Google Adwords is undoubtedly an excellent advertising tool. Not only does it provide relevant ads to users at the very moment they are looking for something, but from the advertiser’s point of view, a range of measuring tools enable them to constantly monitor their efforts. They can see what works, what doesn’t and then edit their ads accordingly.
It is this suite of measuring tools that, in my mind, make Adwords, a much more powerful marketing tool than traditional advertising methods. If you sell trainers, it would make sense to advertise in Running Weekly. The media company that owns the magazine will tell you the demographic of their readership. But they won’t be able to follow the conversion process or give you any details on user behaviour. What was the reaction of readers to the ad? Did it influence a purchasing decision? Did readers like the ad?
Adwords can do all of this, and therefore enable you to be responsive to your target market’s activity. Tracking how customers come on to your website and what they do there, can help influence the layout and design of your landing page to ultimately increase conversions.
You can also use landing pages to measure the effectiveness of your social media efforts. You can design landing pages around the social media campaign, and then use Google Analytics to track traffic and conversions.
Social media for companies is not about being social; it is about growing our business. So the best way to measure your efforts is to see how many customers your efforts generate. If you know a direct mail campaign at a cost of £5000, generates 50 customers, then you can spend £5000 on social media. If it generates more than 50, then it is clear that social media returns a better ROI than direct mail for your business.
Conversions are the key metric; not twitter followers or facebook friends. If your social media campaign can exceed your existing marketing efforts, then it can be considered a success.