Google Adwords or Adwords Express?

One of the questions that I am most often asked is, “what paid advertising should I start with?, “what has the best ROI?”  My answer is always the same, start with Google Adwords.  When someone searches “photo booth rental in your city”, the closer your photo booth company listing is to the top of the search results, the greater the likelihood the person will visit your site.  Google Adwords is an advertising platform, in which you pay to be at the top of the search results.  It is worth paying for this advertising as these people are warm leads, they are seeking out a photo booth rental.

Then the question becomes, should I use Google Adwords or Google Adwords Express for the photo booth business?  What’s the difference?  The two platforms work the same way in the sense that they are both focused on bringing you photo booth leads and you are charged for clicks. But as with everything else, the devil is in the details. Although, Google Adwords has being around like forever, Google Adwords Express was introduced back in 2011. We are going to be looking at the both of them; their pros, their cons and instances each is best suited for.

The big difference between the two platforms is that Google Adwords Express is specifically tailored to local businesses that don’t have a lot of time to invest in pay per click (PPC) Ads but see the value of placing ads on Google.  Adwords Express has been dubbed by Google as: “the easiest way to advertise on Google”.  Adwords Express is easy to understand and has less metrics to wrestle with while setting up an advertising campaign, while Google Adwords on the other hand is more robust, more complex platform than Adwords Express and requires more time.

Setting up a campaign on Google Adwords Express takes less than 15 minutes.  The fact that you do not need worry about bids and keywords is a big time saver. Google handles them all and even recommends a monthly budget depending on average search volume.

Google Adwords calls for careful analysis of keywords, negative keywords, setting bids and regularly updating them for an effective campaign and further analysis of keywords to ensure a successful campaign. All these can be daunting for a photo booth business just entering the PPC world.

Keyword analysis, tracking and reporting, are all done manually on Google Adwords, but they are done automatically on Google Adwords Express, as this does not require much monitoring like that of Google Adwords.

With Google Adwords, properly targeting and customizing your campaign is manual, while this is automated in Google Adwords express, meaning your success with any campaign on Adwords Express is dependent on Google making the right decisions for you.  Also, you can’t prevent your ads from showing up on some negative keywords related to your industry that are of no value to you, which is very much possible with Google Adwords.

With Google Adwords, you have access to more tracking, reporting and analysis data that can help you improve the success of any ad campaign. Google Adwords Express on the other hand provides minimal data, as most of the decisions that affects the success or failure of an ad campaign is automatically controlled.

Bottom line: I use Google Adwords Express for my photo booth rental business.  I consider my photo booth rental business, a local business as we only travel within an approximate 90 mile radius.  The only scenarios in which I would suggest using Google Adwords is if you are a larger regional or national company, or you are a Google Adwords expert. 

I spend about $200 per month on Google Adwords Express advertising.  If you are wondering what to write as a headline for the ad, here is what I use and it works well: “Local Photo Booth Rentals.”  Depending on where yo are located, you may have some national companies competing and using “local” separates you from those. 

If you would like to receive these articles delivered directly to your email inbox, sign up for my newsletter below.