Google Helps the Small Business with - Search Advertising

Small businesses in competitive areas like catering or flower delivery or photo processing, completely depend on Google's ability to be visible where it matters. Where "organic" search results (getting on top of search results with no paid placement) is possible, of course, there is nothing quite like it; but for the rest of us, Google's AdWords' search advertising method is our only hope of survival. Consider Ketchup Castles, a small twenty-woman operation in the Seattle area, that completely depends on the high income software programmers in the surrounding area for its local meal -delivery business. The time around Thanksgiving should be their highest and most profitable; people have Thanksgiving parties, or they would like proper Thanksgiving dinner delivered to them, and so on. When business was roaring around Thanksgiving, and they felt that they really didn't need any more custom at the moment than they had, they thought they could save quite a bit with pulling back on their search advertising with AdWords. To people who don't really understand how search advertising works, it often becomes difficult to comprehend how thoroughly a GoogleAdWords spot makes their business visible to millions of potential customers. Possibly only one in a thousand viewers actually make some actual purchase from you; but over millions of views, that adds up.

The little catering business had its hopes pinned on a great Thanksgiving sales. The effect of the pullback in its advertising was dramatic; in one day flat, they found that they had practically no orders for the day. As their luck had it, their competitors had figured it the other way around: if their current advertising budget was as effective as it was, they figured, it would be much better if they doubled it. All of this comes out of a lack of some understanding over how the search advertising concept works. Mere casual guesswork no longer gets results, and managing search ads properly, becomes an MBA-level scale; there actually are consultancies that help small businesses decide on when way to step up and when to pull back.

Search engine marketing, the advertising method that AdWords completely dominates is said to be the most effective way to advertise, that man has ever invented. So effective is it, that it accounts for fully one half of all of Google's vast revenues. Advertisers say they resent the way they have practically no choice but to deal with Google, and sometimes have filed lawsuits against the corporation for charging as much as it does for every click. With AdWords sales falling off in recent years, Google is actually trying to help small businesses understand how to plan for and play the AdWords machine. For example, it helps businesses see how much business actually comes their way from each search engine they advertise with on similar advertising programs. Typically, Yahoo and Bing bring in only a fraction of what Google manages.

The catering business above, has a couple of old Internet hands, going through all the information and data that they get from Google to build a model of what particular areas of the city their business most comes from, and what words those particular people in their target demographic are most likely to use. It soon becomes high science. There are tools by which they can monitor in real time the kind of traffic they get from Google. Google sells search advertising space by an auction. Advertisers have to use these tools to find out how much they can bid for a spot, how many people will actually click on advertisements, thus costing them something, and how many will actually buy.

Google is obviously on the right track. Small businesses need better counseling on the way they can use search engine marketing and search advertising. This is the wave of the future, and the sooner the world is familiar with it, the better it will be for everyone.