Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Advertising on your schedule with AdWords Express

Small businesses know the importance of being online, but running that first ad can be overwhelming. Google introduced AdWords Express to help small businesses start advertising online easily, without the need for daily management. Fast-forward nearly three years to today, and businesses around the world are seeing success with AdWords Express.

Nick Valle, owner of Nick’s Towing and Roadside Assistance, uses AdWords Express to run his business from the road. After a decade of driving an 18-wheeler and working part-time for a towing company, Nick decided to start his own small business. He started using AdWords Express six months ago, and his business is doing better than ever. He gets enough calls to keep himself and a driver busy throughout the day, and can easily track calls back to his ad with the call reporting feature.

Get results on the go with the AdWords Express app
Nearly 74% of small business owners like Nick use mobile devices to help manage their business*, and earlier this year, we announced improvements to AdWords Express across all screen sizes. To make starting a new ad and managing an existing one even easier on mobile, we’ve now introduced a free app for Android and iOS users in the U.S. The app gives you access to all the features of AdWords Express while on the go:
Reach the right customers with new targeting options
AdWords Express has added more control where it counts for defining your target audience. Now advertisers can choose exactly where to promote their business -- in their zip code, city, state or others around the country (currently in English-speaking countries). When customers search from their phone, they can get driving directions, call your business, or visit your website in one tap.

Let AdWords Express do the rest
When you select your business category, AdWords Express makes sure that customers searching for related topics see your ad. To improve the targeting of your ad, products and services that are mentioned on your website can now be added by AdWords Express as keywords if they are related to your ad. We’ve also added more negative keywords to exclude unwanted searches, which improves the click-through rates of ads and means a lower cost for advertisers.

Let us know how AdWords Express is working for your business, and stay tuned for additional improvements in the coming months.

Posted by Xuefu Wang, Engineering Director

*NSBA, page 4