What is Google AdWords Express?

Google Boost AdWords Express is a simplified version of Google AdWords that is targeted at local small business owners.  Rather than going through a complicated setup process, AdWords Express uses your business categories and automatically optimizes each advertising campaign with keywords designed to reach the best audience possible.  The search categories can be managed in your Google Places listing. This allows you to create a maximum of 5 separate listings for each business location that you control, though that could get expensive depending on the level of competition in the area.

Google AdWords Express Cost and Prices

Just like with normal AdWords prices, Express is set by a budget that varies by competition for keywords in an area.  Depending on your business category, Google will determine the amount of competition and display to you three recommended campaign maximums. When you set a particular budget for a month, Google doesn’t necessarily spend all of it.  In fact, you are not charged at all unless a searcher actually clicks on your sponsored link.  But, because Google AdWords prices are based off of competition in an area / bidding, the lowest budget you can set for a month is $50 less than their lowest recommended budget.

Setup

Setting up AdWords Express is simple, and that is the whole point of the service.  From your Google Places business center all you have to do is Click one button on your business listing and you’ll be brought to the ad creation page.  The ad page itself will only take 2 minutes to complete.

Where will ads show up?

AdWords Express ads will show up primarily when people search for business by location or on Google Maps (aka Google Places on mobile).  On the desktop version these ads will appear below the search box and on the sidebar to the right of results.  On the mobile version they will show up below the search box for each relevant section of Google.

Conclusion

If you want an easy way to set up advertising on Google, AdWords Express is the way to go.  It doesn’t off the same $100 of free advertising offer that normal AdWords supplies, but that would really only cover the first month anyway.  For many local businesses, AdWords Express should prove more effective than normal Google AdWords especially since you should be able to set it up yourself.  Then again, the most important thing to keep in mind is that when a potential customer clicks on your ad, they are brought to either your website or Google Places page – so you need to make sure that either one of those are set up to maximize their interest.  With that said, if you don’t have a website and would like help setting it up, feel free to shoot me an email and we can chat about what I can do for you.  I’m pretty much an expert on this stuff. – HireMe@groovypost.com Comment

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