- Over 100 campaigns launched within the last year maximizing the use of AdWords by paying close attention to price fluxuations, targeting optimal keywords, keyword matching, stop words, direct matches, etc.
- Placement is at an average cost of $1.00 to $3.00 a click, if you even show up at all. Where are these fabu .25, .75 listings I always hear about? I've even been know to calle up competitors to find a way for us all to benefit by cooperatively lowering our bids. When it comes to saving money, almost everyone plays ball.
- PPC returns are ATROCIOUS, ATROCIOUS, ATROCIOUS. And we KNOW the sites "work" when it comes to effective copy, ease of use, etc. We have great inbounds from valuable articles people love to link to, beautiful rankings and get an EXCELLENT AMOUNT OF REVENUE FROM STANDARD POSITIONING AND PRESENTATION. In knowing our weak spots, only then have we tried to fortify our presence with PPC campaigns.
- All of this is based on my experience with AdWords, so I truly fail to see how Overture could work for any business that can take the chance at losing a couple of grand.
This is pretty much the only part of internet marketing that I don't fully understand after almost SIX YEARS in this business. PPC has never worked for me, nor has it worked for anyone else that I know of personally other than success stories I hear on WebmasterWorld.
Do many people have this problem or is it just me? I've been wrapping my head around this for almost two years now - to no avail.
How DO you run a successful PPC campaign? Right now, I honestly fail to see how it can be accomplished - and doubt whether PPC benefits anyone but the search engines that provide the service.
There are web analytics programs out there, that track both Google/Overture at the keyword level. This will return an accurate (ROAS) Return on AdSpend for any individual keyword, giving you the proper information to make bid adjustments, deletions, etc.....
It takes some work to get things tuned, but ignoring PPC engines, is giving up a lot of valuable traffic...
Any suggestions as to what programs to use? Maybe I overlooked a good one.
We found in most cases that prices that worked well for non-PPC (standard positioning and advertising), had to be lowered to work for PPC.
Most often we would cut these campaigns short since perceieved value and normal pricing is usually more important to our clients when selling product than lowering the price to make a PPC listing more attractive... espcially if they see little to no return anyway.
I've been marketing products and services for quite a while, so I made sure to do all of the necessary research before we went into even setting up an adwords account.
I get the feeling that the PPC climate is just simply horrible for a good amount of retail industries.
Service industries seem to do a bit better - and niche industries do very well.
I'm planning on marketing a niche service by January, so we'll see how that goes. I expect it to be pretty successful considering the main keyphrase is practically untouched and going for that beautiful .20 per click.
I never got the "gut feeling" that these campaigns would work - but with this service site, I almost know it will.
Online retail of popular products is, for lack of better words... a real b*tch. I commend anyone who finds success for popular retail through PPC.
PPC is sbout the closest you can get to perfect competition. When you have a commodity you have perfect information. That spells big trouble for market particpants. Eventually the market must tend to the point where only the hungriest or those with the lowest earnings target, or the most efficient will stay in business. That's not a scenario I find particularly inviting :(
Each industry can be quite idiosyncratic, some of the competitors are plain mad in their approach.
The fact you have data to use makes your failure even more difficult to grasp. Even with extended broad match, match driver etc.. there is still a glut of inventory available in most sectors at a low cost level. This allows your blended CPC to be lower than just trying to get into a bidding war that erodes all your margin.
Don't get sucked into those wars. Colluding with the enemy is mistake #1. Outsmart, out perform, bid the right keywords into the right position, in the right place at the right time.
The site copy may work when there is 500 words on a page with graphics etc.. but don't forget that with PPC your 70 characters is all someone has to formulate an opinion on whether you can satisfy their needs or no.
The actual bidding process is one of the easier aspect of a campaign. Pareto's law of 80/20 applies (more like 90/10 actually).
90% of your keywords need little or no day to day management.
90% of your action will come from 10% of your keywords. So if you have 1000 keywords, then maybe 100 need to be managed.
90% of your sales will come from 10% of your keywords and their derivatives.
