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I've decided to take that step for a client and to start an AdWords campaign.
However, I need some questions answered, in lamen terms:
1) What does it take for your ad to be #1, and what kind of diagnostic tools would I need to get the most out of this?
2) How do you guys handle your Max. CPC?
3) Anything I should know or do before I activate the new ad?
4) How do they handle fraud prevention?
#1 doesn't always go to the person who bids the most money, although obviously that helps. The AdWords are ranked partly by how much you bid and partly by how good your clickthrough percentage is. Simplified example: someone bidding 5¢ and achieving a clickthrough rate of 2% would put the same amount into Google's pocket as someone bidding 10¢ with a clickthrough rate of 1%, so Google gives the better-performing ad with a higher position than it would otherwise get. It's their way of rewarding relevance.
By investing some time and brainpower to tweak your ads and your keyword list to improve your clickthrough rate, you can move up in the ranks even if you're not spending as much per click as others around you.
If there's special tools to monitor this I don't know about them; I just log into my account and read the reports to see how things are going.
Regarding the max CPC, you need to know what the traffic is likely to be worth in terms of new sales, and set your bids so you don't pay more for the traffic than it's worth to your bottom line. This must be analyzed on a case -by-case basis. Allow a bit extra to get started, and after your clickthrough rate is established and fine-tuned you might be able to lower your bids.
<<activate the new ad>>
I'd strongly suggest that you make that plural - if you have multiple ads Google will rotate them and automatically start to favor those that perform better. Testing the performance of different variations is always wise.
Regarding fraud prevention: I'm not sure what technical measures are in place, but competitors would have a disincentive to click on your ad because it would improve your clickthrough rate and this might push you to rank above them!
Be sure to block words that you don't want your ad to appear for. For starters, you probably don't want people who are just looking for free stuff, so block words like "free" "freebie" etc.
Pretty nice feature
With AdWords you set your maximum bid and they automatically juggle things so you don't pay more than a penny extra to outbid the guy below you. I have one campaign where my max bid is 10¢ but my actual spending is closer to 7¢ per click overall. I know I can make money at 10¢, so the cheaper clicks are a bonus.
I've thought about raising my bids to more than the actual amount I want to spend, in hopes that I could generate more traffic and still be within my desired margin overall, but in general I prefer not to do a lot of fussing with PPC campaigns. I bid conservatively because being able to "set-it-and-forget-it" is worth more to me than the effort of wringing out a few more dollars by pushing my margins.
[edited by: HyperGeek at 7:50 pm (utc) on Aug. 22, 2002]
If you possibly can, track sales from your AdWords campaigns separately from the company's overall activity. The traffic will be well-targeted if you've tweaked your keyword list well, so sales results might justify raising your bids. If they don't, you need to know that too. Some companies go so far as using affiliate software for tracking various ad campaigns, even though they don't have an affiliate program.
So we're aiming either for leads or sales (which are leads as well from the shipping info).
Those two links on the site are being click-tracked. My stats pack also allows me to view inbound referrals, so I'll be able to get a fair deal to inbound session ratio from that.
