In general, I’d say Google AdWords is a good place to start advertising with pay per click advertising, but it may not be the best place to start for everyone. The best place to start advertising, no matter who you are and what business you are in, is where your customers are. If you find that the majority of the people you want to reach hang out at Yahoo! then perhaps you should start advertising through Yahoo! Search Marketing. If the lion’s share of your target audience uses Live Search then you should be advertising through MSN adCenter.
Small businesses may seem to be at a disadvantage at Google due to higher bid prices on keywords, but it’s not necessarily true. Yes, there is more competition and you may even be going head to head with a large competitor with a big budget. But because you are smaller you can be more agile and adapt to market conditions more quickly. Take advantage of that edge and you should do fine at Google Adwords as well. Still, let’s stress this again: If your target audience is using Google Adwords then it doesn’t matter what the competition is doing; go where YOUR market is.
