In engagements with new clients and prospects, the conversation inevitably takes a turn to Google. The big, powerful almighty search engine whose name is now a verb. It shouldn't be surprising that people view Google as the standard-bearer for web visibility. After all, not many people get all worked up by saying, Check where we are in Bing! (Ed. note: I like both search engines, which is why I pick on them).

Do we feel safe and comfortable with the notion that Google is THE search engine? Ok, let's move on to our point. Somewhere in the conversation the subject of Google AdWords arises. Often the customer just wants to be educated about it, to explore it as an advertising channel. Other times, our firm is suggesting that they implement some AdWords campaigns (actually, working with Montauk Marketing & Design is a best practice!) to test and refine, usually in order to generate targeted leads

The problems inherent to Adwords are:

1. It is a system unto itself, and a powerful one at that. It takes considerable time to really learn it and produce the results you want.

2. It is expensive. There have been many a woeful tale of a small company that thinks setting up some Google ads is a great idea. They get their account, set it to auto-renew on a credit card, and a few months later they are wondering where several grand went. It does happen.

How about the spiraling costs of bidding on competitive keywords. There are some useful strategies for getting Adwords clicks while avoiding the high-price bidding wars for most companies, but whether Adwords is the best choice or not is something that should be seriously thought out. It's not the platform to jump on just because everyone else has.

Ask yourself a question. When was the last time you clicked on an Adwords ad? You may have and not known it, by clicking on the top two results on a search page, which are often used for ad space. But when was the last time you were drawn to those ads on the right side of the page? In the informal polling we have done, there are not many among us clicking with regularity on those ads.

So we see lots of $ = underachieving results.

The alternatives are plenty. But we won't reveal them all at once. In Adwords, you essentially pay a lot to target a tiny slice of the Google universe, and hope they see you. One other way to develop your strategy is by considering options on sites that focus on your subject matter. This is advantageous because you don't have to hope your offer is getting in front of the right eyeballs, you already have a targeted audience.

For instance, a few years ago we worked with a company that was putting $100 per day into Adwords. We reduced the spend on that, and found some very interesting alternative options for advertising. The Adwords account was receiving about 65 clicks a day. The alternative option was buying banner space on a blog written by someone who just happened to love the types of products this company produced. They had about 10,000 unique visitors per month, a sneeze of the potential traffic Google can garner, yet the price for a banner was just right: $250/month.

Before long, that ad was getting 45 clicks a day, with 12-15 new leads coming in. Therefore, Adwords isn't always the answer.  By going with another option, the Cost Per Click fell drastically, and the lead quality improved. And that was just one alternative ad source!