The websites of companies that have been on the market for several years and constantly invest heavily in advertising their product on the Internet usually have high rankings in search engines and a positive reputation. The high positions of such resources in Google search are also associated with constant work on their optimization.
But how then to build a business, having a young site that cannot quickly break into the TOP of search results for key queries of potential customers? Is it possible for a small or newly entered company to compete with serious resources that have been advancing for a long time?
The good news is that there is such an option. Contextual advertising for small businesses is an indispensable tool. Those who are just taking their first steps need to create a campaign and correctly set up the display of pay-per-click ads in the Google Ads system.
Important! By increasing brand awareness and increasing traffic to the website, contextual advertising makes a significant contribution to the growth of small business revenue.
For what types of small businesses is contextual advertising effective?
Contextual advertising shows decent results in almost all areas of small business presence.
For information. You can achieve good performance indicators if you set relevant search queries, correctly formulate the criteria for determining the target audience, and thoroughly work out the strategy.
There are also niches where it is impossible to do without contextual advertising:
B2B spheres. In the field of B2B, the vast majority of customers are attracted from search engines;
Local business. Searching for clients, for example, in social networks, for local businesses has a lower return, while conducting a contextual advertising campaign does not require large investments (the city of Kyiv is an exception);
Products of urgent demand. If the consumer has limited time to search for a service or product, then with a high probability, he will use the search engine to solve the problem.
What are the benefits of contextual advertising for small businesses?
Effective contextual ads for small businesses appear in exactly the right place at the right time, and they give instant results. Google Ads has a number of advantages, including for small companies:
Quick result. Obviously, the ideal for the entrepreneur is the benefit that can be obtained as quickly as possible. The fastest way to get a return on investment in promoting a product or service is contextual advertising. Launch your campaign by creating a Google AdWords account and setting the necessary parameters, and serve a stream of new customers from day one. This is, of course, a highly simplified scheme, and in reality, certain skills and labor costs are required to obtain tangible results. But in any case, this tool will increase traffic much faster than it can be done with SEO promotion;
The measurability of results. The effect of an advertising campaign can be evaluated almost in real time. For analytics, data is available on the number of clicks and impressions, money spent and profit, as well as many other parameters. The advertiser has the ability to track each visit to the site, see how visitors reacted to the ad, and evaluate the effectiveness of all ads;
Targeting. Contextual advertising allows you to set the parameters of the target audience and take into account many factors: location, time of display, gender and age of a potential client, type of device, and others. The campaign is set up quite flexibly, so feel free to segment the market and promote your product only to an interested audience;
Brand awareness. Contextual advertising copes with this task in the best way. By launching a media campaign that includes pay-per-impression banners, you can spread brand awareness to an audience that is interested in a particular topic;
Geotargeting. By limiting the ad display area to a given radius, restaurants, beauty salons, gyms and hairdressers can achieve good results in local promotion;
Budget. You can launch your first advertising campaign on Google even if you have a budget of 500 hryvnias. The system does not limit the ability to advertise companies with small budgets allocated for product promotion;
Pay per contact with targeted visitors only. When placing an ad in a print publication or traditional media, it is necessary to pay for each contact with the audience of the advertising platform. It is impossible to select in advance only those who are interested in the advertiser’s product. The principle of paying for contextual advertising is based on taking into account only those contacts that resulted in a transition to the site. That is, the money is charged only if the user who has shown interest in the offer clicked on the link in the ad. This scheme is more economical and correlates well with sales, since only an interested consumer will spend time studying the advertiser’s site.
Why don’t all small businesses use PPC?
PPC advertising for small businesses is an effective tool for attracting potential customers, but not everyone understands the benefits and uses this channel.
For information. Only a third of businessmen use contextual advertising to promote their product.
Why isn’t everyone using this productive way to attract an audience? Let’s analyze the main arguments of businessmen:
I’m not friends with the Internet
Special knowledge is required to launch an advertising campaign on the Internet. It is necessary to understand what a search system is, how information is selected and ranked in the global network, what a website is and for what purpose it is created. But many businessmen in Ukraine work the old-fashioned way, using the Internet only at home or not at all.
Even though they know that a good website can become a point of growth and attract new customers, entrepreneurs do nothing to increase their awareness in the matter of Internet marketing. Someone thinks that learning is difficult, and it is much easier to paste paper leaflets on poles and porches in the old-fashioned way. And someone saves on learning, trying to comprehend everything on their own, but this does not always lead to the desired success.
The age factor should also be taken into account – small businesses, as a rule, are run by entrepreneurs of the older generation, who are still wary of computer technology. Someone is afraid of it, and someone simply does not have enough time to master modern technologies. The result is that few entrepreneurs are considering launching contextual advertising.
There is only one way out of the situation: expand your knowledge by enrolling in relevant courses, set aside a few hours to watch training videos and read specialized articles daily. If employment does not allow finding time for all this, you should seek help from a contextual advertising agency.
I don’t have a website
There are many areas in which you can conduct full-fledged activities offline for a long time and not even think about creating a website. Entrepreneurs working in this way have several arguments: there is not enough money, it takes a lot of time, etc. Any reasons can sound, but there are only two main ones among them – ordinary laziness and an irrational fear of the new.
Not everyone knows how to fight laziness, but in this matter everyone sets priorities for himself. The reason for fear is often the negative experience of other entrepreneurs who are faced with irresponsible and unskilled performers.
As a result, many negatively perceive the very idea of creating a site. And those who still decide to develop it, after receiving the finished project, do not deal with it. There is also such a category of businessmen who only dream of the best website, without doing anything to make their dream come true.
Advice! You should not order an expensive complex web resource for a small business. It is better to create a simple website in a free website builder, but at the same time present all the advantages of the promoted product in an accessible form and correctly format information about the service or product.
I don’t know what contextual advertising is
Numerous Internet users click on contextual ads every day, not suspecting that they are going to the site through an ad unit. Many do not like banner advertising, it annoys them.
But identifying a banner on a page is much easier than identifying contextual advertising. Text ads are typically so similar to familiar search results that not everyone immediately understands that they are ads. That is why many do not consider this marketing tool as a serious and effective one.
Help! The monthly number of queries “contextual advertising” in the search engine does not exceed a couple of thousand. At the same time, phrases in the field of real estate or a hobby can gain hundreds of thousands and even millions of requests.
Many business owners have no idea where to find new customers. And contextual advertising, despite its high efficiency, is not the easiest way to attract the target audience due to the reasons described above.
A simple conclusion suggests itself: in relation to contextual advertising, you must constantly keep your finger on the pulse. If you do not already have this tool in your arsenal, connect it immediately after reading this article.
