Long gone are the days when advertisers were unable to keep track of who viewed their ads. Today, online advertising with Google AdWords helps you to measure the success of your ads — you’ll know who clicked on your ad, made a purchase, and how long they visited your site. This information will come in handy when putting your campaign together.

AdWords, Google’s online advertising platform gives business owners complete access to managing their ads. With AdWords, business owners can attract potential customers by targeting them according to their interests, age, location, and language. Having this option allows you to target these customers and eliminate those who are unlikely to have an interest in your product/service. Advertising online with Google AdWords takes the guess work out of targeting possible clients.

Steps to defining your audience

• Who are they? (age, gender, language or interests)
• What are they looking for? (what products and/or services)
• Where are they? (which community, city, state or country)
• When do they shop? (in the morning, during the summer, or evenings)

Budget Control

AdWords allows you to keep track of your expenses with budget control. With budget control you can set an amount of how much you are willing to spend per month, per day, and per ad; and you’ll only pay when someone actually clicks your ad. The amount you choose to spend each time someone clicks on one of your ads is called a Bid.

What are Campaigns, Ad Groups and Keywords?

A campaign is a list of Ad groups, it is also where you make choices on where and when your ads can appear. An Ad group is a collection of ads. For example, a business owner that sells swimwear may have three ads consisting of the different types of swimwear sold at his or her store; one for infants, one for children, and one for adults. This collection of ads make up an Ad group. Assigned to each Ad group are Keywords. Keywords are words and phrases that are related to your business. Using the right keywords is one of the most crucial steps towards a successful campaign. AdWords uses keywords in order to decide which ads to show to people searching for things online.

Useful tips when choosing keywords

• Be specific and relevant when choosing keywords
• Use Negative Keywords. Negative keywords are related to your ad, but are NOT relevant; this is useful in filtering out people that won’t make a purchase on your particular product or service
• Use the Keyword Tool: Located under the Reporting and Tool section; this free tool suggests and helps you discover new keywords.

Tips on writing an effective ad

• Highlight what makes your offering unique (what differentiates you from your competitors)
• Include promotions, discounts, instant rebates etc.
• Use a call-to-action (Buy Now! Call Today! Sign Up!)
• Be sure to match your keywords to your ads and your ads to your landing page

Factors that determine where your ads will appear

Bid and Quality Score determine where and if your ad appears on a users search results page. Bid is how much you are willing to spend on a click and Quality Score is an estimate of how useful and relevant your ad and the page on your website are to someone viewing it. So, it is essential when linking your ads to pages on your website, that your ads’ information and the page on your website relate to one another.

Monitor your ads performance

Last but not least, monitor your ad’s performance data; measure conversions, see how many people saw, and clicked on your ads- this allows you to determine which ads are beneficial to your business and track your ROI. Conversion Tracking is a simple way to measure sales– it is a free tool that offers insight on what happens after a customer clicks on your ad. For example; whether they made a purchase, just visited your site, or filled out a form.

Whether you are looking to push traffic towards your website, attract more customers into your store, or pull in potential leads; AdWords helps your customers find you and provides detailed reporting on your ad spend and performance.