More and more clients are asking us this question: Does Google Adwords work? We are not keeping up the mystery. The answer is yes, but what you should be asking is if Google Adwords would work for your business. We will try to explain why we strongly believe that Google Adwords works and in which cases it can be useful or a completely waste of money. 

Does Google Adwords work? As we said, the answer is yes. Google Adwords is an online advertising service that lets business publish ads on the top, right and bottom of the Google search result page. When a user goes to Google and looks for something like “good english schools” Google shows different relevant results, such us links and articles that talk about that topic. Among those results, Google offer paid results (Adwords results) as well as you can see below.

 

 

This lets you reach directly customers that are specifically interested in the products or services your company offers. The success of the Adwords campaigns will depend on how good the keywords are chosen, the power of the competitors and the quality of the pages the ads are linked to.

In the dashboard of your Google Adwords account you will be able to check the performance of your campaigns, ad groups, ads and keywords. Data such as average position for a particular keyword, average price for each keyword or total cost until that moment are available as you can see in the screenshot below.

How Google Adwords works

With Google Adwords a company can create different ads within a campaign and pick a bunch of keywords that describe how users look for your services. The keywords chosen will trigger the ad and Google Adwords will charge the advertiser according to the number of clicks, impressions or conversions they get from the ads. These are the most common model of cost of the ads.

• CPC. Cost Per Click. The advertiser will just pay anytime a user click on the ads.
• CPM. Cost Per Thousand Impressions. This is the amount you pay each time your ad is displayed. Doesn’t matter how many people click on the ad, the key is the times Google shows it.
• CPA. Cost Per Acquisition. This options requires set up what is considered as a successful conversion for the business. It can be, fulfill a booking through the site, buy something online or fill a form, it is up to each company.

This means that it is easy for you to control the exact money you are spending in your online advertising. 

The second thing to take into account is how much you are willing to pay for every click for each keyword. Google Adwords calls this bid as it works as an auction, where the final position for a particular keyword is decided. But how the ad ranks not only depends on how much the advertisers are willing to pay for a keyword. It depends on other important factors.

 

 

Maybe you prefer to be the first result for a very important keyword for your business and you don’t mind paying 5 euros for a click. That keyword may be specific and you are sure the person looking for that is really likely to buy. But, on the contrary, it may happen that you prefer to spend less in many different keywords to reach a larger target audience. Everything depends on your own strategy and the competitors. Anyway, Google Adwords gives the option of setting an automatic bid for the whole ad group.

Knowing the structure of your company’s site is essential. From there it is possible to organise the campaigns and the ad groups of the account, according to the main areas of the business and attract more specific audience. It means, create an ad group per group of products or services that are offered in the site and pick the proper keyword for each ad group.

[ctt template=”1″ link=”RVA_a” via=”no” ]Adwords for short-term visibility, SEO, the long-term solution.[/ctt]

Google Adwords vs. Google Adwords Express

Google Adwords can be as complicated as you want. Actually, for those more lazy or unfamiliar with Digital Marketing, there is Google Adwords Express. This version of the platform makes the campaign management easier, although it has its downsides.

How does Google Adwords Express work? Google Express will choose the keywords for you, taking into account your site and figuring out from it what your business is about. They will show your ads locally, focused on the data taken from your site and Google will decide the bid for those keywords. Apart from that they will include broad keywords, what means you will get clicks from people looking for products and services like yours, but it may not be accurate. This can make you pay for clicks that eventually don’t become conversions (purchases, bookings, etc).

Example: You have a clothing store and your keyword is men’s coats. Using Google Express keywords like types of men’s coats will trigger your ad, even though it doesn’t match with people looking to buy men’s coats.

Therefore, Google Adwords Express is good if you control the budget yourself and if you are far from the position to manage the account yourself. However, traditional Google Adwords guarantees more relevant clicks and gives you more control on your campaigns.

In conclusion, with Adwords you will get:

1. Target qualified audience that really are looking for your services
2. Control the budget you are spending in each campaign.
3. Be more visible in the main searcher, Google. 

After all of this, does Google Adwords really work? As you can conclude, being visible with this advertising platform in Google is much easier. However you should know that this online presence will be temporary. It will last as long as you keep paying your Google Adwords bills. If you are looking for some long-term solution for your position in search engines, SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is a better option. This is the way to get traffic, for free, based just on the keywords present in your site.

Nevertheless, if Adwords is used as a measure of advertising it would probably be very useful and effective. The campaigns can be paused and whenever one wants to reactivate them, for example, in a peak season of business.

Do you have a better idea on how Google Adwords work now? If you still have doubts, we await your questions on comments.

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