Sponsored Ad Programs
Those ads you see
when you pull up a search result
Starting an Ad Campaign
The major search engines are fairly easy
and straightforward for setting up an account to run some ads. You can
set a budget to suit your needs, even if only a dollar a day, they want
a credit card and just bill as needed to meet the budget. What you are
purchasing is the placing of an ad you create on a specific page.
Example: You own a sporting goods store in Atlanta, you want to run your
ad on the keyword combo "atlanta sporting goods". You simply ad that
term to your "inventory" (and create an ad for that specific term) and
bid on how high you want to place the ad in the results. It may be that
nobody else is bidding on that term (fat chance) and you can bid the
minimum of 10 cents or so, or maybe there are several others bidding on
that term, so you may have to bid higher to be number one. It is not
graven in stone that you have to be the number one sponsored ad for it
to be cost effective, but you do want to be on the 1st page of results.
4th or 5th place may yield better results it can vary. Keep in mind, although your ad may appear every time a viewer sees the
page (impressions), you only pay when they click on your ad.
Great Benefits
One of the best things - results are immediate, Google will have your ad
up in minutes, Yahoo and MSN may be slightly longer due to their
"editorial review process".
For SEO purposes, the great benefit is seeing how many page impressions
that particular term gets. For example, in the course of a month, the
term "atlanta sporting goods" gets 500 page impressions, you may also
have the term "camping supplies in atlanta" and that term gets 3,000
impressions a month. That tells you plenty about what your customers are
looking for. Following thru with a good adwords program by examining
these trends can make for great success in web marketing. Figuring out
what terms your potential clients use to find you is an art and science
in and of itself.
Research - Research - Research
Finding those keywords your customers use
and updating your site to reflect those trends is a great way to
success. You can find companies to manage this for you for fees
such as a monthly minimum or % of the ad buys.
When you write the actual ad, you may want to use "call to action"
phrases such as "buy now" or "sale" or some such. The jury is out on
this, but I feel that due to the sophistication of the viewers, I simply
state whatever it is I am selling and make it crystal clear what the
viewer will see if they click on my sponsored ad.
Check competing sites for
keywords they use, either by examining the site carefully, or seeing
what terms they advertise on, or using tools that can determine keyword
usage and suggested associative keywords. |
