Google did not become the multinational success it did without a superb product. Its search engine is a free service to customers, but the complementary Adwords and Adsense programs are really the profit drivers that made Google what it is today. And the reason for that success is because Adwords has historically and continues to provide tremendous value to website and business owners.
The benefits of Adwords can be great and many businesses see a great return on investment (ROI) through the program. At this point, it is really the staple in any major marketing effort and easily the best-in-class with this type of advertising. The potential is tremendous if you create a campaign that is targeted and bid competitively without going overboard.
The primary appeal of Adwords is the drive leads to your business. You can really realize great synergies with another Google service to help you better understand the demographics which convert better and subsequently target those. Google Analytics is this service- it offers a full suite of data collection on your website and you can even set it up to tie analytics with your end definition of conversion. From there, you can use the knowledge of what leads to sales to inform your Adwords targeting. The service offers a large number of options for you to target your demographic (including location, type of device, etc.) and to hopefully have a high rate of success with any of the traffic you receive. Experimentation is important here so that you can really maximize your ROI.
Adwords is really a very flexible platform meaning that you can use it to benefit a large number of types of organizations and websites. Each niche or market segment will have its own characteristics and things that you should do to do well in it. It has its own data collection component which you can download in Microsoft Excel format to analyze what is working and what is not. You can also set options on how much should be spent per day and on specific keywords.
Because of all of the built-in analytics and flexible parameters for campaigns, many businesses see very high ROI from their Adwords campaigns. It does take a time to optimize it though and so playing around with it and keeping track of how various changes perform is key- particularly at the beginning of your Adwords experience. As you move on, you will get a better handle on what works and does not, although things are always changing, so to some extent continuing to be flexible is important on your part as well. Thankfully you can create many campaigns in parallel and directly compare doing that too if you would like to. This can make it easy to see what works and what does not and to get rid of the latter and to keep the former in order to continue to push that ROI upwards.
The results in the platform are very easy to see and interpret even on the website itself and without the need for advanced analytics capabilities on your part (although if you possess those capabilities you can certainly dive into the aforementioned excel data if you would like to). The Adwords dashboard is very user-friendly and made for people who may not necessarily be programmers. The learning curve is not too bad because of this.
The other great thing about Adwords is the sheer vastness of the Google empire. Given the amount of traffic that the search giant gets across its portfolio of websites including search, Youtube, and even sites it does not own through the Adsense program, the reach is essentially unparalleled. Google is also constantly tweaking its algorithms to increase relevancy for its users and advertisers. They also monitor for fraudulent or fake clicks and will refund you if someone is trying to cheat you.
Overall, Google Adwords is a mainstay in today’s web marketing landscape and you should consider it if you do not currently use it for your website and business. It can be a very key part of almost any web campaign along with other potential advertising sources including social media like Twitter and Facebook. Millions have had success with it and for a reason.