Note: Please read the Introduction and Step 1 before you read this.

Google provides great services for an entrepreneur looking to gauge a particular consumer base.

One of the most important ways to gauge your market is through a survey. There are many ways to do this. You could simply go to a coffee shop and ask people about their tastes and preferences for a particular product related to coffee. But, in our Internet-savvy world, there is a much better way to gauge your audience.

In this section, I will outline a 3-step method that will allow you to validate whether people are interested in the product or service that you are about to develop. By following this 3-step method, you will see if your business is viable.


A brief overview of the 3-step method:

1. Using Google Sites, set up a landing page, which describes your product or service, has at least three survey questions on it and has a contact email address.
2. Using Google Adwords, make at least three ads that contain catchy descriptions of your product and have a link to your landing page created in Google Sites.
3. Using Google Analytics and data provided in Google Adwords, analyze the data and results to see whether your business is viable.

Market research is the best way to see viability of your company. In this step, I will explain how to use Google Adwords to track whether there is a potential online customer base for your company.

Google Adwords is an advertising service where you make ads that are posted on Google search as well as partner sites. It is a great way to bring people to your site and judge whether people are interested in your product or service. Simply put, if people don’t click on your ad, they are not interested in your product.

Google Adwords is not a free service. There is a $5.00 activation fee and each time a person clicks on your ad, you will be charged a small amount. Nevertheless, the value of Adwords is far greater than the cost.

In order to access Adwords, visit www.adwords.com.

If you are already logged in, you will see a line in red above the Google Account login. This will tell you that you are signed into a Google account but that account is not a valid Adwords account. Your Google account is not defaulted to be a Google Adwords account since Adwords is not a free service. Click the Start Now button above that red comment. Fill in the required information. After you do that, the first step in your Adwords setup is completed. The next step is to create your ad campaigns. On the “verify email address” page, click “sign in to your Adwords account.”

Once you do that, you should see the following page:

For those of you who have never used Adwords before, I will now explain the interface as well as the overall purpose of Adwords.

As seen in the screenshot above, Google Adwords is a service that allows anyone to display ads on Google Search as well as websites of those companies that participate in Google Adsense. In Google Adwords, you will have a campaign, which is the overall folder for your ads. Each campaign will have graphs and data that will show you how well your ads performed and how many people clicked/visited your site. This data is beneficial for entrepreneurs looking for market research because if no one clicks on your ads, then the odds of your product being interesting to online consumers is slightly unlikely. If there is a consistent number of people who have clicked on your ad, then interest is high and there is a potential consumer base for your product or service.

Click on the “Create your first campaign” button.

Fill in a name for your campaign (only you will see this name).

The most important part of this page is the “Bidding and budget” section. Simply put, a higher budget means Google will show your ads for a longer time throughout the day. For example, if you set a daily budget for $1.00/day, then once 5-6 people click on your ad, Google will stop running your ad in order to stay true to that budget. If you set your daily budget higher, then your ad will show for a greater amount of time throughout the day.

I prefer to keep the “Automatic Bidding to try to maximize clicks for your target budget” clicked. Which essentially means that Google will decide how much you need to bid for each keyword to maximize your daily budget.

For demonstration purposes, I have set my budget for $1.00/day.

After you have decided what budget/day you would like to set, enter it and click save and continue.

You will now be directed to the “Create an ad” tab. This is where you will add the text for the headlines that people will see on the side of Google and on other search partners. This is the most important aspect of your campaign.

Google has outlined some basic rules about how to effectively run an ad campaign. Your keyword must match some part of the phrase in the ad, and your ad headline and description must match a headline or phrase on your landing page. If one of these does not exist, then Google might not run your ad.

Thus, create a headline and description that mirrors a phrase on your landing page.

As seen above, my description 1 and description 2 can be found on the website. However, one problem with my ad that you should be wary about is that my Display URL and the Destination URL do not match. This is a common mistake. Google will not accept this ad because they do not match. Make sure your Display URL and Destination URL match.

Obviously, you will want to make your headline catchy. You have only a second’s worth of brain time to catch a viewer’s attention and bring them to your website.

My current ad reads:

High Tech Dog Toys

Dog Toys Incorporated

Track your dog’s behavior!

http://sites.google.com/site/dogtoysinc/

The main headline will grab attention because viewers who search the phrase “dog” or  “dog toys” will wonder what these “high tech dog toys” are. My second description explains that in a brief way. It gives enough detail to bring in someone to the website.

After you have completed the aforementioned step, click “save and continue.”

