Marketing an online business is often a challenge: Entrepreneurs have an abundance of advertising options – both free and for a fee. The problem is entrepreneurs tend to be incredibly busy people with only so many hours in a day to accomplish everything that needs to be done pertaining to their online businesses.

One of the most effective and easiest marketing options online business owners have is Google Adwords. Even if your business Web site is not yet ranked high in the search engines, you can be assured that Web users see your URL, when they search for the keywords you've bid on, on the first pages of Google.

Adwords is an excellent means of driving targeted traffic to your Web site while you concentrate on your other marketing efforts – such as article marketing and adding keyword rich content to your Web site – to rank high in the search engines.

To run an effective Adwords campaign, however, you must understand how Adwords works. If you do an online search, you'll find there are a slew of Adwords tips offered by everyone from internet marketing gurus to successful online business owners. The top ten Adwords tips are:

Keywords count. If you don't choose the right keywords for your Adwords, your target market isn't going to find you. Keywords, and keyword phrases, are simply those terms and phrases that are most commonly searched for by your targeted market. If your niche is diet and weight loss, you might want to bid on the keywords diet, weight loss, and diet and weight loss.

There are numerous online keyword tools, such as Word Tracker and Overture, available to ensure you pick the best keywords and keyword phrases for your target market.

Write then bid. Before you ever sign up for or into your Google Adwords account, sit down and write your ad. Never write your ads off the top of your head. Rather, you must consider what you want your ad to accomplish and who you want to target. Write your ad then rewrite if necessary to ensure it is as effective as possible. You have very limited space, so you must be as precise as possible.

Set a budget. Know how much you want to spend each day, and whatever you do, do not spend too much per click. Set your budget and follow it.

Research your competition. Whether you use Google Adwords or not, you must stay up-to-date with what your competition is doing to secure new customers and to drive traffic to their Web sites.

Stand apart from the competition. Adwords is an effective way to drive traffic to your Web site if you know how to stand out from your competition. Be creative when you write your ads, but always ensure you adhere to Google's guidelines. According to some internet marketers, the best way to make your ad stand out is to simply capitalize the first letter of each word in your ad. (It's against Google's rules to use all capital letters.)

Include your product or service's cost. Make sure your ad includes the price of your product or service. By adding the price, you're making it easier for potential clients to decide if clicking on your ad and checking out your Web site is worth their time and their effort.

Geographically target your ads. If your product or service is geared toward a global audience, you don't have to worry about targeting your ads geographically. You should consider targeting your ads geographically if you are selling to a specific location. For example, if you're selling concert and sporting event tickets in Chicago, you may want to target only Chicago.

Always include a call to action. You want people to click on your ad and go to your Web site. Encourage them to do so by always ending your ad with a call to action, such as email, call, or click now.

Test, test, test. You can't just run your ad and forget about it. Rather, you should run several ads at the same time to determine which ad is the most successful. Then pull the less successful ads and run new ones to see how they stack up to the original ad. Testing is key to your Google Adwords success.