The type of business you have might gear your marketing efforts in several directions, but there’s one thing we know for sure. Every business should have an online presence, whether you are the local floral shop or a farm implement dealer.
There is always going to be someone who will be looking for your business, or at least your type of business, through the Internet. So how important is it to have your business online? Ninety-six percent of Americans shop online, and BigCommerce.com estimates that 51% of Americans prefer to shop online. That percentage will continue to increase. Don’t let your business get left behind in the digital age.
You’ve probably heard a lot about Google advertising, but maybe you didn’t understand what it was all about, so you just avoided it. It turns out, the concepts aren’t that hard to grasp. To begin, you should understand the difference between organic searches versus paid advertising.
ORGANIC SEARCH
A search occurs when someone types keywords into a search engine, like Google or Bing. For example, if someone is looking for information on a nail salon in their area, they may enter keywords in the Google search bar “nail salons in Hays, KS”. If you own a nail salon, you will want to make sure your business is positioned at the top of the results and if it does, your organic (unpaid) ranking is good. There are many free things you can do to end up at the top position, such as optimizing your website content for search engines, registering your Google business listing, registering your business on Yelp, and so on. If you’ve done all these free things and your business still isn’t the first result, paid Google Search advertising might be your next step.
GOOGLE PAID ADVERTISING
There are many types of Google campaigns, such as Search, Display, Shopping, Video, and Universal App. Your specific business or product type would determine which method/methods would benefit your business most.
- Search Ads are paid text ads that appear in search engine results when people search for terms that are relevant to your ad’s keywords. For example, if you run a music school, a Search campaign lets you show your text ads to high-potential customers right when they’re searching for "guitar lessons" on Google.
- Display Ads can help you reach people with banner ads while they’re browsing their favorite websites, showing a friend a YouTube video, checking their Gmail account, or using mobile devices and apps. Display Network sites reach over 90% of Internet users worldwide. With the Display Network, you can use targeting and re-marketing to show your ads in particular contexts.
- Shopping Ads would be ideal for a retailer wanting to present their online inventory. Shopping ads use your existing Merchant Center product data -- not keywords -- to decide how and where to show your ads.
- Video Ads let you show video ads on their own or within other video streaming platforms like YouTube, and also across the Google Display Network.
- Universal App Ads make it easy to promote your mobile apps across Google’s largest networks including:
- Google Search
- Google Display
- Google Play
- YouTube
So how do you choose which type of Google campaign is right for your business?
Look at the products and services you are wanting to promote and who your target audience is. This will help you determine the behavior of your buyer and which type might work best. If this seems like something you don’t want to tackle, but still feel your business should be doing, that’s where Nex-Tech comes in. We have the experts to handle these campaigns for you, hassle-free. Visit us online at nex-tech.com/advertising to learn more.