Even the most successful companies depend on marketing to drive sales and grow. Nobody—not even titans of industry such as Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk—is exempt from the need to spread the word about their business, nor the difficulties of doing so. It’s hard.

Traditional Marketing vs. Digital Marketing

As we enter the digital age, technology is emerging to ease the difficulties that accompanied traditional marketing methods. To be clear, when we refer to “traditional” marketing, we are referring to advertising in dated mediums such as billboards, newspapers, and magazines; think Mad Men. In the 20th century, there was an old saying among marketers that went, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half!” So true.

Indeed, the problem with these traditional mediums of advertising was (and still is) the lack of information. Modern marketers make data-driven decisions to fine-tune their efforts in order to allocate their time and money as efficiently as possible. This is how they give clients the most “bang for their buck.”

This data that we are referring to helps marketers know who their message is resonating with. Who are they? Where do they live? What do they care about? What’s the best way to talk to them? These are the big questions that modern marketing software exists to answer. And, unfortunately, no newspaper, magazine, billboard, or bench sign will ever be able to answer any of them. Any success (or lack thereof) resulting from advertisements done this way is 100% unquantifiable and unmeasurable.

Okay, I’m Sold On Digital Marketing—Now What?

If you’ve gotten this far, we’re going to go out on a limb and assume that you’re already sold on the idea of digital marketing. Great! But this is where things can start to feel complicated. There are numerous digital marketing platforms and methodologies that exist, all of which have their own unique sets of advantages and disadvantages. How are regular people like you supposed to weigh the pros and cons of every option you have available to you in order to make the right decision?  

This is also hard. But we’re here to help!

Digital marketing platforms such as Facebook, Hubspot, and Mailchimp all serve important purposes in the global marketplace, but today, we’re going to focus on one platform in particular: Google AdWords. We’re going to walk you through its benefits.

Benefits Of Google AdWords

1. Taps Huge Traffic Sources To Deliver Faster Results Than SEO

First, to be clear, we are not in the least suggesting that committing to the use of AdWords will alleviate you of the need to adhere to SEO best practices. But we are saying that SEO takes time. It takes Google 30 days simply to index a new site. And, as a general rule of thumb, even if everything is done perfectly, it may take a brand new site as long as 6 additional months to climb the search results. But Google AdWords is instant.

At the top of every Google results page, you will see sponsored links. These are the products of AdWords campaigns. They don’t carry as much weight as rising to the top of Google’s search results organically, but they do capture a great deal of traffic, and they serve to increase the domain authority of sites that are in the process of fighting their way to the front page of Google’s search results.

2. Extremely Accurate Targeting Capabilities

The ability to find and target the people who are mostly likely to purchase your product or service is game changing. If you are a Nashville-based realtor, targeting broke college students in Chicago who are researching the housing market for a school paper is not going to yield any new leads for your business. You are looking for people who are older, who live in more residential areas, who have a higher level of income, and who live in Nashville. How are you going to reach this narrow slice of the global population?

Much of what makes Google AdWords so useful as a marketing tool transcends the simple popularity of their platform. Think about Gmail, Google Docs, Google Plus, Google Maps, etc—these are all applications that people depend on everyday. This constant mass usage has given Google an endless sea of information about their users that marketers can leverage to target the exact people that they want to reach. You can target people by location, by language, by age, by gender, by time zone, by browsing device… the list goes on.

3. Guarantee of Relevance & Equality

You know how Google works. You type something in, press “enter,” and it will show you a list of search results that are as relevant as possible to your search terms. Relevance is the key and the engineers at Google work very hard to make sure that nothing compromises that; not even revenue from Google AdWords. What does this mean for you? It means that the playing field is (relatively) level.

You won’t be the only business that is running AdWords campaigns for your keywords or target demographics. You are sure to have competitors, and some of them may be running campaigns with much higher budgets than you can afford. Will these competitors be able to outbid you for the top slot? Not necessarily. Google’s algorithms are complex and will take it into account if your campaign has a smaller budget but a higher level of relevance. If set up correctly, Google users will see your ads only if it is highly relevant to their search terms, and that means you have a fighting chance of carving out a customer base for your business, even with a modest budget.

4. Ability To Measure, Analyze, & Fine-Tune

Remember that old quote about how traditional advertising mediums made it difficult to figure which half of your money was being wasted? Well, this is the solution to that problem! One of the best things about Google AdWords is its sophisticated analytical tools. You will be able to see exactly how well your campaigns are doing in real time. You will be able to see which groups of people your campaign is resonating with, and you will even be able to A/B test variations of that campaign to figure out how best to connect with your target audience.

Success that you cannot quantify is success that you cannot build on. Google AdWords is the ultimate solution to the glaring lack of data provided by traditional advertising mediums, so you would do well to take advantage of it! If you harness the power of AdWords analytics software, then you will reap massive benefits from our last point…

5. Maximized Cost Efficiency

Here’s another old quote for you: “A penny saved is a penny earned.” Benjamin Franklin said that.

Google AdWords will help you save limitless amounts of pennies by giving you the tools to figure out what’s working and what isn’t in your marketing campaigns. As you correct for inefficiencies in your campaign, your customer acquisition rate will sky rocket, and your ROI (Return-On-Investment) will go through the roof. In the end, ROI is the most important metric of any marketing campaign, and Google AdWords will give you granular control over it.

Want To Learn More?

If you’re interested in learning more, or hiring a team of AdWords experts to handle your marketing efforts, then don’t hesitate to reach out and get in touch with us! We’ll put you on the path to long-term, sustainable growth.