Many smart small businesses have a website. Commonly,
business owners wonder how to drive more visitors to their
website.
First, for many small businesses, the best way to get
customers to visit your website is to include your web address
(e.g.
www.mystore.com) on business cards, brochures, store
signs, and advertisements, etc. This is particularly effective
for businesses that have a physical store and a local service.
But, what might be a relatively affordable way to get more
people to visit your website if they haven't seen any of your
literature? One solution, among many, is Google Adwords.
Adwords work by placing small three-line advertisements on
the right of the page when someone uses Google to search for
some particular topic.You've probably seen them yourself. If you
search for golf clubs you might see an advertisement for an
online or local store. When you click on that advertisement, you
are sent to a website owned by that business. The business owner
hopes that you might then buy something or visit the store.
You, the business owner, does not pay to display those
three-line Adword advertisements – unless someone decides to
click on your ad. This is known as "Pay Per Click".How much do
you have to pay?It depends.
First, you need to understand that the way Google decides
which Adwords to display is determined by the following:
·Key Words – you determine which combination
of words might trigger your ad when someone types them into
Google's search page. You can pick "golf", but it is better to
be more specific, like "golf clubs". Even better, "graphite golf
clubs".The more specific, the more likely your ad would be
interesting to the person doing the Google search.
·Click Budget – you determine the upper
limit for how much you want to spend for each click.A click
might cost just a few pennies, but it can also cost well over a
dollar. When someone searches for "golf clubs", Google looks at
all the advertisers that specified "golf clubs" as a key
word.Chances are there are hundreds of such advertisers. So,
Google then picks the advertisers that were willing to spend the
most and displays those ads first.Smaller spenders might see
their ad shown on the second or third search page, if at
all.Note that fewer businesses probably specified "graphite golf
clubs" than just "golf clubs". Even fewer probably have
specified "women graphite golf clubs".So, the more specific your
Key Words, the lower the cost of the click.Google helps by
telling you if your Click Budget is too small.
·Daily Budget – you also determine how much
you wish to spend per day.
·Geography – you can specify the rough
geography of where in the world your Adwords will show.If you
are an Italian restaurant in San Jose, you don't want to pay for
someone in Rome.You can specify countries and even rough
distances from your business.
·Timing – you can turn your Adwords on and
off.Perhaps you have a sale that starts and stops on particular
dates. No need to pay for clicks after the sale is over.
You also decide what your Adword looks like. Pick something
catchy, but not misleading.Create several different Adwords.
Google tells you how many clicks each Adword gets, as well as
how many times it was displayed.Experiment – try different
wordings and Key Words to see which ones are effective.You can
change them at any time.Some companies do this to test which
products might be the most popular at any given time.
To try out Adwords yourself, go to
www.google.com/adwords.
Set you budgets relatively small until you get the hang
of it.
There are many other ways to skin this cat, including from
other companies such as Yahoo and MSN.The important thing is to
experiment.
