For those of you who don’t know, Google AdWords is Google’s Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising business. When you do a Google search, it is the links that appear in the yellow box at the top of the page and down the right hand column.
You pay Google to put your advert in for specific searches, but you only pay for the advert when someone clicks on the link, which means you don’t have to pay anything except when you get a guaranteed visit to your website.
In this case study, Fliss, who owns a wedding cake business in Cheshire, UK explains how Google Adwords works for her.
100% of my advertising budget goes on Google AdWords. I get contacted all the time from people wanting to put my adverts in magazines and on flyers, or to have a display at wedding fayres, but it really is a no brainer to refuse them all and give all my money to Google.
A bit extreme I hear you say? Well, let me explain:
When I first started my business, I explored many different ways of advertising. I don’t have a shop, so my goal is to get people to come to my website so they can see my wedding cakes. Using my analytics software, I know that approximately 2% of the people that visit my website make an enquiry, and approximately 20% of those enquiries go on to book. That means I get one order for every 250 people that visit my website.
Those percentages seem to stay the same no matter where they find out about my site, where they live or the time of the year.
Ever since I made my business details available online, I have been constantly bombarded with different bridal publications calling me to try and sell me advertising; the best deal of which was £199 for a half-page advert in a magazine that was going to have 22,000 copies printed to be distributed at bridal fayres.
Assuming 90% of those made it into the hands of actual brides, and 50% of those were still looking for a cake, and my advert was influential enough to draw 10% of those people to my website, that works out at around 20p per impression.
I’ve also looked into getting flyers made (~34p per impression), printing my own flyers (~26p per impression), wedding fayres (~30p per impression), general web directories (£1+ per impression!) and specific wedding web directories (~40p per impression).
AdWords on the other hand guarantees me visits to my website. What is better is that I can specify to only show my ad to searchers within 35 miles of where I live, and for the best performing search, “wedding cakes” I only have to pay 12p per click.
You do have to have a good website to get it that cheap (your position is based upon the quality of your website and the amount you’re willing to pay) and it can get a bit expensive if there is heavy competition, but the wedding industry is seriously under-represented in the PPC market.
The more money I give to Google, the more guaranteed website visits I get. I can’t afford to max out on my AdWords opportunities (around 300 clicks per day, just from within 35 miles of me) so there really isn’t any point in my pursuing other less efficient advertising options.
~Fliss~
Fliss is the owner of FlissyCakes, a wedding cake business based in Altrincham, Cheshire. She writes for the Bridal Magazine Blog, and has her own wedding cake blog. You can connect with Fliss and FlissyCakes on Twitter and on Facebook.