
AdWords you create your own ads, choose keywords to help Google match your ads
to your audience and pay only when someone clicks on them.
· Do you need to make any changes to my Web site?
No. We do not need to
add meta-tags or access your Web site for any reason. We may have some ideas
for your company's site to better assist your customers in navigating your
site, but no, we will not need to do anything in order to place your site in
the search engines.
· How long will it take until I see my listings on
the search engines?
Most of the time, Global
Advertising Media will have your account active and live on the search engines
within 3 to 5 business days.
· How can you move my Web site so high in the
search results and so quickly?
Our management team has
been involved with sponsored results placement for over a decade. We engage in
no trickery or illegal practices in moving your site up in the sponsored search
results. We have accounts with all of the major search engines and work
directly with them to place your site in the sponsored search results. Our
personnel and expertise enable us to move your site into the sponsored search
results within days.
· Is there a contract required or a minimum amount
of time I need to sign up for?
Global Advertising Media
will e-mail you a terms of conditions of service agreement, so that you have
our terms in writing. But, our services are all on a Six Month or Twelve Month
basis. We only require that you finish each time frame for contract has
started, but with 3 days written notice, you can cancel at any time for any
reason. We are very confident of our services and believe that they should be
performance based. If our service is working for you, you will naturally want
to retain our services month in and month out. Most of our clients stay with
us, sponsored search results placement works.
· Is this pay-per-click?
Yes, all sponsored
search results placement is charged by the search engines on a pay-per-click
basis. Global Advertising Media offers Various types of plans. Our plans start
as low as $299 or INR 15,000/- a month and increase in $100 or INR 5,000/-
increments, depending on your needs and goals.
· Do I need to do anything?
No! We want you to do
what you do and let us make your search engine advertising campaign successful
without you having to worry about it. Our job is to create the campaigns, all
of the keyword search phrases, manage the campaigns hourly, every day and
report to you what is happening in those campaigns. You can be as involved as
you would like, or not involved at all. We know a customer is happy when they
do not contact us very often after the first few months. They are busy doing
what it is that they do.
· Am I eligible for the Google AdWords credit?
If you do not already
have an AdWords account, then you are eligible for the credit. When you sign up
for a new Google AdWords account through Global Advertising Media Control
Panel, you immediately become eligible for an AdWords credit. The credit is
applied by Google directly to your new AdWords account.
· Do I receive a credit for each hosting account I
have with Global Advertising Media?
No, the credit is given
to your customer account, regardless of the number of hosting accounts
(websites) you have with Global Advertising Media. The amount of the credit you
receive is based on the highest plan purchased. You use the credit to create a
single new AdWords account from which you can create campaigns for as many
websites as you like. The adwords credit is not redeemable for cash.
· How do I claim my credit?
To claim your AdWords
credit, you must use the promotional code provided in your Control Panel. When
you sign up for your new AdWords account, you will be prompted to enter this
code.
· How do I sign up for AdWords?
Simply log into your
Control Panel. There you will find your promotional code to claim your credit
as well as a direct link that will take you to Google's website in order to
complete the creation of your AdWords account.
· Where can I find further information about
AdWords?
Further information
about Google AdWords can be found at https://adwords.google.com. Google's
AdWords website contains all the information you need to know to take advantage
of Google AdWords for your website.
· What if I have a question that wasn't answered
here?
Every client is
different and has different needs and inquiries. Please feel free to e-mail
contact@globaladvertisingmedia.com or call anytime 09342850002 / 09892994104.
We will do our best to assist you in any way that we can. Don't be shy, we
promise to answer your questions in a professional way, with no pressure or
rude representatives. We value your interest and strive to help in any way that
we can.
