| People's number one concern about online advertising | | | | to be things like "shoes", but if you have a tennis gear |
| using tools like Google AdWords is that it has become | | | | shop, you can buy words like "men's tennis shoes" and |
| too expensive. There are stories abound of "my | | | | "Nike tennis shoes" that will cost you a lot less than the |
| cousin's friend" or "this guy my college buddy works | | | | general terms like "shoes". (Nike is probably paying a lot |
| with" who ran up an $80,000 AdWords bill in 1 month | | | | for "shoes" and you don't want to compete with them |
| and bankrupted his small business! Well, that's a guy | | | | anyway, do you?) |
| that slapped together an AdWords campaign in about | | | | Just set up a little AdWords account and try out some |
| 10 seconds and didn't have any clue what he was | | | | keywords. Don't forget to set your maximum budget |
| doing. | | | | so you don't run up your credit card bill! Then come |
| Did you know that you can set a daily or monthly limit | | | | back to your AdWords account after a couple of |
| for how much Google will charge your credit card? | | | | days and see how many Impressions you've had |
| That pretty much solves the budgeting problem, now | | | | (that's how many times the ad has shown), how many |
| doesn't it? | | | | clicks you've had (that's now many times someone |
| Now the question is, can you be creative and | | | | actually clicked on your ad), and what your average |
| persistent enough with choosing the keywords you | | | | ad position is (that's what position your ad is showing |
| want to bid on so that you can get relevant customers | | | | up in on the right hand side of Google's search results |
| to your site without spending more money than that | | | | pages). If you want to raise your ad position so more |
| customer is worth? Well, unless you're selling knockoff | | | | people see your ad, try increasing your bid on certain |
| "male performance" drugs or some other massively | | | | keywords, or try different keywords that are less |
| over-advertised product, the answer is most likely | | | | competitive and expensive. |
| "yes". The truth is, 5 years ago a lot of keywords cost | | | | The bottom line is you can set your spending and |
| 5 or 10 or 20 cents per click, and those same | | | | criteria, and measure everything along the way, so you |
| keywords now cost 50 cents or a dollar per click. | | | | can tweak your AdWords campaign until it gets the |
| That's because a lot more people are buying | | | | results you want... without spending a ton of money! |
| keywords now so there's more competition. But that's | | | | And you can turn it off anytime if you can't get it to |
| okay, most of them aren't AdWords geniuses, and on | | | | work (though I think you'll have it working after a week |
| top of that, you don't have to buy expensive | | | | or two of playing around). |
| keywords. The more expensive keywords are going | | | | |