If you are to succeed in business you will need Google
- Written by Greg Rogers News Company Editor
Google rules the Internet. It is as simple as that!
Back in the day, Australia's biggest retailers controlled most of the clothing and furniture markets in each Capital city and in larger regional areas. Their total dominance was once unchallenged but the Internet changed that. A Myer's stocktaking sale used to attract thousands of people to its stores around the country. After the Internet was created, Amazon and eBay are probably the largest retailers in the World and they do not even own a shop. They sell furniture and clothing online and they deliver items within days.
These new online retailers grew to be retail giants due to their cunning use of Google Search. Small businesses can do the same with Google Adwords campaigns run by professional marketers like PPC PRO.
Google search engines thoroughly index almost all existing web sites and eventually find new web sites on a continuous basis, so almost any business, institution, service or government department, will have the contents of their web sites indexed by Google. That is a good thing but just being indexed is not enough because the contents or products or services of a business need to be actually presented to consumers. There are over 1.9 Billion web sites in the World and they all compete against each other for attention, so the chances of being found "organically" are pretty slim.
Most of the major successful businesses like eBay and Amazon, all pay Google to show links to their product pages when people around the World or in specific markets, search for a product say "Air Conditioner". A manufacturer in Thailand with the best air conditioner in the World may go out of business if they do not have a network of retailers who use paid search because the major operators pay a lot of money to appear on the top of the page when people search on Google for "air conditioners". "Page one is where the money is" because most people only look at the first page and if the air conditioner manufacturer from Thailand is not shown on page one, they will not sell many products. In online marketing, being seen first is often more important for making a sale than quality.
The good news is that you can pay Google to be shown on the first page.
In the travel industry, giants like Flight Centre and Trip a Deal pay Google to show their travel products on page one when people, who are interested in a holiday, search for information about any destination or experience. They each pay Google Adwords thousands of Dollars every day. That is how they control a sizeable part of the travel market.
The lesson from these insights into how new businesses have taken over from older established businesses, is that it is vital to have a very good web site, publish unique relevant content and consider both search engine optimisation and paid search as the core components of a marketing budget.
Using Google Adwords is not easy. It requires training, insider knowledge and a strong insight into how much money competing business operators pay Google to be seen when people type "keywords" into a Google search box. For those reasons, it is a good idea to consult a professional PPC ( Pay Per Click ) advisory service so as to gain a head start against competitors. This is particularly important for start ups, as Google will "supercharge" business marketing for a fee.
A Google PPC advisor can provide insights into how much to offer per click, what keywords are too expensive to bid on, what keywords are under used and are lower to buy and how to control an Adwords budget.