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The landscape of advertising has changed dramatically over the past few decades. 30 years ago, companies relied on television, radio, newspapers and billboards to advertise and increase brand awareness. Then came “infomercials” that used celebrities to bring credibility to their brand. This was followed by television stations that were dedicated to selling little known products and making them a household name. Stations like HSN and QVC are two of the most recognizable ones our there to date. All this said, 1the internet changed all of it a little more than 2 decades ago. This is when it became fully commercialized here in the United States after the removal of the final restrictions, on the internet, giving it the ability to carry commercial traffic. Fast forward “♫ In The Year 2000 ♫♪”…
…for those of you that don’t remember this, please remain quiet; you’re going to make me feel old ?. Anyway, in the year 2000 Google launched a self-serve online advertising system, managed by bidding on keywords. You may have heard of it; they called it AdWords. Today AdWords is a multibillion dollar online advertising platform that continues to adapt and change with the times throughout the years. AdWords accounts for over 92% of all of Google’s revenue, and advertisers use it daily to compete against one another to gain Brand Awareness, Leads and Sales to help promote both their large sized businesses and their SMBs. Through the years though there have been several theories that people have promoted about AdWords, or about how AdWords works. I wanted to write you an article that will hopefully clarify some of these items and help you better understand AdWords as well as maybe calming a few nerves along the way. So, let’s go ahead and begin:
Comedy sketch with Conan O’Brien prior to 2000
Myth number 1 – “You are going to have to spend money with Google to run an online advertising campaign.”
This is false. There are actually many other online advertising platforms for you to use depending on what type of advertising you are planning on doing. If you are simply looking for Online Paid Search Advertising, then you could either use Google Adwords or Bing Ads. Adwords also serves their ads to a number of other smaller, little known, Paid Search Engines out there although they also serve to some other larger ones as well. Some of the Adwords “Search Partners”, as they are commonly referred to, include YouTube and Amazon. In the past they have also included Search Engines such as Yahoo and AOL, but these are now use by Bing. Over time you will most likely notice these to change again and again. The main point to this myth though, is that Google is not your only choice for Online Advertising. In addition, if you are interested in other types of online advertising like Social Media; There are other platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram to name a few that you can use for Social Media Marketing. Banner Ads also bring to light a number of other platforms such as AdRoll. Simply research this topic a little further to find even more online advertising platforms that you can use.
Myth Number 2 – “The more money you spend per click in a keyword auction, the better your ad positioning will be.”
Again this is false, or at the very least you can say that it’s not completely true. What I mean by that is that is if a larger company has a completely bottomless budget then yes, it’s going to be very difficult to outrank them so long as they have every intention of “bleeding the competition dry.” That said, it is very possible for you to outrank your competition regardless if they have a greater budget. There are stipulations to this statement such as you may not be able to accomplish this feat every hour of every day. However, if you have a structured account with relevant Campaigns, Ad Groups, Keywords, Ads and Landing Pages then you can outrank your competition for less money. Without going into the entire process here, as that isn’t the idea behind this particular article, the main secret is to do what I basically just laid out. You need to have complete relevance between your Campaign, your Ad Groups inside your Campaigns, your keywords inside your Ad Groups, the content within the Ads that your keywords are targeting (have your keywords inside your ads content), and the Landing Pages that you are sending people to when they click your ads. Follow this outline and you will quickly find that your CPCs are going to start decreasing and your ad positioning will begin increasing.
Myth number 3 – When it comes to PPC, you can “Set It & Forget It!”
Unlike those rotisserie convectional ovens from Ronco®, you absolutely cannot “Set It & Forget It” when it comes to your PPC Accounts. However, I couldn’t just pass up an opportunity to use one of the most recognized mottos from the world of infomercials. Back to the point though, if you even intend on running a successful PPC Account, then you are simply going to have to put in the time to manage it properly. Not only do you need to manage your spend on a daily basis, but you will need to monitor the campaigns, keywords and ads multiple times each week to track any trending data. You will then need to make modifications to these items and track the results in order to determine what changes are going to bring you’re the best Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). This is a daily chore that you will need to dedicate yourself to, short of hiring an Ad Agency who will be able to dedicate the time and resources to these tasks in order to achieve this for you. There will be a time in your company’s life cycle that you will find that handling its advertising by yourself is simply not cost effective and that your time will be better spent managing other tasks that require your attention.
Myth number 4 – “My Company’s ads will need to be in the first position of the search results for them to be effective.”
Absolutely false! There was a time not that long ago (previous to Feb 21st, 2017) when Google did show Paid Search ads on the right side of the SERPs (Search Results Pages). That isn’t the case today, but maybe sometime in the future we will see this return. My point here is that when we did have the side ads companies continually saw reasonable return even when they were not in positions 1-3. Now that we no longer have the side ads, I can still tell you that you do not have to be seen in the first position in order to be effective. There is what we refer to as the “sweet spot” in the online advertising world. It really all depends on the industry though. Sometimes you may see the best results in position 2 or 3, but the idea that you cannot see a positive ROAS in a position below #1 is a complete fallacy.
1 Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet
-Written By Ed Cehi
With fourteen years of Internet Marketing experience, Ed Cehi joined That Company as a PPC Account Manager in 2008 after previously working at another high-profile Florida Web Design and Marketing Agency located in Ocala, Florida for the six years previous. He started his career in Internet Marketing as a Web Designer after graduating from The International Academy of Design and Technology in Orlando Florida with his degree in Web Design. He soon moved on to Search Engine Optimization and then graduated into Paid Advertising following that. Ed is now the Director of SEM at Th@t Company located in Leesburg Florida, just outside of Orlando. You can find him online in multiple social mediums such as Twitter (@edsaxman) and LinkedIn.
