Google AdWords, not as scary as you’d think?
3 weeks into the New Media Drivers License class and I feel like I have learnt something new everyday since the start. No matter what the assignment there is more information out there on it than I can possibly grasp in a week so the learning never ends. My target for today: AdWords!
Google AdWords, everyones heard of them, everyones seen them, yet not everyone really knows how they work. Well this week I tried to attract attention to “Deepti’s Blog” through AdWords, it might even be how you landed here and started reading it = ) . I started with great fear of filling out endless forms, learning new terminology and having to do a lot of research before I could ever have an “ad” out for public viewing. Little did I know along with everything else they have thought of the solution for this too!!!
Creating your own personalized Google Ad and have it up and running takes no more than 15 minutes! You need to enter basic personal information which ofcourse includes a credit card number…feel some hesitation already…don’t worry Google let’s you manage how much money you wish to allocate to your “advertising budget” there are recommendations out there that a good start should be around $50 but hey I’m a student doing some exploration so mine was $5. You choose how much you are willing to pay per person that clicks on your add, in my case I chose $0.10, and when you get enough clicks to reach your monthly max they will stop posting your add until the new month starts. WOW! A pricing plan that I could control, this impressed me in the first 10 minutes of using their system.
The next big step was writing the ad that would attract people. Google allocates 3 lines for every AdWord with room for 25 words on the first line, 35 on the second, 35 on the third, and lastly the url to your site. This is where I thought I would have to use my Masters Degree and expertise in Advertising and Public Relations, EH! WRONG! Google yet again made this extremely easy. There is a tool that scans your website for key words, these words are then shown to you in a list and you can add them to the words you want your add found for. Each word they find then comes with an expanded list of related words which you can also add. It is from this list that you can create your AdWords lingo. It is genius, Google takes the guessing out of the game, they help you maximize your output without you having to be an expert. The following are the keywords Google helped me compile:
You can change these keywords, your actual ad, your budget, your per-click amount at any time through your AdWords login (which is the same as your Google login for any of their other tools out there G-Mail, Google Calendar, iGoogle etc).
I spent the week changing all of the above and playing around with different combinations of words etc. Although through many searches I was unable to find my add pop-up I am happy to announce that the stats through my AdWords account showed me that I got one hit on my add, so I know it’s out there, and the excitement it brought me is definitely worth the $0.10 I owe Google for it = )
The downside to all this is simply that you can do more with a larger budget. A larger budget gives your ad preference over others with lower budgets thus shows up more and leads to more hits. But isn’t that the reality of the advertising world! Google has still found a way for a girl like me with a $5 budget create her own personal ad campaign and actually have one stranger in the world stop by her little blog world and take a peek!
It’s a fantastic tool that is easy to use with endless possibilities, I am definitely going to keep at it and hopefully find the key (from my fellow bloggers out there) to getting the most hits from a minimal budget. You’ve done it again Google, you’ve done it again!!!
I guess I didn’t realize you were also in the class, too. Very cool. Makes me wish I’d just gone to that first day at Walsh and joined in the fun. I’m trying to talk my dad into AdWords for his company.. they’re a little behind the times.
nateerickson
February 3, 2009