What is Google AdWords?

Basically, Google AdWords is an advertising system that is run through Google.  Google AdWords allows you to advertise your products and services on their own search engine, as well as their affiliate sites.  These advertisements show up in the form of a placed text ad, which will appear when people search for phrases related to your business.  This advertising is a "pay-per-click" type of system, which means that you only have to pay for your ad when someone clicks on it.

Now, a Google AdWords campaign is when you run a series of different ad groups.  Each ad group has different ad texts based on the type of keyword a user types into Google's search engine.  There are several different types of groups you can choose, such as: geography, product type, and device segmentation.  The point of a Google AdWords campaign is to find out which keywords work best for your business.  This will involve constant revision of your ads.  Just like with any type of marketing, it takes some time and effort.  To get the best results you need to invest extra time and effort.  This will allow you to get the most out of AdWords for your business.  Throughout the ad campaign you may need to do some keyword research, try grouping certain keywords, prune out the ineffective keywords, analyze your keyword data, and more.  There are also tools available to tell you how well your Google AdWords campaign is doing.  One of these tools is Wordstream's AdWords Performance Grader.  It's a free tool that sees how well your campaign is really doing, shows you where you fit in with other competitive businesses, and provides tips to help you improve.

Ready to start?

If you're ready to start your Google AdWords campaign, it's really a simple process.  The first step is to set up a Google AdWords account, which is made even simpler if you already have a Gmail account.  Your Google AdWords account is separated into two different categories: campaigns and ad groups.

The first step is to plan your campaigns around your business's needs.  You need to ask yourself what you want your business to get out of a campaign.  To start, you should choose a budget, decide where your ads will appear geographically, and choose where your ads will appear online.  To get the most success out of the campaign, ask yourself: what does business have to offer?  How is your business different from others in the same field?  What do you want to achieve from advertising?  Who is your target audience?

Make sure you stick to one goal per campaign.  You can have goals such as increasing more signups for your newsletter, or to increase sales.  It's easier to determine what is working well and what isn't when you only have one goal in mind.  Then, as mentioned before, you will split each campaign into ad groups.  You should be able to come up with three different ad groups per campaign.  For example, say you sell coffee beans.  You will choose three different ways to then advertise your coffee beans within a campaign.  You could say "gourmet coffee beans".  You could say "Ethiopian coffee beans".  You can also say "delicious coffee beans".  From these three different groups, you can see which keywords and groupings are working best in your ads.  Then, you can refine and change things, making your ad campaign even more effective.

There are plenty of resources online to help make your Google AdWords campaign effective and of good quality.  To learn more about Google AdWords Campaigns, contact a Blue Archer professional.

Michelle Hawley

Digital Content Writer

@BlueArcherPGH