Sponsored Search Marketing Primer

The major search engines provide the least painful method of expanding your marketing strategy, and I can’t really think of many business models on the metro distribution level or larger that shouldn’t be using sponsored search marketing to promote and drive sales. Even local automobile dealerships are using sponsored search marketing to generate sales leads. And why shouldn’t they? Today Internet savvy consumers begin researching products online before making the choice of what product to see and purchase. While I was car shopping last spring I went to the Internet to research the models I liked, and through Google AdWords I actually found a local dealership that had the car I was interested in sitting on their car lot. When I arrived at the dealership the sales manager’s first probing question was how did I find them and did I find them through Google. Luckily later that night, while watching a local television commercial I discovered another car dealership with a much better offer on a much more suitable vehicle. But the evidence exists that sponsored search can be an effective marketing strategy even for local businesses.

Easy Management and Measurement 
Unlike search engine optimization, sponsored search campaigns are easily managed and measured. Getting started is as simple as creating an account, creating ad groups, ads and keywords to trigger the ads. And campaigns can easily be tailored to match budgets, ad scheduling and geographical region, and advertisements can be in the form of text, display or even video ads, although you should focus on creating high converting text ads before venturing into the display and video ads.

Get Started With Google
While Microsoft and Yahoo! both provide great sponsored search tools Google is currently at the forefront of search engine advertising with its many tools and high search engine traffic volume. Like the other search engines Google Adwords offers custom reporting features allowing you to track the conversion rates and cost of your AdWords campaign. But one the greatest advantages of Google AdWords lies within its perfect integration with Google’s analytic software, and this free software offered by Google is no lightweight package. A simple tracking script inserted into the HTML code of your Website provides campaign performance right down to the shopping cart checkout process, the cost and ROI of the transaction, exit points, and bounce rates of landing pages. Another great feature of AdWords is the keyword research tool. Simply enter a keyword and allow Google to make keyword suggestions for you. You then examine demand and cost and select which keywords you want included in the campaign.  

And although Google might be the search engine advertising tool for beginning advertisers, MSN and Yahoo! shouldn’t be overlooked. Once you master Google AdWords you should spread your marketing campaign to the Yahoo! and MSN sponsored search networks. And I admit that I don’t really like the Google AdWords interface, it was once very intuitive, but with the addition of many tools and features over the years it is now a slightly confusing and busy interface.

So if you’ve considered advertising online, go ahead and get signed up with Google AdWords. It’ll only cost you five dollars to sign up and you can get your campaign started for only a few dollars per month.