Overture advertising down?

[dailymultiple]

The day my business took off was the day i discovered overture...about 6 months ago. Ive had steady interest and new customers each month. Often i would get a sales call everyday of the week. So this month I increase my Keyword count and decided to spend $1000 with overture. But suddenly this month things have grinded to a halt. The clicks are still the same...my traffic logs show that I am getting more traffic then ever, but the sales calls and emails have all but stopped coming. I am not in a seasonal business and there is nothing that has changed on my website. Does anyone else ever have this experience? Im not really convinced that the war has anything to do with it. My (new business) sales have gone from over $5000 last month to $0 this month. Strangest thing Ive ever seen. Im not an internet business, im a brick and morter manufacturer. Anyone ever have months were things take a dive like this? I have checked into everything and everything is the same as it always was....except the sales.

[webdiversity]

dailymultiple, there can be many factors influencing the buying habits of your visitors.

What we find sometimes is the sales message or call to action in your ads can become stale. Often you find yourself slipping down in position and occupying a place in no-mans land where if you do get a click it's usually only as a comparison and the visitor goes back to the first one to complete the sale.

The other thing that may be happening is that your web site funcitonality has become slow, if your site has been successful sometimes the downturn is caused by people getting fed up with waiting.

If you follow any of my posts you will see that we always harp back to one thing...... tracking. if you don't track the visitors path through the site you can't identify the bottleneck, if you can't identify the bottleneck then you have to assume the entire process is flawed.

If you know your competitors well, why not ask them how business is. I'd suggest that if the ads worked before then there is something wrong with the site or the integration, not with Overture.

[Chicago]

Daily Multiple,

It is tax season:)

or all the prospects are at Google;)

In all seriousness, one of my professional services business sees considerable fluctuation in Internet marketing customer acquisition. This is most attributable to large clients engagements. I may go 2 -3 months and not receive a client, still paying $5cpcs. Then wham. A 50k project. My CPCs have never been down in 4 years. My ROI in the 1000s of %.

ROI is best measured over months, not weeks. Patience and persistance is key.

It would be intertesting to know what you do, because if you are selling a low dollar ticket item, then this type of fluctuation really shouldn't take place. If this is the case here are some things to check:

1. Has a new bidder arrived on the scene with a better product or lower price?
2. Are you remaining in the top three positions on overture for the keywords that you know to be working (your old ones, not the new ones).
3. Are all your forms working on the site? Has the site changed at all?

If none of the above, just hang tight. And, take some time this weekend to learn Googles ADwords. You will find close to equal success with Google ADwords cost per click program. Google Ads also pull into AOL. Between O and G, you will have coverage on MSN, Y!, AOL, G, AV, AJ, and many others.