You’ve done it!
You’ve built your business with proverbial (or real!) blood, sweat, and tears. It’s taken a lot of time and what feels like a gargantuan sum of effort, and now you’re ready to take it up a notch. When it’s time to up-level your business game, the first thing you want to do is to start bringing customers across your threshold in droves and you’ve got your eye on Google AdWords. As you may already know, AdWords is Google’s pay-per-click advertising service. Customers who search for certain keywords will see the ads near the top of their search results, and if you do it just right (and that’s the trick!), this can mean a major influx of new, qualified leads for your business.
This all sounds great, but it’s important to realize that AdWords isn’t a win-win for every business.
Here are 10 signs to look for to know if your business is really ready to launch its first successful AdWords campaign.
You can really get into your customer’s head.
Nearly all of the decisions you make in your business start and end with your customer. Your customer and what he or she wants and needs must be at the heart of your marketing efforts, and of course, this applies to launching your AdWords campaign. The success of AdWords has been designed to rise and fall on your choice of keywords, so getting into your customer’s head is the difference between a costly mistake and a huge payoff. Many business owners make the mistake of applying their intimate and specialized knowledge about their product or service to the verbiage they use to market.
Just because you know the ins and outs of your business and all of its moving parts doesn’t mean your customers do! All that matters to your customer is, well, what matters to him or her. Do you know what that is? If you don’t, you run the risk of coming up with a list of keywords that your customers would never type into a search box to begin with and that could mean a failed campaign that either brings in no leads at all or, worse, brings in a long list of unqualified or uninterested leads. In either scenario, you’ve spent time, effort, and money for nothing.
Figure out what your customers are really searching for and start there. If you don’t have a huge budget to begin with, consider analyzing just your top selling product or service. What are the leverage points that make customers buy? What need does it fill?
Asking these questions allows you to put yourself in your customer’s shoes, and that brings you one step closer to a successful AdWords campaign.
You know your most attractive assets and features.
While we have you thinking like a customer, consider your best one, the one who loyally buys and refers your business to friends and family. If your very best customer were asked to describe you, what would he say? How would he describe your offerings? What reasons would he list for why he chose you over your competitors?
If you don’t know these answers, it’s time to put on your thinking cap and drill down into your customer profile. Send out a survey to your email list, take a poll on Facebook, or hire a marketing consultant to help you examine your customer base. Having a ready list of assets and features is not only required for developing the kind of keywords that makes for a successful AdWords campaign, but it’s necessary in many other areas of your business marketing!
You have a killer website.
First impressions are everything.
With so many choices out there, your customers aren’t going to stick around if your website is sloppy and unprofessional with 404 error pages, bad graphics, and poorly written copy. This is obvious! Which would you choose? The restaurant with the mismatched chairs and stains on the table cloth, or the one with silverware polished to a high sheen and crisp white linens? Even if the food is top-notch, you’re probably going to be swayed a little (or, a lot!) by the cleanliness and order of the dining room. You are ready to spend the time and money on online advertising when you’ve already invested the same into your own website. This means that you’ve chosen solid graphics, created a sales page, and have put some energy into making your site easy to navigate for those unfamiliar with you and your product or service.
If you don’t take this first step, you’re wasting your money on leads that may turn tail and run as soon as they reach your digital living room. Get your house in order first!
You understand the importance of good sales copy.
Sales copy gets the job done. A well-written sales page can mean the difference between no customers and an out of this world conversion rate. This is never more true for leads that haven’t already been warmed up, whether that’s through word-of-mouth, social media engagement, or other types of marketing. The less familiar a potential lead is with your business, the more important it is that he or she gets the white glove service the moment they walk through your door. If you are truly ready to cast your line with AdWords, you already know this. When customers are frequently hitting your site and spending time on your sales page before clicking that buy button, you know your copy is ready for the Google audience.
You aren’t afraid to spend money.
If you are penny-pinching and absolutely terrified to take a risk, you are probably not ready for AdWords. To really run an effective campaign, you can’t be afraid of spending money. Advertising of any kind is an investment. Plus, if you are afraid to begin with, you’ll probably struggle with any sort of learning curve that is bound to be a part of the process for you. When you are watching every dollar slip through white-knuckled fingers, this probably isn’t the time to invest in something like AdWords, which has high gain potential, but balances that out with a hefty risk of loss.
