Have you received one of GoogleÔÇÖs vouchers to try out AdWords? Are you thinking about trying your first PPC campaign? If so, there are a few things you need to know before you take the plunge.

Although Google touts AdWords as being easy to use, that is nowhere near the truth. In fact, setting up a campaign is not easy. Setting up a successful campaign is next to impossible for beginners, let alone experienced AdWords users. There are many different concepts you need to understand and balance. AdWords has tried to offer some automation to simply the process but the results are generally disappointing.

Google bases its Ad rankings on a combination of quality score, bid, click through rate or CTR, and the keyword history. There is an art to creating an effect campaign. You need to understand what is important to Google in the make-up of your campaign. For instance, not all of your top performing keywords should be lumped into one ad group.  Your ads need to be relevant to your keyword or keywords and you need a relevant landing page for your ad group. Relevancy is extremely important.  But even if you are a master at creating relevant ads and setting up your ad groups properly you will probably still encounter problems. If you choose a keyword that has a low search volume it will give you a poor quality score for the keyword and there is little you can do about it.

If you use popular keywords you will probably still have a low quality score simply because you are new and now you have to pay even more to get noticed because these popular keywords most likely have a much higher average bid.

This problem has been compounded with the many free vouchers Google offers new businesses to try out PPC advertising.  Unfortunately, the only way to overcome this problem is by throwing money at it. If you are trying to compete against companies that have high quality scores for he keywords you are targeting you have to pay more in order to increase your ads position into the top 3.  That means upping your PPC bid. In essence, the lower your quality score for a keyword the higher your bid needs to be.

LetÔÇÖs face it-PPC campaigns are not cheap. Even at a modest budget of $10.00 a day, $300.00 a month in PPC charges quickly eats away at a start-ups marketing budget. Unfortunately, in most cases $10.00 a day wonÔÇÖt be enough to allow a new company to compete for ad placement. In some segments, it can be really expensive to rank for the keywords you need.┬á This makes it tough for start-ups to break into AdWords and get any type of reasonable return on their investment.

If you check out GoogleÔÇÖs FAQÔÇÖs or ask them directly for help to improve your keyword score or ad ranking there is only one answer-bid more. They are honest about the fact that money is the solution when everything else is properly set up for your campaign and the ads and landing pages are relevant to your keyword.┬á This leaves little opportunity for the new AdWords client to be successful without a lot of money at their disposal.

In a way, AdWords and new business are about as compatible as oil and water. The fact is that the more free offers Google puts out, the more it has the potential to repel away more small businesses and start-ups. Obviously, Google needs to keep attracting more customers in order to grow, but the process of attracting that new business is also forcing many small businesses to abandon their AdWord PPC campaigns because they simply cannot afford the ever-increasing budgets required to make their ads rank in the top 3 and see results.

With other forms of advertising available at lower costs many businesses are turning to new ad agencies that distribute ad messages via links in articles across the web using third party publishers and through social media sites like twitter at a much lower cost with better traffic results.

Think carefully about your advertising strategy.  Investigate new forms of internet advertising to see what would work best for your company. If you decide an AdWords campaign is the right choice for your company, hire someone with a lot of experience that really understands how AdWords works and can get results for you faster.