Call me aggressive, but I take the initiative and call these people. Weeding out advertisers who are costing my clients money is essential to managing a PPC campaign.
Some of them don't know what they're doing and are willfully increasing their costs, along with mine. A few are knowledgeable folk who just didn't do their homework.
Either way, I feel like the person in the fast lane who is driving behind someone who is doing 10 mph under the speed limit.
Is weeding out irrelevant ads part of your routine? Or do you roll with it?
Like you say,
Weeding out advertisers who are costing my clients money is essential to managing a PPC campaign
be it guerilla tactics, sweet talking or straight up making deals you can't just market in a vaccuum.
my spend would be less if my competitors utilized Negative Keywords or more Specific Keywords
That's a theory I don't subscribe to - atleast as of now. Can you elaborate on that?
When your competitors do NOT use negative keywords, the surfers would probably ignore their ads (since they are looking for something else). Even surfers do click on the ad, the CPC would be lower than usual (because he/she doesn't have YOU as a competitor for this particular keyword).
For the rest of the keywords, you and your competitor are slugging it out as usual. So when your competitor does NOT use negative keywords, how does it increase your costs? Am I missing something obvious here?
Suppose I were selling an ebook "How to Field Dress a Deer". If I could persuade a garment manufacturer to use negative keywords such as "deer" "hunting" "game" "venison" etc. when bidding on "dress" that would help us both.
Ah... When the advertisers are in unrelated field, you don't call them "competitors".
Both you and the garment manufacturer are using the keyword "dress" for targeting different surfers. When the surfer is looking for something like "kids dress", he/she will ignore your ebook advertisement. Your ad will collect impressions (but no clicks) and will lose position.
Basically, you don't need to persuade anybody to use certain keywords or certain tricks. The AdWords system of using CTR and CPC for ranking will automatically take care of things like that.
If competitors write bad ads or bid on irrelevant keywords they pay more for the being there, or they get removed if totally irrelevant.
It's not my job to educate my client's competitors on how to do their job, or bring attention to their own shortcomings, thus giving them an opportunity to do better on the back of unpaid consultancy.
The important thing is to understand the tactics/mindset of each of the competitors you have and act accordingly. Anyone that has taken on a BIG company with a ridiculous bidding strategy will know what I mean by that, they are not competition at all. They do their own thing and we let them.
At any point in time most keywords we monitor have up to 7 of the top 10 over-bidding (excluding Google's auto discounter, but even then people agree to spend more than they need to to start with).
If they are incompetent that is much better for you than if they knew what to do and how to do it.
I'm not saying the Justice Department will come looking for any of you, but I'm not sure I'd make public postings about any participation in any such activity. I'm sure Google knows what the law is.
Just a thought...
of course, if all you're doing is educating them about the features of adwrds, I would guess that's okay - just be careful any time you call a competitor to discuss their spending...
For instance, Mr. "A" sells "household widget repair" and bids on the term "widget repair" (because it has such high impressions and he's coveting that traffic).
Mrs. B, sells "automotive widget repair"- A way different product for Automobiles that has nothing to do with Homes. Mrs. B bids on "Automotive Widget Repair."
Unfortunately for Mrs. B, Mr. A's ad for "Widget Repair" is bleeding into her "automotive widget repair" campaign. Because he's paying so much to be on top, she has to increase her maximum bid.
Mr. A sets a high max cpc because he wants to be on top- and fortunately for him, he receives a decent enough ctr that is above the cutoff threshold- so he keeps going along, blissfully unaware that his costs are so high partially because he's competing in areas that have nothing to do with his industry.
If Mr. A used negative keywords, like Mrs.B does, then he would see his costs go down- and the roi go up. This is true in my experience because I do it all the time and my CPC drops-
You can put "N. Calif." in your adword, and you can bet you'll have people from Missouri clicking through your ad. I know because I track the clicks, and even the responses- and it's incredible how many adwords surfers don't fully comprehend what they're clicking on.
Mr. A is totally unaware that his "home widget" ad is attracting the "auto widget repair" folks. I spoke with an AdWords rep and he was 100% behind the idea of me calling the irrelevant advertiser and educating him.
