Get the best value out of Google AdWords

The benefit of this is that you can gain maximum value from your adspend as you’ll be sure your reaching people who are genuinely interested in your product or service.

Google Adwords is undoubtedly the king of online advertising, although Facebook has rolled out similar affordable, targeted services. Twitter is still refining its offering but is one to watch if your aim is to build an audience.

One of the advantages that Google offers is its Google Display Network that allows you to place advertisements on partner websites, not only in the Google search results. These ads could be simple text ads, image-rich ads and even video ads and displays onto mobile sites.

The greatest value of Adwords is the ability to decide the type of online user you want to target your advertising at. This might be according to age, interests, income levels and location. In this way you can be sure that someone interested in your type of product or service will be served one of your ads.

Apart from this level of customisation, you can also set limits on how many times your ads are displayed so that you don’t blow your monthly budget within the first few days.

Cost is obviously one of the big advantages of online advertising. It is far cheaper to reach potential customers, although the price you’re charged depends on the popularity of the keywords you associate with your ads. This price is determined through Google’s bidding algorithms that determine the price on this popularity. Obviously keywords that are searched more often are more costly, but the benefit is that you’re more likely to appear in someone’s search results than if you’d chosen a cheaper, but more obscure keyword.

In order to take advantage of Google Adwords you will need a Google account, from which you can link an Adwords profile. The advertising planning and strategy tools are enormously powerful, and with that comes a steep learning curve to ensure you get the best results.

For a small business owner, this can be quite time consuming and while it should deliver results you might want to engage with a specialist who can help craft the right types of ads and campaigns to improve your chances of success.

One of your biggest challenges is trying to find the right balance between learning these skills, or employing a specialist so that you can focus on other aspects of growing your business. Trudon is Google Adwords Premier SME Partner and will be able to help you gain the most value from an online advertising strategy.

For more information, visit www.trudon.co.za. Alternatively, connect with them on Facebook or on Twitter.