Am I doing something wrong?

Adwords campaign unproductive

[cfe_admin]

I've been running an Adwords campaign geared towards the fire industry for about a month or so. I have two ads running, one for the more high-profile all-encompassing keywords, and one specifically targeting one of our products. My all-time CTR for the focused ad is around 6%, and the other is closer to 3%.

The CPC is what's bothering me. It seems pretty inconsistant, but the all-time averages are .29 and .50 for the two ads. With our modest budget of about $100/month that only allows for about an additional 250 visits a month. So far our ROI is -100%, as reported by Analytics which I have tied into it. I tried to follow some of the advice encountered on this forum already, taking the ads off of the content network and such, to no avail. Is this a pretty common experience or am I messing up at some point? Thanks

[wrgvt]

Are you using negative keywords? Use the keyword tool within AdWords to see all the possible combinations of keywords and see which ones you don't want your ad to show for. For example, you're selling blue widgets and your most popular keyword is blue widgets. Type that into the keyword tool and you see the following:

blue widgets
new blue widgets
used blue widgets
refurbished new widgets
blue widgets pictures

If you don't sell used or refurbished blue widgets, or you figure someone looking for pcitures of one aren't likely to buy through your ad, add the following negative keywords (at either the campaign or ad level):

-used
-refurbished
-pictures

Likewise, if you have a keyword of "widgets" and only sell the blue ones, add negative keywords of:

-red
-green
-yellow

etc. To improve the CTR, use negative keywords to restrict your ad showing for keyword combinations that are least likely to result in a sale.