Of course, that's the google rep speaking. I'm not sure what Google AdWords would think, but I don't see how it's a problem to educate a non-competing bidder whose ad is showing up in an unrelated field. Some of these folks actually thank me because they had no idea.
And that's the takeaway: If you're managing an adwords campaign, take your eye off those high impressions and investigate what other unrelated fields are part of those impressions, then use the negatives to stay out of my backyard.
Call me aggressive, but I take the initiative and call these people. Weeding out advertisers who are costing my clients money is essential to managing a PPC campaign
Do you contact them via phone or email? How many of them
listen to you? I am curious :)
That's maybe also how other business owners might look at this situation. It could be if I am in that same boat and would have exactly that problem, I also would rethink...
Of course that is different if somebody with an unrelated business would ruin the inventory with his stupid bids not targetted enough. Then it's just about educating them how to use adwords to get a better result and save money (and at the same time save you money and stress).
I somehow feel like this about ebay.com, half.com or amazon.com. They have broad matches on tons of keywords (but all of them) and this means that 5 ads are showing up which are not targetted at all.... somebody should call them and ask them to waste their investors money somewhere else ;)
When you are running ads who says you are right or wrong? Basically the searchers do. They are the ones that will decide what ads are relevant to what they were looking for.
An example. If someone types in "phone" there will be a hundred different people whose intent was different, so 100 ads could be right or wrong.
If your competitors, or to be more correct the other advertisers, are bidding on keywords, and being shown for all the wrong things then they will be removed..... by the system.
I feel the implication that weeding out competitors costing your clients money by making phone calls is verging on harrasment and I'd be inclined to not do that sort of thing. Whilst your intention may be good, I don't see your motivation as being beneficial to the recipient of the call.
The biggest enemy or ally you will have is your ability to master the system. If you've done that, then your clients will not be penalised by others encroaching on their domination of each keyword.
Often though the deciding factor is the ad copy.
So for examply I bid for "country" because mine is a product specific t othis coutnry which is also very small (ok, unfortunately there are some cities in th estates with the same name as teh country, but they're hard to weed out).
So I have a bid for "selling red widgets in country" at, say 0.50
then I'd bid for "country" with just 0.05, keeeping my wastage low and my CTR up, my ad doesn't show THAT often (still much more then for teh targeted term of course) and lower down. sine my ad title says "Buy red widgets for country here" my clicks are pretty targeted.
The fact of the matter is that people are REALLY stupid when searching, so I get about 20-30% of ALL my clicks from "country" and of those about 80% simply searched for "country". I mean what the heck is that suposed to mean? People are that stupid, but I still want their money, so I gotta bid for the general keyword.
SN
I had one competitor call me out of the blue (someone from WebmasterWorld, as a matter of fact - Hi, pal! ;)) and ask me outright:
"How on earth can you possibly make it work by bidding $2.10 on blue widgets!? That's really high!"
Well, turns out it was high, but we were doing things slighly differently with our suppliers than he was and we were losing fewer orders in the funnel. So what looked like our folly (to him) was actually sound business practice on our side.
This is one reason I'd be hesitant to "educate" the competitors ... I might be the one getting the education.
A second reason I'd be hesitant to go talking to my competitors about their weirdo bids is we've noticed that there are some competitors who get in it for the long haul. They monkey around with their bids and keywords, find what works for them, and they compete within boundaries they figure out. Other people don't know what the heck they're doing - they get a chunk of 'marketing budget' money and they go nuts on PPC. These guys drive up the bids for a while, bidding waaaay out of scope for a wide set of keywords, and then when they run out of money they walk away thinking, "Gee, that's a lousy way to market!" Most of the screwball "out of scope" competitors weed themselves out in a relatively short period of time.
Finally, there are a couple of competitors who use our main product as a loss leader. They're bidding higher to get those customers - they don't care - they just want to get customers in the door at whatever price with whatever keywords they can and then they work to cross-sell/up-sell to the customers. If we called them they'd have a good laugh at us. :)
Edited to fix some lousy grammar. Left other lousy grammar intact.
