Why not to use Google AdWords

Okay, let me be frank! I was busy on some other projects such as the case studies listed here and investment projects in India where I live. So it was a bit hard to write a blog post.

And of course, I don’t want to provide you crap or some information for the sake of regular updates. But from now on I will try my best to improve and at least write 3 blog posts a month.

Anyways, here is a fresh post on why you can’t afford to use Google AdWords.

This may seem a bit unrealistic but it is true that Google AdWords will eat up your money and may not pay it off to you to become profitable in your online business, especially if you are new and just starting out.

I am telling no-nonsense about this because there are certain reasons that I am going discuss with you today. Google AdWords is the name that comes to a mind of any advertiser when he thinks of advertising at first.

And why not? After all it is the biggest online advertiser at present. But being big doesn’t mean it is good enough. That is what I am going to explain you today.

In order to understand why not to use Google AdWords, we must understand how Google AdWords actually works. You must know the whole process so that you can also realize that using Google AdWords is beneficial to you or not.

How to use Google AdWords

It is pretty simple to use Google AdWords. The only reason for this simplicity of usage of Google AdWords is because it is the place from where Google Inc. earns over 90% of its earnings.

The process of using Google AdWords has been broken down in four simple steps for better understanding. They are:

1. Decide your budget
2. Create your ads
3. Select your keywords (according to your niche)
4. Provide your billing information

This process looks simple but it isn’t as there are thousands of advertisers spending millions of dollars on making their ads effective.

What I mean to say is you can create ads in around 15 minutes but do they will be effective to attract visitors and convert them into paying customers? May be yes or may be no.

Click on Create your first campaign and you are ready to go for online advertising via Google AdWords.
Now you will be guided to whole campaign creation process and at last your ad will look like this.

The upper one is text ad unit and lower one is an image ad unit. Though there can be other dimensions, these are standard dimensions used by people.

This was the advert creation process in Google AdWords. After this your ads will be live and you will get clicks coming in.

Did you find any flaws in Google AdWords that can affect your ROI (Return on Investment)?

Probably not and that is where Google makes its business position much more effective to hide the disadvantages and magnify the advantages with its strong brand name.

I am not opposed to Google or its services. I too use them daily like you (Gmail, Google+, YouTube, Google Drive etc.) but the thing is to know whether a particular product that a global tech leader is providing is worth for you or not.

Reasons affecting your ROI in Google AdWords

Here are the reasons which can affect your ROI if you use Google AdWords.

Clicks – When you start advertising by fixing your daily budget you will surely get clicks but it is a big question as to they will convert or not.

That is why, as said before, millions are spent on conversion optimization and not many are capable of spending that much money including me and maybe you.

At last what is the point of spending several hundred or thousand dollars without yielding any results?

Process takes time – Generally in advertising, process takes time for an advertiser to understand whether a particular advert is working well or not. As the time passes, so the money.

You have to do A/B split test campaigns in order to know which advert works best and how a customer behaves in each of the advert that you are running.

This again takes money to do so and if you do not have a budget of several hundred dollars you cannot do that.

If we consider the time value, you are daily loosing much of your customer acquisition than what you would have been able to do.

Ads placement – While advertising with Google AdWords you never know where your ads will be placed in their network (unless you specifically choose a particular website).

Now that is a problem because you don’t know from where your visitors are coming.

Although Google says that it contextually displays ads but I have found their ads in places where it would be of no value to the advertiser to advertise.

One such place is in apps such as Flappy Bird. Look at this picture.

This is a very big risk because Flappy Bird is such a game that can be played by anyone from a five-year old to an adult. And who knows your ad will be displayed when in apps like this and who will be clicking or tapping on it.

Although Flappy Bird has been removed from the online stores, but there are plenty of apps which displays advertisements that are not related or we can say contextually displaying unrelated ads.

Ads are displayed based on the specification of apps but who knows who will be using those apps.

Another critical thing to note is that while playing addictive games like Flappy Bird you are not really in a mood to see the advertisement. This highly affects the advertiser’s spending.

What if while playing you accidentally tap on the advertisement shown in the game? There is no point to advertise at a place where people just accidentally come at your website and go away at a speed of a bullet train.

Moreover this will increase your website’s bounce rate which is not good for search engine optimization and overall rankings of your website.

So by now, you must be thinking what is the solution if you want to advertise online? Well, there is a solution to every problem.

Advertise online with effectiveness

With some of the drawbacks from Google AdWords you don’t have to worry as there is a way where there is a will.

In Google AdWords you do not know from where your clicks are coming, but there is an option in Google AdWords itself to display your ads on a specific website or a group of specific websites.

For this option to work the website on which you want your ads to be placed should be included in the Google’s Display Network.

First Option

You can do it by following the simple process.

• Sign in to your AdWords account and setup campaign settings.
• Make sure you select “Search & Display Networks – All features,” “Display Network only – All features,” or “Display Network only – Remarketing” while setting up the campaign.
• Then scroll down and you’ll see “Narrow Your Targeting Further Option”. Click on it and select placements.
• You will see a window like as shown below. Now you just have to enter the URLs of the websites you want your ads to appear on.

This was the possible option for you if your advertiser’s site is included in the Google’s Display Network.

Second Option

Another option is to directly contact the webmaster that you are interested in advertising on his or her website.

A week ago for Everydailyseotip.blogspot.com I got an email asking for advertising here on this website. The email looked like this.

You can also try doing this. This will directly be sent to the owner or the manager of the website.

Even if there is no advertising section on the website where you want to advertise, there are good chances that the webmaster is interested in advertising.

Third Option

This option is the best option in my opinion. You can use Social Media Adverstising. The two most basic advantages of social media advertising are:

You can shout out your name.

You can get followers, if not customers so you can eventually convert them into customers later.

Every social media site has a follow feature which is not available when you go through Google AdWords for advertising.

Whether it is Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr there is a follow feature which gives you an added advantage over simple paid to click advertising.

You can have a look at Lewis Ogden’s Facebook case study which is pretty amazing. He used Facebook ads in a sporting way and earned a handsome amount of money in a week’s time.

Closing up

At last if you want to advertise effectively, you have to be creative. Creativity is required in every step of advertising and life in order to be successful.

From banner making to ad placements you have to be creative enough to make a mark. Else spend more money to get your word heard. Creativity and money spent are inversely related.

More the creativity, less money you spend and vice versa.

You might be shocked that why not to use Google AdWords, but I am not saying abandon Google AdWords; rather I’m trying to say in which cases you can have better return on investment from advertising apart from Google AdWords.

It’s just that I want to explore more options and don’t want to stick to any one source like Google AdWords.

Comparing brings out different points to look at which in turn will improve what you are doing. 

Do you think you have some awesome tips for advertising? If yes, please share it in the comments section below and share the knowledge with others.