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Can you imagine advertising that costs nothing?

Written by: Peter Lawless

Article Overview: Yes it is true; you only pay when someone clicks on your ad!

Can you imagine advertising that costs nothing?

So your ad better be relevant and then when your prospective customer clicks on the ad, the first page they see should also be relevant to what they want, thus encouraging them to take action to either contact you or buy from you.

So which form of advertising should you use for your company – take a look at the list below and remember, will it give you a great return on the money you spend:

* Local Broadcasting,
* Nation-wide broadcasting,
* Cinema adverts,
* Newspapers, magazines,
* Directories, classified ads,
* Flyers,
* Brochures, catalogues,
* Posters,
* Online, Banners,
* Pay Per Click,
* Outdoor, Billboards,
* Eye-catchers,
* Advertising in motion and others.

Pay per Click which Will Force You to Buy a Safe
When I first heard of Google Adwords, I thought it was not so important among the communicational mix of the company I was working for at that time. Nevertheless, soon I realised, that the Adwords were the leading form of their advertising and that the managing director considered it the most effective one as well.

No magazine ads any more, nor TV or radio spots. Well, that was their opinion then, today I'm not fully supporting this viewpoint. I think that the synergy effect you can create using more communicational channels at a time, supporting one another, is the way every marketing expert should follow.

But let's come back to the bit about Google Adwords… It's a fabulous advertising tool as you pay only when people click on your website. Well, no miracle, you might say, but the trick is that these people clicking on your website are ready to buy. They are looking for you, you don't have to look for them any more! You just create your campaigns, track, adjust and measure them continuously and then count money you get!

OK, before you start blaming me of promoting Google, I want to mention that you can measure and track literally every single click! You don't have to develop sophisticated tables and insert hard survey data after every campaign. The reports are created automatically, you just choose what you want to see and how often the reports should be generated.

Why This Miracle?
Launched in 1998, the Google Adwords Program is now the leader in the pay-per-click search engine industry. Contrary to its competitors, Google doesn't list ads by only considering your bid or Cost-Per-Click (CPC). Google also checks if your clickthrough rate (CTR) is high:

CTR = Number of clicks your ad received / Number of times your ad is shown (impressions)

High CTR = 1 / 20 = 5.50 %

Low CTR = 1 / 2000 = 0.05 %

It means that with traditional pay-per-click search engines, you have to bid more than your competitors if you want to get ranked first. With Google, you also have to get a higher CTR as your position is determined by multiplying your CTR by your CPC: Position = CTR × CPC.

In short, it doesn't matter how often your ad appears and how much you pay. The key thing is that people have to click on your ad. Therefore your key phrase or keywords have to be relevant to the search. If your keywords achieve at least 1.5 % CTR, it means that they are relevant.

How will Your Success Happen?
Maybe you are now asking yourself: well, that's nice, but how do I start? Or maybe you have already started but having created a few ads, you simply didn't get the results you had expected.

The first step indeed, is to get your whole marketing strategy right. You need to understand where the real value of your products or services is to your customers. What THEY value. However, this is another story and I cannot start writing about this issue because I would create another ebook or something…

Once you know why your customers value your offering, you will get a better idea on which keywords to choose for your Google Adwords campaigns. Try to understand which words or phrases do people interested in buying from you type into Google search when they are looking for your website.

Find as many of them as possible: every guru on Google Adwords recommends the Keyword selector tool availabe at http://inventory.overture.com/ so I can just follow them. Anyway, the data you'll get there are for the whole world, that's why I suggest that Irish businesses use its UK version: http://inventory.uk.overture.com/.

You just put your main keyword in the box there, press enter and see what happens. It will spit you dozens of keyword phrases based on your search term that people looked for in Yahoo over the last month. You can just copy and save them and you can continue with another keyword that expresses your offering well.

Having at least 100 of appropriate phrases relevant to what you offer, you can now go to www.google.com/adwords, sign in and follow the instructions. Google people are really working hard to make this procedure as easy for users as possible.

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Article Tags: adwords, brochures, campaigns, catalogues, cinema, eye catchers, flyers, google, local broadcasting, magazine ads, managing director, miracle, newspapers, outdoor billboards, posters, prospective customer, radio spots, survey data, synergy, viewpoint



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