Here are the 5 reasons why you should advertise your small business.

1. You’ll Gain Control

If you’re like most business owners, you rely on referrals for the majority of your new customers, clients and patients. Referrals are wonderful.

But the problem is, they aren’t very reliable or predictable!

Same goes with organic Google rankings – aka search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is wonderful, don’t get me wrong. I believe SEO is one of the best investments a local business can make — that’s why we created The Local SEO Formula. But the reality is that SEO rankings can come and go.

That’s why I always advise my clients to develop multiple sources of new customers, so they’re not vulnerable or dependent on just 1 source of new customers, clients and patients at any given time.

So, if you already have 1 source of marketing (such as referrals or SEO) that is reliably providing you with new customers, every month, that’s great!  But don’t stop there. You should always be seeking to add additional sources, so your business has greater stability.

If you want consistent, reliable predictable customer flow, you should be advertising.

Advertising provides you with the greatest level of control over your marketing, because you can just buy more and more of it.

Where Should You Advertise?

You have many options, including Google AdWords, Facebook, direct mail, Yellow Pages, newspapers, TV, radio, and many others.

We usually recommend Google AdWords as the best starting point.

So, for the remaining 4 reasons, I’m going share 4 reasons why I recommend every business owner should be advertising with Google AdWords…

2. You’ll Pay Only For Qualified Traffic

With Google AdWords, you’re only paying when people click on your ads. That’s why it’s called pay per click (PPC) advertising. And there are no minimums, so you can start by spending as little as $5 or $10 per day if you want to, and then scale up your ad budget upon success.

Search engine traffic is very qualified traffic because potential customers, clients and patients are searching for the services you offer. They’re ready to buy. They’re just deciding whom they’re going to buy from you or your competitors.

If you’re not advertising and you’re not ranking in the organic results, you are simply missing out. We recommend you invest in both SEO and PPC. But if you’re not yet ranking in Google, then you should at least test advertising.

And here’s why…

3. You’ll Reach More Customers Than Ever Before

According to Google:

  • 20% of all searches are locally-based
  • 40% of all mobile searches are for local products and services
  • 97% of people use the Internet to search for local businesses.

If you own a local business, there’s never been so many people looking for your products and services. And Google AdWords has the largest share of this local search traffic, so it’s the best starting point in terms of advertising.

What if you don’t have a huge ad budget?

Not a problem…

4. You Can Compete – And Win

Google AdWords really levels the playing field, so that even advertisers with limited budgets can compete – and win – against competitors with deeper pockets.

The reason it’s a level playing field is because Google AdWords is an auction, where advertisers bid for highest placement. However, there’s an extra twist to it that many business owners don’t know about.

Google rewards you for writing great ads. If your ads get clicked more often than your competitors, you can rank higher in Google and actually pay less per click. So, you can generate more leads while paying a fraction of what your competitors pay Google.

Last but not least…

5. You’ll Make Smarter SEO Investments

One of my favorite reasons to advertise in Google AdWords is to improve my SEO campaigns.

Now, to clarify, advertising in Google will NOT directly help you rank better in Google’s organic results.

(We’ve had some people commenting on our blog that Google rewards you in the SEO rankings if you buy AdWords ads. But that’s a myth, plain and simple.)

However, AdWords can improve your SEO campaigns in an indirect way, and here’s how…

When you test different keywords in AdWords, you’ll see which keywords are generating leads and sales (assuming you’ve set up proper tracking). When you find that certain keywords are delivering sales, you should target those keywords for your SEO campaigns.

That might sound really simple, but you’d be surprised — most people don’t do this.

Why is this important?

If you don’t test first with PPC, you risk focusing on near-worthless keyword targets. And that’s a big opportunity cost.

A lot of times, you might get ranked in Google for a keyword, and it delivers some traffic but it doesn’t deliver leads or customers. By testing the keywords first in AdWords, you take the guesswork out of SEO. You’ll only target the best quality keywords.

 

Want More Tips? Get Our FREE Report

We recently created a new report – 10 Steps to Dominate Google AdWords – that outlines our 10-step methodology for creating profitable Google AdWords campaigns.

Read it and you’ll discover:

  • 3 questions you should answer before you start advertising
  • The #1 biggest mistake to avoid when advertising online
  • How to position yourself as the best choice in your niche
  • The secret to paying LESS per-click than your competitors
  • 4 easy ways to track the profitability of your Adwords campaign
  • 8 tips to generate more response from your advertising
  • A default AdWords setting you shoudl turn ‘OFF’ (this is critical)
  • How you can double your sales without increasing your ad budget
  • And more…

Click here to get the report:

10 Steps to Dominate Google AdWords

 

Agree / Disagree?

Do you agree that all businesses should be advertising online?

If not, why not?

Do you have any questions about setting up a Google AdWords campaign?
Share your comments below.