Google Adwords can be one of the most effective marketing and advertising tools that you have at your disposal across any range of industry or medium. The results are instantaneous and you can direct a great quantity of relevant, targeted traffic to your site. However, as we all have discovered at some point, these campaigns can also become very expensive. Therefore it’s important to learn some cost effective bidding strategies and other techniques and ideas that can help you make the most from the smallest monetary investment. When most people get started with Google Adwords the first thing they want to do is bid as highly as possible so that they get the number 1 listing for any words or phrases they are targeting. Being first is the best after all, and what good is paying for the third or fourth or any other listing? While this may sound smart in principle, it’s a strategy that can end up costing you a great deal of money. Entering into a bidding war for the top spot is going to cost you a significant chunk of change for every single click. Depending on the size of your market and your budgetary constraints, you can quickly tap yourself out before you even make a dent. A smarter, more cost effective strategy is to tone down your bidding and shoot for obtaining one of the top five to ten spots. The cost savings will be incredible, and you’ll still be able to see plenty of traffic. Even without having the number 1 listing, you can combine great advertisement writing and smart market selection in order to produce fantastic results. You’ll pay less to receive more visitors and prospects, and that’s a winning combination. The above strategy dealt with bidding techniques for a popular and competitive market. An alternative to bidding less, but bidding smarter and showing up in a moderately high spot for a very popular search is to find a less popular market and make yourself the number 1 listing there. You’d be surprised at how open some of the less popular words and phrases are. People are tempted by the big guns, whatever the most popular and widely used phrases are for a particular industry or market. But you can be the big fish in a small pond by finding less popular search queries that are still highly relevant to your core business. You can achieve the number 1 spot for much less money, and you will therefore be able to drive a high percentage of the smaller market to your website. If you want to be successful with Google Adwords you need to stat managing your campaigns more effectively. Forget about bidding wars and high prices for the top spot in very competitive niches. Instead, opt for a lower but still respectable spot in that market for less money. Alternatively, find a smaller niche and get yourself to the top for lower cost. Either of these two bidding techniques will produce cost savings and more effective campaigns for your business.