Minority-owned businesses in Michigan can reap significant benefits from investing in search engine marketing, Google executives said in an event at the company’s Ann Arbor office Tuesday afternoon.

Google, citing a “severe underrepresentation” of minority-owned businesses in its client mix, hosted about 40 southeast Michigan minority entrepreneurs for a discussion about search engine marketing.

Louis Green, CEO of the Michigan Minority Supplier Development Council, said minority entrepreneurs need to embrace Google’s search engine advertising tool, AdWords, which allows businesses to target their marketing efforts toward people who have searched for key phrases.

“We have some really strong, strong business people. A lot of them, though, may not feel comfortable with technology,” Green said. “We saw this opportunity of connecting people together to use Google as an enabler for their business success.”

Google’s push to convince more local minority entrepreneurs to advertise comes after the company issued a report last month asserting that businesses get $2 in revenue for every $1 they spend on AdWords.

Mike Miller, Google’s Ann Arbor office leader, told the minority entrepreneurs that AdWords was a “very accountable and affordable way to reach your customers.”

“At the end of the day we know that this provides a tremendous ROI for companies,” he said.

Cheryl Richardson, CEO of Benton Harbor-based marketing services firm Concept To Promotion, said she recently started using AdWords for the first time since she bought her company more than a decade ago. She said her company had experienced strong growth via word-of-mouth references.

But she said she was already impressed with the immediate results AdWords produced for her company. She said he received a business lead within days of starting her AdWords campaign.

“I never had a reason to think about AdWords. I didn’t know anything about it,” she said. “My perspective has changed tremendously.”

Contact AnnArbor.com's Nathan Bomey at (734) 623-2587 or nathanbomey@annarbor.com. You can also follow him on Twitter or subscribe to AnnArbor.com's newsletters.