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Why AdWords Makes Sense For Your Business
Updated February 25, 2015

Why AdWords Makes Sense For Your Business

Rob Gillan | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with AdWords

We use Google AdWords to help steer related web searches to our website. This allows us to make sure that prospective clients who are searching for related terms, or even for our brand name, see us at the top of their search results and are more likely to follow that link to our website. We also use it to track lead form conversions so that we can tell what percentage of our lead form submissions are a result of Google AdWords click-throughs.
  • Ad Groups - This allows us a to get more granular with our data. In a single campaign we can add as many ad groups as we like which allows us to keep tightly-knit groupings of keywords. This helps facilitate a much easier understanding of which keywords are popular, unpopular, and which ads are not working with popular keywords.
  • Negative Keywords - The most effective way to reduce spending, in my opinion, is through proper use of negative keywords. Identifying keywords that are popular in the context of other terms you are bidding for, but that don't make any sense for your campaign, is crucial for filtering out searches and potential paid clicks that bear no relevance to your offerings.
  • Regional Targeting - An operation that has product offerings that vary by location can benefit greatly from the geo-targeted campaign settings AdWords offers. This way, our ads are only part of the bidding process in the regions that they should be. Regional targeting helps us to reduce our overall spend as well as providing a better, more relevant experience to the end-user.
  • AdWords is, admittedly, an intimidating beast at first glance. Though most marketers will not be scared away by it, the overall user experience would greatly benefit from an overhaul of the help system and simpler explanations for each tab on the site.
  • If you have multiple campaigns with multiple ad groups in each campaign then the actual maintenance of your account can become cumbersome quite quickly. Anyone who has ever started out with an ad group filled with too many keywords knows the pain in extracting related keywords and copying them to their own new ad groups. Google could improve the account maintenance experience by providing easier tools for marketers to move around keywords and ad copy. For example, when a marketer is dealing with A/B split testing in ad groups -- where is the option to copy both ads to a new ad group without rekeying at least one? This creates tedious work and could be as simple as dragging and dropping keywords from one ad group into another.
  • Google's notification center tends to aggressively suggest keyword additions. While some of these may make sense, their pitch of 'getting your ad in front of more people' sounds too good to be true and sometimes is. As savvy AdWords marketers we know that negative keywords help us stay out of the bidding process when it doesn't make sense for us. Including every keyword that the Google algorithms suggest can lead to an increased spend with no positive impact on your investment and requires a healthy dose of skepticism.
  • Increased traffic to our website
  • Responsible for approximately 45% of total lead form submissions
  • Creates brand awareness by giving our ads visibility on searches that don't result in clicks; and no click means no cost to the business
There is no doubt that AdWords has provided marketers with a powerful tool. The caveat to wielding such a powerful marketing tool is that it can become a money pit without proper education on the finer points of PPC marketing. Knowing when to bid, how to stay organized, and how to interpret the data is key to making AdWords work for you.

I haven't yet found a scenario where I wouldn't employ AdWords if the business had a budget for it. Used properly, Google AdWords can benefit everyone from small businesses to international companies.

The obvious question to ask when evaluating a tool like AdWords is: "Are people searching online for products or services like mine?" If the answer is yes (and you've got a web presence) then you may want to consider reading up on AdWords strategies.

Using AdWords

1 - Marketing and Sales. AdWords is a tool used in our institution solely for the purpose of driving leads. Our account is managed by one individual in the organization and is checked on a daily basis.
1 - Supporting AdWords requires marketers who aren't afraid to take some time to learn a new skill. Pay-per-click advertising is a new paradigm that requires learning about the bidding process, how your budgets will work, and there is also some new language that requires digestion. Once past the initial learning curve, however, AdWords quickly becomes easy to see. The "big picture" forms after a minimal amount of use and marketers are then able to bring up very useful information with only a few mouse clicks.
  • Driving leads
  • It really is all about driving leads.
It's simple - AdWords helps drive leads to our website in a manner that we can measure and assign a cost to. For the comparably low investment, we are seeing returns that make the decision a no-brainer. AdWords, when used effectively, works.

AdWords Implementation