Google AdWords have launched many businesses and certainly increased the business of many existing companies…but unless you’re willing to pay big bucks in clicks for people you can’t do business with, you’ll need to find a way to qualify your leads before you pay for their clicks.

Step 1: Be Descriptive.

Let’s say you have a carpet cleaning business in Boise, Ohio. If you Google the search term “carpet cleaning” what are you going to see? You’ll get not only carpet cleaning services, but also stores selling carpet cleaners, do it yourself articles, chemicals for cleaning carpets, and much more. That’s a pretty wide range of things someone could be looking for, and if your small business doesn’t sell carpet cleaning machines nationwide, carpet cleaning chemicals nationwide, and have offices all over the US offering local carpet cleaning services…you MUST say that in your ad. If you only offer local services, it’s probably best that you skip this and just move on to step #2. If you do sell some things nationwide but do other things locally, tell your customer in your ad. If your business is in Boise, Idaho and someone in Spokane, Washington needs their carpet cleaned…can you help them? Not at any reasonable cost, you can’t do the local service, but if they’re looking to buy a cleaning chemical you have…that could work!

Step #2 - Localize.

If you have a local business (such as the example carpet cleaning service) you should definitely use that in your search terms. Let’s say your business is located in Tampa, Florida now. Your search term shouldn’t be “carpet cleaning” because you’ll get nationwide (and even world wide) views and clicks from people you can’t do business with. Try using something like, “Carpet Cleaning Tampa” and “Carpet Cleaning Tampa FL” and other combinations with commas, abbreviations, and common misspellings.  Use the words “local” and “service” where you can.  If someone is searching for “Carpet Cleaning Service Tampa Florida” they likelihood that they can benefit from your local Tampa carpet cleaning business is very high.

Step #3 - Make a promise

People want to hear promises. If you saw two identical ads and one said “satisfaction guaranteed” or “money back guarantee” but the other one didn’t…which would you choose? I’d go for the money back guarantee too. Even though the other service may be better, I feel more comfortable if they advertise a guarantee. If your product or service is what you claim (and it better be) your refund rates will be very low and certainly worth the increase in security for your customer.

One last tip on guarantees — Keep them. If a customer requests a refund, do so promptly and without a hassle. Just because someone got a refund doesn’t mean you’ve lost the customer. If they are treated well, you’ll get great word of mouth advertising, they may come back for more at a later time, and if they do neither of those, at least they won’t go telling everybody what a bad experience they had with your business.

- John