There are literally hundreds, if not thousands of how-to guides out there written by experts and savvy bloggers, and even Google itself.

Despite that, the advertising giant has things that are either rarely talked about, or most people are simply not aware of.

AdWords is an extremely popular advertising platform, and as a budding entrepreneur, startup, or small business owner, you may have heard about its importance for your business’ online marketing needs.

Over the years, AdWords has changed, and it’s constantly changing to keep up with the trend in online advertising and marketing.

But what is it really, and how will it affect or benefit your business?

 

1: What is Google AdWords?

 

Google AdWords is a platform where you can buy exposure for your website or business.

It consists of three main components:

  • The Google search network
  • The Google display network
  • YouTube

 

The Google Search Network:

The Google search network is where you bid against other companies to have text ads show in Google when somebody makes a search using particular keywords.

So for example, if you owned a shoe store you would want to show an ad to someone on google when they use the search term “buy shoes online”

The person who spends the most money on Google to acquire that click is the most likely to get a conversion.

Example of AdWords Search Network Ads

 

The Google Display Network:

The Google display network is a little bit different.

The display network lets you display banner ads or text ads on websites that are part of the Google display network.

This is a network of millions of high traffic websites that get paid by Google to let ads be served on their website.

So if you sell mountain bike parts on your store, you may want to advertise a banner ad on a high traffic mountain biking blog…

Adwords display network example

YouTube:

Lastly, we have YouTube which is owned by Google (sold to them for 1.65 Billion on October 16th, 2006)

You can use YouTube to advertise to people based on keyword searches, particular topics and interests as well as things such as life events.

Video content is one of the largest content mediums consumed on the internet.

300 hours of video are uploaded to youtube every minute!

YouTube is a great way to deliver messages to your target audience through the AdWords platform.

 

2: You can remarket to customers with Google AdWords

 

Remarketing or retargeting is cookie based javascript technology whereby you can target people with advertisements across all the major Google traffic networks with ads based on what they’ve already engaged with on your website.

For example, if you have a shoe store online and someone adds a pair of shoes to their cart but doesn’t check out, you can show them ads of those same shoes all over the internet to try and entice them to come back and finish their transaction.

 

3: Conversion Tracking

 

In your AdWords account, you can set up what’s called conversion tracking.

This is where Google provides you with a little script that you add to the conversion page of your website so all of your paid advertising efforts can be attributed to the source.

This is how you can identify what’s working and what’s not.

You can even set an attribution window so you’ll know if a conversion on your website was caused by an ad that they saw 2 weeks prior for example.

It also lets you see which of your keywords and ad groups are resulting in conversions and which ones are costing you money.

 

So there you have it.

Those are three key things you need to know about AdWords.

If you want to start advertising with Google but aren’t to sure if you can make it work profitably reach out to us,

Our AdWords certified team can generate enough business on AdWords to not only cover our fee, but make it wildly successful for you.