Let us start with the basic question. Why do you need online advertising, or specifically Google AdWords?
Let us imagine you have decided to start a business. You have hit upon this idea of customised t-shirts and selling them through a website. Now have you ever imagined or calculated the cost of starting your business in the "old" or "conventional" way? Of course, when I say "conventional", I mean the pre-online days. At the minimum, you would need a shop. And given the way real estate prices are, it would mean an expense of lakhs even before you begin. In fact, a big upfront investment in either a shop or inventory is what keeps a lot of entrepreneurs away.
Fortunately, the web has solved a lot of problems. Today, a website substitutes a shop & online advertising & marketing have come to replace conventional marketing.
Why Online Advertising? There are several compelling reasons:
Reach: The worldwide web reaches out to an enormous no. of people. How many? Let us take a look.
 |
| Internet now reaches out to more than 2 billion people |
What do we see? The world wide web now reaches out to 2.4 billion people. That's some number. Also look at the growth rates between 2000-12. Over this 12 year period, it has grown by an astounding 3,606.7% in Africa & 2,639.9% in the Middle East, for example.
And what of the usage? In case you are interested & I am sure you are, just read the link: http://thesocialskinny.com/216-social-media-and-internet-statistics-september-2012/. To present just one interesting fact: There are now more devices connected to internet than people on Earth.
So we don't have to tell you the importance of internet as a worldwide medium, especially if you have a business to market, or you are in the Marketing or Sales profession. Let us just say that if you are NOT on internet, locally, nationally or globally, you are simply missing out on a highly critical component of visibility and growth.
Which brings us to Google, and more precisely Google Ads. Advertising on Google is presented through its AdWords programme. Google, being the search colossus, also dominates the Internet Advertising space. It apparently made $42.5 billion from advertising in 2012. Takes some beating.
But wait. Isn't internet all about search? Yes, internet or Google is all about search. You type your keyword "car insurance" & hope to see relevant, topical & local results for your search query. By and large, Google or any other search engine delivers that. Now think of the benefits of being on a good position in the search results of Google or any other search engine. If your company were on the 1st page for a highly searched keyword like "car insurance", you would literally have your website & company in front of millions & millions of prospective customers per day. Given a chance, who would not want to be there, given that it does not cost a penny?
But therein lies the catch. How do you figure out how to be on the first page? There is a whole SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Industry out there splitting its hair on how to put you on the 1st page top position. Search YouTube and you will find millions of videos with "experts" explaining to you how to be on page one. But obviously no one has more than a very rough idea. And that's understandable. If people could easily figure out how to be on the 1st page, would Google not cease to exist? Would it able to provide you with fair & impartial results? No.
Hence, the need for what we call Paid Online Advertising. We describe Google AdWords in detail on the next page. Suffice it to say that Bing Ads, a joint initiative of Yahoo & Microsoft, mirrors Google AdWords in many features & therefore, need not be described separately.
