What is Google AdWords?

AdWords is and advertisement program from Google that let you create your specific advertisements, display them in Google and its advertisement network, and receive clicks from potentially interested people. It is a charged program where you pay when people click on your ads, but not for their impressions. Don’t be scared by the payment, because you have the complete control of your spending and as you will see later a few tens of dollars are enough for the local promotion of a band for some months.

The following is how Google describes how it works:

You create your ads: you create ads and choose keywords, which are words or phrases related to your business.

Your ads appear on Google: when people search on Google using one of your keywords, your ad may appear next to the search results. Now you’re advertising to an audience that’s already interested in you.

You attract customers: people can simply click your ad to make a purchase or learn more about you.

How can Google AdWords help in promoting a band / group?

With Google AdWords you can create a tailored promotional campaign that automatically makes appear your advertisements on Google and its partner network to an audience that is related to what you are offering, in your case the exhibition of your band. If your campaign is well created the audience exposed to your ads is already potentially interested, then there are chances that a part could click on your ads in order to learn something more about you and maybe contact you. I underscore “automatically”, because this is the big advantage: the campaign works for you 24/7, you don’t have to call or write to anybody, just to answer to the contacts that you receive.

When a potential “customer” clicks on your ads, he/she must be redirected somewhere, that’s why your band needs to have a website. If the band doesn’t have a website, you can easily create one for free using many services that you can find on Internet, like for example Google Sites .

Are you interested in this opportunity? Well, continue reading this article and you will be guided step by step into the creation of a campaign for a band, but if you want to reach the maximum success investing the minimum money keep in mind the following points:

• select carefully target locations and languages, two extremely important aspects to reach the right audience in the right place. If your band is based in the United States, you don’t want to be contacted from Ukraine by Russian speaking people, right? 🙂
• create compelling advertisements: this is, together with the keywords, a crucial part of your campaign because its success depends on how much your advertisements stimulate a potential customer that reads them to click and visit your website.
• choose effective keywords: this is the second crucial part of your campaign because your Ads can be shown on Google when people make a search with them, and will be used even to find relevant sites on the Display Network where show your Ads

1 – Connect to the Google home page at www.google.com and click on “Sign In”

2 – Click on “Sign up for a new Google Account”

3 – Now you are into the page where you can create a Google Account. It’s a simple procedure, just follow the indications.

Step 2 – Create a Google AdWords Account

In order to activate a Google AdWords campaign you have to create a Google AdWords account.
If you already have a Google AdWords Account go directly to Step 3, otherwise follow this procedure:

1 – Connect to the Google home page at www.google.com and click on “Advertising Programs”

2 – Click on “Google AdWords”

3 – If you are not already signed into your Google Account, you are requested to sign in.

4 – Now you are in a page where you have to select some important information for your Google AdWords account. Pay attention to the note that says that “you won’t be able to change these details later, so please be careful when making your selections”.

You have to select:

• A) Time zone country or territory
• B) Time zone
• C) The permanent currency for your account

Remembering that you won’t be able to change these details later, check again your selections, and then:

• D) Click “continue“

5 – That’s all, you have created your Google AdWords account, and now you are able to create your campaigns.

Note that you can sign in to your AdWords account using the Google Account address and password, and that your advertisements won’t run until you submit your billing information.

Step 3 – Create your Google AdWords campaign

If you are here, it means that you have a Google AdWords account, so let’s start creating your campaign !!

In this example I will show how to create a campaign with the following imaginary characteristics:

• it’s created for a band called Only 70
• the band plays only music from the 70ies
• it’s based in San Francisco, California, United States
• they want to promote the band only in San Francisco and nearby areas

1 – Connect to the Google home page at www.google.com and click on “Sign In“.

2 – Sign into your AdWords account using the Google Account address and password, Google has a unique procedure for all its accounts.

3 – Now that you are signed in, click on “Advertising Programs“.

4 – Click on “Google AdWords”

5 – Tah dah !!!! You are inside your Google AdWords account. In this example you are entering into the account without having create a campaign yet, so a welcome page is presented that invites you to create your first one. There is even a “Learn more” section that you can explore if you are interested. When you are ready to start, click on “Create your first campaign“.

6 – First you have to select your campaign settings:

• A) choose a name for your campaign, whatever you like
• B) select Locations and languages of the campaign, two extremely important aspects in order to reach the right audience in the right place. Our band Only 70 wants to promote itself only in San Francisco and nearby areas, so if we selected “All countries and territories” the campaign could generate impressions of announcements worldwide (not a big trouble, you don’t pay for impressions) and receive clicks from Australia (trouble, you pay for every click!) , wasting our money. So select “Let me choose …“

• C) writing “San Francisco“, a selection page that presents pertinent options will appear.

• D) click “add” on the option/s that you like, in our case the metropolitan area of San Francisco. The effect of this selection is that AdWords will generate impressions of your announcements only in the result searching pages generated in response to queries submitted by people that are connected to Internet from this location.

• E) then select the “language/s” that your customers speak. Our band Only 70 wants to promote itself only in San Francisco and nearby areas, so we could select English and Spanish, but in our example we decide that English is enough. The effect of this selection is that AdWords will generate impressions of your announcements only to people that are using that language/s for their pages, queries, etc. etc. You have focused once again your audience.

scroll down and skip “Networks and devices“, the default values are okay, and fulfill the “Bidding and budget”  fields:

• F) activate “CPC bid limit“, where CPC means Cost Per Click. This will let you impose an upper limit to the cost that you want to pay for every click made on your advertisements.
• G) set your “CPC bid limit“. Choose a low limit, a few cents should be enough, because a so focused and specific campaign will not have lots of competitors, and your advertisements will gain impressions even with a low offer.
• H) Finally, set your “Budget“. A few dollars per day will be more than enough, because for the same reasons listed in G) you shouldn’t expect a big traffic, and consequently the number of clicks will be low.

scroll down and skip all the rest, the default values will start your campaign as soon as it is ready and will not set an end date, but do not worry because AdWords never goes beyond the funds that you load into your account. Then:

• I) Click on “Save and continue“.

7 – Now it’s time to create an “ad Group“:

• A) Choose an “Ad group name“, whatever you like

Then create an advertisement. This is, together with the keywords, a crucial part of your campaign because its success depends on how much your advertisements stimulate a potential customer that read it to click and visit your website. Note that on the right side you have a preview of your Ad:

• B) choose your headline, in this example we use the name of the band
• C) then fulfill the description lines
• D) fulfill the “Display URL“
• E) finally set your “Destination URL“, that should be the page belonging to your website where you want to direct who clicks on your advertisement. In this case we suppose that our band has a website called www.only70.com, and we use it.

scroll down and go to the keywords selection, the second crucial part of your campaign because your Ad can be shown on Google when people make a search with them, and will be used even to find relevant sites on the Display Network where show your Ad:

• F) Choose your keywords following the suggestions offered by Google. You have apparently no limits on the number of keywords that you can insert, and you can change, add and remove them later anytime you want
• G) Click on “Save and continue to billing“