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We don't have the time or resources to monitor bids in this way, so what chance have we got ? Can you realistically run a successful PPC campaign MANUALLY ? (without having to do it daily)
Has anyone done it recently ?
In the beginning, I would check at least every few hours just to get a feel for how fluid your particular market place is. Before long, you will know if you can leave your bids unchecked for a while or if they will require close monitoring to hold your chosen position.
It will not take long to figure out if you are in with a bunch of idiots or folks who know what they are doing.
B2B terms seem to be less fluid than those that target the consumer. But there are exceptions to every rule.
The main number you need to know is "how much does the average new visitor add to my bottom line?" You need to know how well your traffic converts to sales and your average net profit per order. This will tell you how much your average new visitor is worth. As long as you keep your bids somewhere under that amount, your PPC campaign will work profitably whether or not you fuss with watching your bids. As long as you're not pushing too close to your breakeven point, it's not the end of the world to miss the occasional bid gap, or to be #1 when you thought #3 would work okay. It's important to manage your bids, but it's even more important to manage your time well.
If PPC works for you, you can invest in management software somewhere down the road, but you don't have to wait until then to get started.
The key to PPC is to set your bids according to how much the new traffic will be worth to you, more than trying to "hold your chosen position."
The question was about the difficulty of maintaining bids manually - not how to calculate return on investment. My answer was directed at the question, and I believe it is a valid one. :)
Purchase a Bid Management Program to do the work for you.
Yes, and what I hoped to make clear was that if you know your ROI and set your limits accordingly, it's perfectly possible to do a profitable "set it and forget it" PPC campaign.
The profit might not be maximized, of course, but as the business grows more resources can be allocated to optimizing the PPC investment. The thing is to get started, and take it one step at a time ...
I think I'll lurk a while and see if I can guage how active this particular industry is on PPC.
Overture recently increased the limit of queries to 24 per day through an xml feed. That opened up the playing field a little more for those terms that are highly competitive.
If you understand how the programs work, you can effectively manage a PPC campaign and not have to worry about doing anything manually other than setting up the program. You can surf the Gaps, set a drop back rank, set the maximum bid and all sorts of bid management options.
I've got a couple of campaigns that have been running through a bid management software for almost 6 months now. We've had great success and have maximised our ROI. Those clients chose to remain in the top three positions and have provided guidelines on max bid, dropback rank, maximum gap amount, etc.
I will never again manually manage a PPC campaign. I did one for the Corporate entity that I work for and it was a nightmare! We had a Christmas promotion going and the competitors were bidding every couple of minutes.
I think we could justify spending $200 but I'd like to make the right choice first time.
Please respond via StickyMail.
We tend to stay clear of software recommendations here.
Thanks
