It's all about the money...

Money, money that’s what marketing is about. This time I will talk about a way of online advertising, namely: ‘Google AdWords’. This is how an advertisement of Google AdWords will look like (only the colors will be different)


Most of the people know this name, but how does this way of advertising work? A short overview of the most important things you need to know about Google AdWords. Imagine you are a marketer, who wants to advertise.

A marketer of strawberries makes an advertisement and pays Google only initial costs. He links his ad to certain key words like: strawberry, fruit etcetera. A surfer on the internet, who is looking for ‘strawberries’ on the search engine Google, will find the advertisement of the marketer on the right side of the webpage. If the key word of the search engine links to the keyword of the advertisement, the ad will be shown.
With the start of your marketing campaign you pay the initial costs and afterwards there are three options important: daily budget, bids and quality score

Daily budget
You can chose the budget you want to spend on your advertisement. The daily budget determines how often your ad will be shown and on which height of the advertising list. In other words: the more you pay, the more your ad will be shown. It is an advantage that all sorts of companies can use this method, despite of their marketing budget.

Attracting visitors to your own website
As marketer you can decide to choose for Click Per Cost (CPC). This means that you only have to pay Google when someone clicks on your ad. This strategy is mostly chosen, when the purpose is attracting visitors to your website. If you chose for CPC, the next step is to chose the amount you will pay Google. You can chose automatic bidding. You set a daily budget and AdWords seeks out the most clicks possible within that budget.

The other pay strategy is manual bidding. This option enables you to specify different bids for different target groups. If you know that certain key words are more profitable, you can pay a bigger amount for these words. The ad will be shown more by certain key words and the position of the ad can be higher.

Quality score
Furthermore, the quality score is important. This indicates how relevant your key word or advertisement are. Therefore Google uses for example the Clicktrough Rate (CTR). It measures the amount of click troughs with a certain key word. The higher your quality score, the lower your costs and the higher your position in the advertising list.

I think using Google AdWords for advertising can be a good way. The advantages: easy, specified to your budget and links to relevant words are useful. For the rest, it is a small advertisement and it won’t be screaming, compared to other advertisements on different websites. Disadvantage is the power of Google. Google decided (based on certain criteria) how many times your ad will be shown. Unfortunately a lot of people, who see the ads on Google, won’t click on them. Therefore to attract visitors to your website, other strategies must be used too. Anyway, there are a lot of possibilities how to use Google AdWords. It isn’t that odd that, according to a post on Molblog, twitter will launch an advertisement system which you can compare with Google AdWords. Will they link key words to twitter accounts or businesses? We have to wait a few more weeks to find out more about: TwitterWords or TwitterAdWords Twitter-to-words? Maybe more information in the next blog…?

Online relationships

The rise of the social media, have not only changed the way we socialize, but the advertising world has changed too. In the good old days you had to different groups: the consumer and the advertiser. The division was clear too. Advertisers made commercials or advertisements and the consumer perceived them. The communication was one-sided.

The growth of the social media continues. A good reason for companies to change their way of advertising. A few companies make use of social media for advertising purposes, but a lot of possibilities that social media offers are unused. The communication is changing into two-sided. Consumers are not only perceiving the advertisements, they are making them.

Magazine for Marketing (Dutch Magazine) gives a few tips for companies:

-Companies should not only focus on their website, they have to find their customer online.
Research of Universal Media shows that social networks are still growing. Online video increases from 31% to 83%. Three fourths of the world population has an account on a social network site. Companies should make use of these social networks. They have to start searching for their customer online.

- Companies should participate in discussions about their brand.
Perfect possibilities are talking about your own product on social network sites. Users do not believe the opinion of the brand anymore. The opinion of other users is much more important. The customer is not easily convinced by an advertisement about the big advantages of using this product. Therefore, the company should advertise their brand online and give possibilities for discussion.

- Give customers the possibility to give their opinion about their product on your company’s website.
Do not only give possibilities for discussion on network sites. Try to attract customers to your own website too. The consumer is more active these days. Respond to this behavior and give them the possibilities they are looking for.

Last but not least, a good example of a company which makes good use of online marketing: the supermarket ‘Albert Heijn’. They invented an application for your iPhone: ‘appie’. This ‘appie’ helps you with your shopping and can find recipes. You can connect your ‘bonuskaart’ number to your application. This makes the communication more personal. After the invention of the appie, they wanted to expend the possibilities of the appie. Therefore, they made use of community sites to look for the customers opinion. Creating a relationship with their customer. Isn’t this what marketing is about?

Two examples of 'Appie'





Other examples of company’s who make good use of online marketing? Please leave a comment and maybe I can talk about it the next time.