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Here we are in the first quarter of 2018. Hopefully 2017 was a highly productive year for you with a successful ROI from your marketing activities. If this wasn’t the case for you, or you’d like to hear how you can improve your online visibility and reach your target audience more easily with the help of an AdWords digital advertising campaign, then read on…

Getting with Google is getting with the times, down under.

We all know the Internet is a major part of how we live our lives, but the numbers may astonish you. To quantify it, 91% of kiwis are online, with 86% of us surfing the web daily.

Most of us start our browsing session with a search, most likely using Google’s market-leading search engine (Google has almost 95% of the search market in New Zealand). Put this figure alongside the number of us online each day, and Google’s AdWords digital advertising service is starting to look like the obvious choice for NZ companies wanting to increase online visibility for their brand, drive more visitors to their website, and get more sales or enquiries.

Further evidence of Google’s search market dominance is apparent in the fact that over half of Google searches are now performed on mobile devices, and in NZ Google accounts for 98.97% of the mobile search engine market.

And what makes advertising with AdWords superior to other platforms?

So, we’ve established that the number of kiwis on the Internet can't be ignored, and that Google more or less OWN the Internet in the land of the long white cloud. But does this make advertising online any smarter than say a print or radio ad? The answer is yes… and no – the numbers of people online, alone are impressive, but it just means there’s a huge audience out there waiting. Where AdWords really comes into its own is when we look at how it can be used to target a specific audience and how measurable it’s performance is. This is what makes digital marketing an infinitely smarter choice than print and radio advertising.

AdWords is pay-per-click and concentrates your advertising spend on a target audience

A form of pay-per-click advertising, AdWords can (and should) be integrated with Google Analytics, an almighty reporting tool that Google created to record data on how people browse and how they react to different content and ads. This giant pool of data takes a lot of the guess work out of advertising. It means with the help of one of our Google Premier Partner certified digital marketers, you can find out:

• Which keywords your target audience are likely to search for
• When they are likely to search for them
• What device they are using
• Where in the country they are searching from
• What times of day (and days of the week) they’re searching

You can use parameters in all these areas to target your desired audience and place your product or service in front of them at the specific time they are searching for it.  The more targeted you get, the more likely you are to reach your target audience – who are more inclined to convert than someone from outside of your target audience – so you’re not throwing your money at ‘stab in the dark’ coverall advertisements on the radio or in newspapers.

AdWords measures performance, making ongoing and informed campaign changes possible

Back in 2014, I wrote a blog series, over on the Apex Digital site, entitled ‘Hard Truths About Promoting Your Business Online.’ Number four in the list in the second post of hard truths began, “You have no idea whether your offline advertising efforts are working, yet continue to spend money on them.” I spoke of my frustrations at watching businesses continue to throw their money at immeasurable offline advertising, seemingly due to unfounded concerns about the cost of digital advertising.

I assumed that these concerns about the cost of AdWords were basically a fear of the unknown, so I did some research into this. This research confirmed that online marketing with AdWords was “actually more affordable (and infinitely more measurable) than most traditional forms of marketing.” To see if my numbers still ring true today, I’ve updated and presented them for you in the table below:

In my original post I pointed out the measurability and transparency of AdWords advertising, noting the lack of timing involved in traditional forms of marketing. After all, when you want to investigate a weekend getaway, you’re not likely to go to the letterbox to consult the daily newspaper. Nor are you likely to listen to the radio or get in your car and drive past a billboard to see what deals you can get at your favourite sushi joint tonight. Of course, not…you’re going to pick up your phone and ask Google!

And as the owner of the sushi joint, if a hungry punter searches ‘Christchurch sushi deals’ on his or her phone and clicks on your ad, your AdWords and Google Analytics accounts will record the details of the search and resulting click, and add it to a pool of data that can be used to help inform what campaign improvements could be made.

Brilliance still needs good management

Digital advertising on AdWords is a superior platform compared to other channels, but there’s still the potential for inexperienced users to botch the setup and miss opportunities to optimise the campaign for better reach and ROI.

We've been working with AdWords since Google launched it with just 350 advertisers back in 2000. We are proud to know the industry and AdWords like the back of our hand, and our parent company, Apex Digital, has received Google Premier Partner status – the highest honour for digital marketers. We offer our clients added value by monitoring their AdWords campaigns daily, and providing detailed reporting, insight and advice to help optimise their campaigns and drive more traffic to their sites.

Drop us a line to learn more about joining the 1.2m advertisers that benefit from the highly targeted, measurable and transparent digital marketing service that is Google AdWords.

Disclaimer: Search Engine Market Share stats are notoriously difficult to obtain due to the way that different sources interpret the data and calculate the stats plus the popularity of Search Engines differs quite significantly by country. I’ve offered my best efforts to give local statistics based on research from sitepont.com, gs.statcounter.com and netmarketshare.com and this information is offered as a general insight into Google’s Market Share in NZ.