I'm doing this with the revenues from my other sites on adsense, hopefully if this works I'll be reinvesting my adsense cash into customers which will convert to more money, especially over the longer term. (this is the theory anyway lol!)
I would like to hear your best advice for the adwords system and optimising my profits. Advice for improving CTR and lowering CPC are also greatly appreciated! I have been reading through several of the topics here, but most seem to deal with fraud - is this problem on a serious scale?
Is there any tool to find odd search terms which may bring in clicks? Obviously I can think up of search terms but any help much appreciated!
Lastly I know this is a big area (his market) with many huge fish who have gone on board with adwords, so is there really hope for me to get involved there, bearing in mind my daily spending will be only about $5-10 a day.
Many Thanks!
[edited by: Shak at 10:45 pm (utc) on Dec. 29, 2003]
[edit reason] no specifics please. [/edit]
I don't think fraud is a wide-spread problem. And there is much more to this forum as well. You should be able to find tips on lowering CPC and increasing CTR.
IMO- A $5-$10 daily spend isn't going to get you much in this field.
And no, you cant have two accounts pointing to the same site with the same keywords.
[edited by: Shak at 10:46 pm (utc) on Dec. 29, 2003]
[edited by: Shak at 10:46 pm (utc) on Dec. 29, 2003]
IMO- Unless you offer CC, don't expect a single sale...ever!
[edited by: skibum at 11:31 pm (utc) on Dec. 29, 2003]
1) to find unusual words/phrases you can also use wordtracker. You can get a lot out of a 1-day access at $7.45
2) use lots of negative words.
3) use many different ad groups so you can get the search in the title (e.g. if someone searches for "red widgets" you want your ad to say "Buy Red Widgets"). You can use the substitution feature, but I prefer more ad groups.
4) I don't want to start another holy war, but I would say with a tight budget you should definately turn off content distribution
5) use lots of negative words.
6) Lots of people feel tweaking creatives is very helpful, I'm not so sure but I do always recommend starting titles with a call to action (e.g. "Buy", "Search", "Compare").
7) use lots of negative words.
8) If you have ad groups with highly variable ctr's (e.g. one phrase is at 1.9% and another at 0.06%) you might want to consider taking action on low performers even if they are above Google's minimum. You can either move them to a different ad group or just delete them.
Creatives not important? ..Quote from Oceans 11, "are you out of your godamned mind!" A good ad always takes good copy. By stating that, I assume you just write an ad and let it run? As opposed to editing and rewording it with proven words while tracking the CTR's? Certain words can make or break an ad, and raise or lower your CTR by very substantial percentages. In the industries I work in, and there are quite a few, changing words around can mean a 5% jump in CTR and in sales as a result.
Since we're on this subject, I see the majority of ads on Adwords are basically bits and pieces of other ads that worked for other companies. I don't say much about it, and rightfully so. I compete in many markets & industries, and my ads nearly every time in every market get premium listings with a low CPC in part as a result of other advertisers not understanding how to write copy. If your running ads that you kinda just through together and profiting, get me in there and I will blow your mind (unless of course you already have a 10% CTR at a .40 CPC yielding premium listings across the board).
You said "8) If you have ad groups with highly variable ctr's (e.g. one phrase is at 1.9% and another at 0.06%) you might want to consider taking action on low performers even if they are above Google's minimum. You can either move them to a different ad group or just delete them."
Why are you recommending that low CTR KW get moved to another ad group or deleted?
A $5-$10 daily budget is a waste of time in my opinion.
I've seen a lot of sites start with less than a $500/month budget, and grow into something much bigger. You have to start somewhere, but if you're going for such a small budget - only use exact matches while you learn the system.
The way I do it now:
1) use braod match to find out what the market is searching for
2) set up ads for phrases from broad search that apply to your product as exact match
3) use the exact match phrase 2) as a negative in the broad match ad
this way I constantly get information on what is searched for in the market, but also have the advantage of perfectly targeted (and mostly cheaper) ads with the exact match.
Although the budget you have has an influence on number of impressions and clicks, low budgets campaigns are not something to dismiss as mentioned above. It really depends on the market and what you can get out of it.
Just my 2 cent (EURO)
Quite you will see positive returns from a $5 - $10 daily budget allowing you to safely ramp up the campaign as time passes.
But, if your campaign does poorly on a $5 - $10 budget I think you have short changed the campaign and not given yourself a nearly large enough sample size to dismiss this advertising avenue.
Tools like Wordtracker will only be as good as the end user, there is no magic formula but there is still a collosal amount of unbidded inventory, inspite of attempts by the PPC providers to match drive, or extend broad match, or the FindWhat/Lycos intelliwhatsit announced today.
Once you know what you are looking for it's easy to find, which may seem a bit of an oxymoron, but search follows a pattern, once you know the pattern the research is easy. There was a thread back in supporters along those lines, which would be worthy of a read.
Daily budget = cash flow
Thanks guys as expected honest and very helpful information!
Agreed!
Gotta say that I really love this forum. Proud to be able to post from time to time...
AWA