If you aren’t afraid to set aside money for marketing and advertising, you are probably ready to give AdWords a try.
You believe in risk-return tradeoff.
An investment term, risk-return tradeoff refers to the idea that higher risk equals higher potential for return. The greater the risk, the greater the chance of gain. If you are onboard with this principle, you are willing to tradeoff the security of lower-risk opportunities for high-risk ones with a greater reward potential.
This applies to pay-per-click advertising because there are myriad variables at play. It’s true that if customers don’t click, you don’t pay; that’s not a risk. What’s really at risk is the chance that you select keywords that bring in leads that aren’t truly interested in becoming customers. This can add up and fast. For first time users of Adwords, it can take time to figure out what gets people in the door and what makes them stay.
Focusing on any area of marketing over another is also a risk. Perhaps you have staff that you’ve redirected toward AdWords or maybe this is taking up your own time. Effort and time also feed into the risk, especially when you are a small business owner and have precious little of both.
If you consider the learning curve as simply part of the overall investment, you are definitely ready to launch your first campaign.
You understand the game.
Business isn’t child’s play, but in some ways, it can be looked at like a game. There are rules, and there are certainly superstars out there dominating in their various industries. Much like a good game of hoops, you’re going to benefit if you take the time to study the rules and approach your first few tries as training. Don’t expect to be the MVP right out of the gate. The only way to beat your competitors at their own game is to thoroughly understand how they play and then turn around and do it better yourself.
Do you regularly research your industry and your competitors? Do you know what they’re doing, both what they do better and where they fall short, and how they approach their customer base?
Much like professional athletes watch film replays, studying the players in your industry and how they use Google AdWords can give you a huge leg up. If you’ve already got this mindset, playing the AdWords game might be just another fun challenge to tackle.
You have an established product or service.
While it might be tempting to get traffic moving to your website while you’re still in the early stages of startup, it’s a bad move for your long term business goals.
If you don’t yet have an established product or service, you may want to consider waiting a bit before jumping into pay-per-click waters. For one, if you don’t have a product at all, you obviously won’t have the opportunity to earn a return on your investment, and if you do have a brand new product that hasn’t been market tested yet, you might just end up with an influx of negative reviews. If you have a solid product or service and you have the experience and infrastructure to support a new customer stream, AdWords might just be a great addition to your marketing.
You know what a landing page is.
You don’t have to be a tech genius to build a website or to run a pay-per-click campaign, but it definitely helps to have some general savvy or to employ staff to do the job. Having the ability to design a solid landing page for an AdWords customer stream is essential to making the most of the investment. Not every potential customer that comes across your threshold is going to be ready to purchase immediately. Some may become part of your email list to be groomed for later purchases.
Having a landing page that moves these leads along in the sales funnel can add up to a lot of dollar signs. If this is already a part of your sales process, you’re ahead of the game.
Your customers are searching the internet for solutions to their problem.
Whatever your product or service is, it solves a problem or fulfills a need for your customers. That is your unique leverage point. However, not every customer base uses the internet to remedy this. (Really, it’s true!) Customer groups that don’t use Google to find their solutions obviously won’t find you. Also, if your product or service is incredibly unique or so cutting edge that people don’t even have the right words to search for it, they, too, aren’t going to be “googling” their way to your site.
For AdWords to be successful for you or any business, it’s absolutely necessary that your customers are typing terms related to your product or service into Google.
Nearly all businesses have a product or service that fulfills a need already being searched for on Google. If that’s the case, you’re good to go!
So, should you invest in AdWords?
There’s no hard and fast answer to this question. There isn’t a profile out there for the successful AdWords user. You might fulfill some of these and not others. Or, maybe you don’t see any of these signs in yourself or your business just yet. The good news is that all 10 of them are areas of focus that you’ll eventually want to address and work on, anyway.
The choice to make an investment in your business is a personal one, and how you choose to do it will ultimately be guided by your instinct and experiences. The more you learn about an investment like AdWords, the better your chances of making a real go of it.
Good luck!
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