Google AdWords

Foreword

David Booth

Senior Partner, Cardinal Path, and Google Seminars for Success Leader, AdWords, Analytics, Urchin, and Website Optimizer Certified Partner

Have you been online today?

Unless you live in the confines of a cave still not serviced by cellular or satellite, and regardless what day of the week or how early in the morning you might be reading this, the answer is very likely a resounding “Yes, I have.” But it wasn’t that long ago that car phones resembled NASA equipment fit for a mission to Mars and the Internet was something experienced on the family desktop computer, once everyone was done using the telephone for anything else.

Well, the world has changed, and with that change has come a veritable new frontier for the field of marketing. At the turn of the 20th century, John Wanamaker famously said, “I fully believe that half the money I spend on marketing is wasted. The trouble is, I don’t know which half.” And therein lies the fundamental problem of traditional marketing, which we’ve struggled to overcome since before Mr. Wanamaker uttered his famous words.

We’ve put our messages on the pages of newspapers and magazines, sent them out over the airwaves of radio, and made them dance in front of the eyeballs glued to the living room television. We’ve paid the postage for our mail drops, we’ve listed ourselves in all the colors of directory pages, and we’ve purchased lists of potential consumers of our products and services. And in the end, we’ve put forth our best, most educated guesses, and we’ve been left hoping that our target market just happens to be on the receiving end of our messages, just when they need us most.

But back to our question: Why were you online today? If you weren’t checking your email, then, most likely, you were searching for something. And to an advertiser, that means you were exposing your intent; you were telling the marketers, in your own words, exactly what you wanted at that very moment. If only we as advertisers could get our hands on you right when you did that search…

… and that is exactly what Google AdWords has enabled us to do. As you read through this book, you’ll see that we no longer need to guess, and we no longer need to waste our advertising dollars on prospects that have no interest in our products and services. If you’re selling, say, sandwiches, then you’re trying your hardest to seek out all those people who are hungry right now, actively on the prowl to solve that problem of theirs with a sandwich. Wouldn’t you love to be there just when someone nearby types “sandwich shop” into their phone so you could jump out with a big sign promoting your sandwiches? Well, that’s exactly what we’re doing here.

And it gets better than that. Not only can we go after our potential customers by the words they type, but also AdWords allows us to further refine our targeting by things like geography, device, day of week, time of day, networks, websites, demographics, and even interests that users have displayed as they traverse the Web. Wanna offer up a coupon to hungry people interested in food who are searching from a smartphone or a tablet using a signal from a wireless carrier somewhere within 5 miles of your location, only during your hours of operation? This book will show you how.

And how about scale? Through this platform, you can reach more than 80 percent of the entire Internet-using world, showing your ads across the Google properties that have become a staple of our everyday lives, as well as more than a million other websites. And all of this is available in an advertising medium that is remarkably accountable. Through flexible bidding options and the tracking mechanisms you’ll learn about, through AdWords and tools like Google Analytics, you’ll finally be able to control your costs, measure impact, and calculate the return on your advertising investment within a matter of hours of launching your campaigns.

Excited yet? You should be. The bottom line is that Google AdWords has seen such enormous success for one simple reason: for most advertisers, and in most situations, with an understanding of the tool and the right management, it just plain works. And this book is a foundational step towards refining or developing an AdWords strategy that works for you as well.

I met Stasia for the first time while on the road as a fellow Google Seminars for Success Leader, and it was immediately apparent that she was truly passionate about showing people how to take full advantage of this opportunity. It goes without saying that she maintains a vast array of knowledge and experience on the topic, but much more importantly, Stasia possesses that rare gift for being able to gracefully and effectively impart a practical—and usable—understanding of it to others.

In the years that have followed, I’ve had the pleasure of working with Stasia all around the world and seeing this firsthand. In every seminar, at every event, during every training, and inside every consultation, I have watched as she has proven this ability without fail, leaving behind a fresh wave of newly empowered marketers. As you’ll see in the pages of this book, Stasia’s ability to teach in person translates impeccably well to print, and you couldn’t be in better hands when learning how to make Google AdWords work for you.

So whether you’re a seasoned veteran looking to brush up your skills or if this is a new journey you’re about to begin, get ready—you’re about to find the other half of that marketing budget!