Should my business use Google AdWords?

We are often asked, should I use Google AdWords? 

The answer is – it depends! There’s a few questions we ask you, or consider before recommending that our clients sign up to AdWords. 

Do you have a good online presence? 

Without a good website to send customers to, AdWords will be a waste of money and time. Budget would be better invested into improving your online web presence first and then looking into AdWords again later down the track.  

Google AdWords reads through the website pages you are wanting to direct a customer to, to assess how relevant your website is to the keywords and search terms you’ve chosen. If your website has no similar wording or phrases, you will receive a ‘Low Quality Score’ and fail to show in ad results or at least much less than competitors in the paid search rankings. Even if you’re offering the most amount of money to appear here, Google needs to maintain credibility in their search area to maintain web users trust and by assigning quality scores, this ensures web searchers are getting the best and most relevant ads shown to them when they search.  

Is your service high value or have high margins? 

This is important for return on investment (ROI) purposes. If you sell small, low cost items like a $5 pack of pencils, but an AdWords click is going to cost you $2.50, then this is not a great ROI, as you’re only making a maximum of $2.50. This also assumes that everyone is making a purchase then they click – whereas if only every third ‘clicker’ makes a purchase then you’re paying $7.50 in advertising for a $5 pencil set and making a loss!  

This is a very basic example above, but hopefully helps you to determine whether it’s worth giving it a go. Some highly competitive industries have very high cost per clicks, such as $15-20 a click, in which case you want to ensure your investment will be returned when a purchase is made. Others are less than a $1 per click and can be a fantastic way to get your company name out there. 

AdWords can also help you track customers ending up in your cart or making an enquiry, so a more precise ROI can be determined after AdWords has begun.  

Is your Target Audience using Google? 

Depending on your geographic audience, some countries do not have Google as a preferred search engine. For example, if you are targeting the Chinese market, it may be best to advertise on Baidu or 360 Search – as these are China’s market leaders for online search. 

Demographics may also make a difference too – if you are targeting 80-year old’s this audience may have a limited knowledge when it comes to technology and wouldn’t be using Google to do their information search. Advertising dollars may better be spent elsewhere before pursuing AdWords.  

While we feel this is most likely a ‘Yes’, it’s a great consideration to have and really think about your audience and how they search for information.

Do you have the time or money to invest in AdWords?

AdWords isn’t a system where you can just pop some money on it, let it run and see how it goes. AdWords needs checking at LEAST weekly to ensure the ad spends are on track, keywords are tracking well, negative search terms can be blacklisted early and more. Changes and tweaks need to be made frequently to ensure the best performance of the account. Some months clicks will go up, and some months they will be down, however understanding why and how to fix this is crucial to getting the most out of AdWords. If you have the time each week to tweak and analyse and learn to use AdWords, fantastic- have a go! If you don’t, consider hiring an AdWords Certified expert to look after the account for you. 

Contact Redsteps today!

If AdWords IS for you, then we highly recommend you jump on board. We’ve seen fantastic results for our clients and love hearing the positive feedback from them each month. If you’d like to have a chat about Redsteps managing your AdWords account, please get in touch today! 

Call us on 03 8768 9383 or send us an email to hello@redsteps.com.au 

Let’s chat!