As a recap, you now have your Google site set up (3-Step Method for Market Research using Google (Step 1)). This is your landing page that people will be directed to from your ad. Your landing page has a description of your potential product or service, a survey about that product and your contact information. You have completed your initial Adwords setup and have added 1 ad in your campaign.

If one of these steps seem foreign to you, I suggest you review the previous material before continuing on.

After saving your ad, you will now be taken to the keyword section of your Adwords setup.

A great characteristic of Adwords is its scanning ability. Adwords will scan your ad and website and give you suggested keywords that it believes would be beneficial for your ad campaign. Obviously, some of these keywords may not be good for your website; however, take a look at them.

Enter one keyword per line. You may enter as many as you like. The more keywords you have, the more opportunity people have to find your ad. However, the more keywords you have, the more your cost will increase. So, if you are on a tight budget, 10-20 keywords may be enough.

Every keyword represents a customer that you may or may not be able to help. So

it’s time to go looking for customers – for keywords – and see which ones, and how

many, are your kind of person.

Wordtracker has a free keyword suggestion tool that you can access at http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/. Since my mock-business relates to dog toys, I will search dog toys in the Worktracker Keyword Suggestion tool.

This tells me how many online searches per day it has a record of.

Google has its own keyword tool, however it will not tell you how many searches their keywords actually got. You can access it within any ad group.

Since my mock website relates to dog toys, my keywords are as follows: dog toys, dog, toys, high-tech, technology, research, rubber dog toys, pet toys, and dogs toy.

After you have entered your keywords, click the “Estimate search traffic” button beneath the keywords. The Traffic Estimator provides traffic and cost estimates for new keywords before you add them to your campaign. You can also review estimates for current keywords already running in an ad group.

When you enter a keyword into the Traffic Estimator, you get estimates for your keyword’s status, search volume, average cost-per-click (CPC), cost/day, and average position. By using this tool, you can better forecast your ad’s placement and performance based on your CPC bid, targeting options, and other criteria.

Since my budget is low, my cost/day is estimated to be approximately $0.52-$1.00. This gives me a sense of what I am going to pay while I keep this campaign running.

You have now set up your ad and keywords in Adwords. If you wanted to add more ads or keywords, you can do so later.

Click “Save and continue to billing.” In the billing section, fill in the appropriate information. After you do this, your initial setup is complete.

Now that you have made an add, added your keywords and added your billing information, your Adwords setup is complete. You should now be at your Adwords home page.

Click the “campaigns” tab. This will have all the information about your ads, settings, keywords and networks.

In the “Ads” tab, you should see your ad that you made in the setup. Your status will say “Pending Review.” This is normal. It means that Google has not yet verified that your ad follows it’s advertising policies. Nevertheless, your ad is eligible to run on Google search pages even with this status. Your ad won’t run on Google’s search partners or on content network placements until they review and approve it.

To the right of your ad and status, there will be data listed for your ad that will help you track your market opportunity.

For you convenience, here’s what all those tabs means:

% served: Percentage of time your ad has been shown in relation to the rest of the active ads within the same ad group.

Clicks: How many people clicked your ad

Impressions: The number of times an ad has been displayed to web users in the course of one advertising day. When CPM bidding is in use, one thousand impressions equal one cost-per-thousand, or CPM, unit.

CTR: Clickthrough rate (CTR) is the number of clicks your ad receives divided by the number of times your ad is shown (impressions) via Google search only. Your ad and keyword each have their own CTRs, unique to your own campaign performance. Keyword CTR is a strong indicator of the relevance of your keyword to the user and the overall success of the keyword. CTR is also used to determine your keyword’s Quality Score. A low CTR may point to poor keyword performance, indicating a need for ad or keyword optimization.

Cost: Total cost of your ad campaign

Click the keywords tab.

You should now see the list of the keywords that you added previously. If you want to add more, simply click “add keywords.”

You will not get a good sense of your audience with just one ad. You should have at least three ads listed in your ad campaign with different headlines and descriptions.

In order to add more ads, click the Ads tab. You will now see your first ad that you made during the intial setup.

Click “New Ad.”

A new field will appear that will ask you to put in a new headline, description and URL. Do not make this ad similar to your first ad. The point of making multiple ads is to target different demographics. My first ad targeted people interested in technology. My second ad can target people interested in dog toys. My third ad can target people who are solely interested in their dogs. Your ads should do the same.

Remember to have at least three ads.

Your Adwords setup is now complete and fully functional!

In the next step, we will introduce Google Analytics and how to track your number of visits on your website. Read Step 3 here!