Ade in Business

I know I’m behind the curve on this one, but just recently created a Google AdWords campaign. I’d read a lot about AdWords in the past but never actually gone through the motions of setting up and running a campaign. I must say I’m very impressed with the product and my results so far even though I haven’t put much money into the campaign. What am I specifically impressed with?

• It’s incredibly easy to setup — intuitive interface, fairly dummy-proof, and I don’t have to fill out a ton of information.
• I don’t have to start by talking to someone in sales who I’m just going to feel will try to convince me to spend more money.
• I can apply an iterative process to advertising — I can change anything about my ads and campaigns at anytime, observe results immediately, repeat.
• I can spend as little as $0.01 to test. From there I can slowly bump up my bids to whatever I want. (By the way, I funded my account with an AdWords credit from setting up a new GoDaddy dedicated server. That was pretty helpful to be able to test with “free” money.)
• Great inline support — tips, keyword suggestions, etc. I don’t feel like I have to be an expert to run an effective campaign.

Based on my experience over the last couple weeks I don’t see how I wouldn’t use AdWords for any product or venture for the foreseeable future.

I’m going to open my mouth and recommend something to my friends in the newspaper industry. Everyone who’s involved in decision making related to online advertising (classified, retail, whatever) should meet once a week for four weeks. Get a computer, projector, and walk through the following:

• Week 1 - pick a topic you want to promote in the paper. Make it narrow (e.g. North Central High School basketball). Get the Online VP’s credit card and create a new AdWords account and campaign for $50.
• Week 2 - go over the results carefully. Find out why the campaign did work or why it didn’t work. Are the people clicking on the ad finding what they were looking for? What can you tell about the campaign? Make tweaks.
• Week 3 - repeat what you did in Week 2. Unless the campaign is wildy successful, then move on to Week 4.
• Week 4 - talk about the experience. Don’t let anyone give an opinion unless they attended the previous 3 meetings. Now compare the experience with the process of placing an ad in your paper. How can you improve it so that someone putting their $50 toward a classified ad in the Business Services section would have a comparable or better experience?