Tags: | adwords | ads | small business | google | review |

2007-04-08 00:00

Google's Adwords for a Local Small Business

Ever since I started as a publisher with google's web advertising program, adsense, I've been very curious about the other end of the spectrum, adwords. A few weeks ago I saw my chance to try it out and get a feel for how the advertiser deals with google's ad program. My mother owns a local flower shop and I got in a conversation with her about online advertising, and her website, where I am the webmaster. I described the google program to her, and she agreed to give me a small budget to try out some ads through adwords. We hoped to see how google's program will work for a local small business. I was very impressed with the easy setup - the whole process took me less than 30 minutes - and we were up and running with the "starter campaign" after entering a credit card number and agreeing to pay a $5 setup fee. The starter campaign bases all ad impressions on the monthly budget specified by the advertiser, and one set of keywords, also specified by the advertiser. I was impressed with the helpful "keyword tool" which suggests alternate keywords, gives indications of search volume, and pricing competition on each given keyword. Within the first hour of the starter campaign we had about twenty ad impressions, and one ad click, which cost 86 cents. This price was much higher than I would have expected! Because of this shockingly high click cost, I paused the starter campaign soon after it started, and began work on an "advanced campaign" instead.

I was a bit intimidated with the advanced option at first because after all, I had just gotten started, but I was once again impressed with how easily everything was configured and running in a short time. The differences between the advanced and starter campaigns aren't severe, but they do make quite a difference in how things are run - the advanced option allows specific ad groups to be created for each campaign, and I started with three, one for general flower delivery promotion, one for weddings, and one for gift baskets. The main difference between advanced and starter is the ability to set maximum click prices for each group, or if you feel the need to micro-manage, every keyword. I set the maximum click price for each of my groups quite a bit lower than 86 cents, to get a feel for how pricing works. It turned out that my starting prices were a bit too low, and over the first week I slowly adjusted pricing for each group until I settled on prices that allowed ads to be shown, but not in the first ad spots, as these are the most expensive. One of the most surprising things for me was the number of ads shown on the "content network" - sites like mine. More than half of the ads shown in our campaign have been on the content network rather than in search results. Because her's is a locally based business, we targeted the ads to our city specifically, and this has allowed us to keep the click prices slightly lower, because there is less competition locally. I am still getting a feel for how to optimize keywords, and adjust prices, but I have been very happy with the results so far - we've had less than twenty clicks, despite our ads being shown more than 5,000 times, but I imagine we are getting genuinely interested customers visiting the site. We've also had some non-click traffic from the ads - I imagine these are people who see the ads, but they don't click on them and instead they type in the URL of the site, or search for the shop's name instead, and since google only charges for click-through traffic, this is like getting a small amount of free traffic just by running the campaign.

We are still in the "testing" stage, we have yet to see if Internet orders or newsletter signups will increase due to the advertising, but it has been quite easy and cheap so far, with what seems like promising results. I have been given a chance to test out adwords, and I am glad to know more about the program, and hopefully the flower shop website is getting some quality traffic and exposure. If you are interested in either adwords or adsense, please feel free to use the sign-up links I have placed below:

- Kevin
Kevin (at) Upcsite (dot) Net

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