The world now belongs to the small business owner but most small business owners don't have much money to grow their business. Getting into debt to fund your business before you have a steady flow of income is not only a bad idea, it's down right foolish. Don't get yourself in the hole before you even have a chance for success. Spend your money wisely and on a tight budget that you can fully afford on your current level of income.
Although it's a dog-eat-dog world out there, you can still steadily grow your business on a shoestring budget utilizing Google AdWords. One of the main reasons Google has been so successful is because they have focused much of their efforts on the small business owner marketing on a budget. If you haven't spent much time with Google AdWords, you may not be familiar with some of its key features which will allow you to fully customize your advertising campaign.
LOCATIONS
Location targeting allows you to funnel your audience by physical location, including territories, regions, cities, and custom areas. For example, if you are a business owner doing business in San Antonio, Texas and you only want to target people in the Greater San Antonio Area, you will be able to do such.
You may want to reach as many people as possible, but i's highly recommended that you focus your efforts locally in the beginning stages of growing your business even if local means the country you reside in. Every country has different laws, regulations, and even cultural differences. You may waste a lot of money targeting other countries because most people prefer to do business with people they know, trust, and can relate to.
LANGUAGES
A language barrier may mean the difference between a sale and no-sale. Even though Google has the ability to translate websites on your behalf, you must still communicate with your clients whether in person, over the phone, or through email. If you don't specify the languages you are able to communicate in, you may waste a lot of money on people who don't understand the message you are trying to convey.
One nice thing about the language setting is that people are all over the world speaking similar languages and when combined with the Location setting, you can target people from just about any Continent.
NETWORKS AND DEVICES
People have many options to surf the web, gather information, and stay connected. Depending on the type of business you have, you may want to focus your efforts on desktop and laptop computers, or you may want to extend your reach to include mobile devices with full Internet browsers, or both.
Google has the ability to advertise on their search engine, all their free products (Gmail, Blogger, etc.), websites, video games, applications, YouTube, and more. It's up to you to determine which of these will provide the best Return on Investment or Branding exposure for your business.
BIDDING OPTION
You may not realize this, but every time someone does a Google search there is an auction for the keywords based off relevance and amount willing to pay. Obviously, there are phrases and keywords that have a very high popularity, and sometimes the less obvious are the best options. You have the ability to control automatic bidding or manual maximum Cost-Per-Click (CPC) bidding. Both of these options, your bid is the amount your willing to pay for a click on your ad. Your bidding option, along with your budget, is one of the ways you control the cost of your ad campaign.
BUDGET
This is the amount you want to spend on your AdWords account. You are able to specify a daily budget so that your AdWords campaign will never exceed this amount. You have the ability to have the system use up your daily budget as quickly as possible or spread it out evenly throughout the day. If you reach your daily budget too early in the day, it's like closing your doors for business early in the day so the latter choice is the best choice for people with smaller budgets.
AD SCHEDULING
With this setting you are able to tell the system which hours of the day and which days of the week you would like your ads to run. Oftentimes the best hours in the day are during the early afternoon Monday through Friday. Deciding which dates and times you run your ads mostly depends on the nature of your business and when people will be looking for you.
AD ROTATION
If you have multiple campaigns running, you don't want all the ads displaying at the same time so this setting lets you customize when the different ads will appear in relation to one another within the specified ad group. The system will automatically favor the ads that have a higher CTR and Quality Score.
FREQUENCY CAPPING
Lastly, within the Google Display Network only, you have the ability to limit the number of times your ads appear to a unique user. As time progresses, it will be very smart to show your message to an individual more than once because it builds your brand and trust between you and the consumer. However, when you are on a tight budget, you must maximize every situation.
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