Get serious about promoting your small business website in the new year!
This is a local cleaning company that needed a low budget (but good value) website to boost enquiries. After just 2 months, it’s already paid itself off and keeps on improving in ranking on Google.
“Small businesses have an enormous opportunity to expand their market reach and reduce their costs through the internet…only 54% of small businesses have a web page.” — Dr Craig Emerson, Small Business Minister
The road is not so long
People are always wondering weather or not it’s a good idea to spend money, especially in a recession (if we’re in one anyway). So, the question is…is money spent on Sponsored Links (or Adwords) money well spent? Here are three good reasons why most small/medium businesses should have a campaign running.
1. You don’t have to spend much! If your worried that it could get out of hand, you can minimise your keywords. It’s always a good idea to at least have your business name coming up. It helps people realise you haven’t gone out of business.
You can also restrict the area and times your ads display, to save more costs.
2. In Australia, Google is used by 90% (source: Hitwise) of searchers! That means that the other search engines like Bing, MSN and Yahoo, hardly deserve the time and effort to set up accounts and run ads - not to mention the difficulty to use these interfaces.
Google provide all the tools necessary and more, as well as analytics and reports that really help you stay in control.
3. You’ve got to spend money to make money. Anyone in business knows that.
Online advertising is much better value than most alternatives.
It’s very easy to control, you don’t need to fork out thousands to untargeted viewers. Because you can choose the keywords for your ads to show for, the user is naturally interested in the topic.
In reality, you could stop spending $600 per month on a local newspaper ad, spend $100 - $150 per month on Google Adwords, advertise in the same area (or perhaps a better defined area) and get better results.
However, after saying all that, there is another side to the coin. There are also some very compelling reasons why using Google Adwords could be the wrong thing to do! Check the next blog.
“Art is not what you see but what you make others see.” — Edgar Degas
“One of the ways we achieve a fast feel is to have a very minimalist look.” — Irene Au - Google director of user experience
Organic and Sponsored Links (Adwords) demonstrated in Google
There are so many terms and technical words that are used on the internet, that for many it’s a real put-off. It seems that the people who use the internet constantly, or work in IT have a language all to themselves, that they automatically think the larger audience will understand.
That’s why “Plain English” is so useful. This means putting these new words and concepts into a palatable format for anyone to be able to understand.
A great example of terms explained this way is in this UpOnGoogle’s Internet Glossary. It is still being constructed, and will actually never be completed as it continues to keep abreast of all the latest jingo.
Enjoy.