Google AdWords is simple.  The user is in Google searching for some specific keywords, or they are on a site that uses the specific keywords in the text of the page (and is using Google AdSense to generate revenue), and  the advertisement shows up to hopefully get the user to come to your site.  The advertisement is clickable, and it will take the user to whatever page we specify in our advertising campaign.

we are hoping for folks to follow a certain path:

1) The user searches for certain keywords on Google (or those words are in the text as mentioned above)
2) Our advertisement is there trying to gain the user’s attention
3) The user clicks on our advertisement (and we pay Google!)
4) The user is directed to a landing page that is specifically designed for the keywords that were shown in the ad (that convinced the user to come to our site)
5) The user reads the text on that page, determines that he or she should check us out, and clicks the “Go” or “Register” or whatever button.
6) The user is brought to the “Register” page that asks him or her for the minimally needed information to register with the site and start using it.
7) The user registers and is directed to another page where he or she can start using our service immediately

Well, that’s our plan anyway.  Hopefully the user won’t bail out in the middle there somewhere.  But we’ll be keeping track of what users do so we can tweak things along the way.  Anyway…

Steps 1 and 2: Get the user’s attention with the ad

So of course we need an ad in the first place.  The Google AdWords ad that we are going to create falls into a shape that looks something like this:

  [ Line 1 Underlined Somewhat Capitalized Title]
  [ Line 2 (and sometimes wrapped
    into Line 3 if it’s a narrow ad)]
  [ URL of advertising website ]

Google has all kinds of rules around what you can and cannot do.  But as long as you aren’t trying to pull any fancy stunts, you’ll find that they are all common sense rules.

We needed to do some research to determine what the keywords we wanted to purchase were going be.  Since other competitors also desire the keywords, there’s some research and guesswork required. 

The market we are focusing on first is the coin collectors.  There are lots of these types of collectors out there and because their collections can often be quite extensive and valuable, they like to be organized.  They are split in how they are organized.  From what we can tell, about 40% of them purchase specialized inventory software for this purpose, whereas the rest of these folks either use a simple spreadsheet, a personal database (like MS Access), or a low-tech solution like a notebook. 

And why would they want our web-based software over the one they can pay for?  Because like so many other applications out there, it’s web based and free.  I’m not saying I completely agree with the whole “web-based is better than fat-client” argument, but I am instead going with the trend on this one.  Personally, I would rather write a fat client application and sell it on line, but that’s not what our research suggested we should do…

So now we need to do some research to figure out what to put into the ad.  But I’m tired and it’s late, so I’m turning in for the evening.